When nineteen-year-old Iselin Hanssen disappears during a run in a popular hiking area in Bodø, Northern Norway, suspicion quickly falls on her boyfriend. For investigator Jakob Weber, the case seems clear-cut, almost unexceptional, even though there is some suggestion that Iselin lived parts of her life beneath the radar of both family and friends.
But events take a dramatic turn when another woman disappears in similar circumstances – this time on the island of Røst, hundreds of miles off the Norwegian coast, in the wild ocean.
Rumours that a killer is on the loose begin to spread, terrifying the local population and leading to wild conspiracies. But then Jakob discovers that this isn’t the first time that young women have vanished without a trace in the region, and it becomes clear that someone is hiding something.
Category: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy ISBN: 9781399734783 Publication date: October 17, 2024 Format: Hardback RRP: £20.00 Publisher: Hodderscape
Book Description
When the Gendarmes ask the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena for help, they don’t expect them to send Samantha Harker.
She’s a researcher, more used to papercuts than knife fights. Sam is also the daughter of Dracula’s killer and can see into the minds of monsters. It’s a perilous power, one that could help her crack this case ─ or have her thrown into an asylum.
Dr Helena Moriarty is Sam’s reluctant partner, the Society’s finest agent who has forged a formidable path in her notorious father’s shadow. Professor Moriarty is in hiding, but he still makes his presence known: Hel’s partners have a way of dying in mysterious circumstances.
From Paris’ glittering opera house to its darkest catacombs, the investigation pits Sam and Hel against magic, monsters, and men. And beneath their tenuous partnership, something else is growing . . .
But is trusting Hel the key to solving the murders? Or is Sam just another pawn in a Moriarty game?
With characters drawn from the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, Strange Beasts is a twisty puzzle box of a historical fantasy ─ perfect for fans of Genevieve Cogman, Theodora Goss, Freya Marske, T. Kingfisher, and Gail Carriger.
About the author
Susan J. Morris is a fantasy author and editor, best known for a writing advice column featured on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog and her work editing Forgotten Realms novels. Susan delights in running workshops for Clarion West and in moderating panels for writing symposiums. When not writing or reading, Susan indulges in playing video games, training in Pilates, and experimenting with new plant-based food recipes. She lives in Sammamish, Washington with her partner, two cats, and entirely too many plants.
Susan had that pink hair at FantasyCon in October. It’s very distinctive and eye-catching…and distracting.
I read this book for the British Fantasy Society book club meeting on Sunday afternoon. I got an Audible code from the book club organiser because my Goldsboro Books special edition of Strange Beasts hasn’t arrived yet. It was the October SFF Fellowship book, but I had to cancel my subscription because funds are a bit tight. I ordered it impulsively after chatting to Susan a few times at FantasyCon.
Conversations in the courtyard are responsible for a number of books I’ve bought in the last month…
Anyway, I also ordered a copy of the standard hardback from bookshop.org when I found out it would be the first BFS Book Club book and before Dave sent me an Audible code. So, once again, I have multiple copies of a book.
Totally worth it!
The main characters of Sam Harker and Dr Helena Moriarty are well-rounded, complex characters, each working through their own problems and dealing with their own secrets. They’re officially investigating the Beast attacks, but they both have their own secret missions and they’re being manipulated by multiple parties. They struggle to trust, because they’ve been taught by other people that they can’t trust anyone and can’t trust themselves. Their growth as people and the tentative nature of their relationship from start to finish is realistic.
Sam is the view point character, so we read her thoughts and see events from her perspective, and see her fears and confusion as she deals with the things the mission throws at her.
They’re also really fun characters.
Jacob Van Helsing is not a fun character. He’s an absolute dickhead. Sam’s memories of him as a loving child contrast with the adult man poisoned by his father – the Van Helsing who helped kill Dracul – into hating and fearing her as a Channel. His comeuppance is well-deserved, although I don’t like that he got credit for Sam and Hel’s work. I suspect even if he hadn’t chosen to take credit, Mr Wright would have given him the credit, because the Society, and society in general, is incredibly misogynistic.
I did not work out who the killer was until quite late on; there are a lot of red herrings. Even the identity of the alchemist was a red herring really, when you think about it, another piece on the chess board, but not the player moving the pieces around.
I felt the mix of science and magic was really well done – a delicate balance of folklore and early 20th century science was found and use consistently. The details of Paris in 1903 feel realistic, although I’ve only been to Paris once and didn’t get to go into the catacombs, but I can imagine them being full of mythical beasts and human criminals. The descriptions were very vivid and events tightly plotted. There are characters I’d like to know more about but they don’t come back into the narrative, and other characters that the reader learns about slowly. Each character has their own backstory and personal history.
Also, chemistry is magic, and fun to play with. So long as you don’t accidentally gas people or blow things up.
The plot starts with a bang and doesn’t stop. Well, actually it starts with a threat, then a few bangs, and then a monster attack in a carriage…you get the picture. You’re just taking a breath when the next thing happens. It’s fun, but I had to take a day between reading/listening to a few chapters at a time.
I have listened to the first 14 chapters as audio and read from chapter 15 to the end. The audiobook was really well read, with multiple accents! I would not have been able to pronounce most of the French and German names without hearing them first. It’s been a lot of years since I sturdied French and I wasn’t very good at it even then, and my German is non-existent. I could not understand the French phrases. I’m just going to assume they’re all in good French, make sense, and not question it.
If you enjoyed Gail Carriger’s books, I highly recommend this historical fantasy of Bell Époque Paris. It’s darker and the focus is on the developing friendship/potential romantic relationship rather than a ‘destined partners’ type narrative. I love it.
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I reviewed this book when it was first published last year. The paperback was recently published so I’m sharing the details and my review as part of the tour to celebrate the paperback publication.
Since the hardback was published last year the following has happened:
WINNER of the Cultura’s Best Fiction Book of 2023 (France’s biggest book chain), plus Crime Fiction
Book of the Year at seven different festivals
High-spec signed paperback with foil and embossing
NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER in France with seven hardback reprints and counting…
Johana has been shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger
FIRST in a new series set in Sweden – The Lidingö Mysteries
Book details
Publication Date: 7 November 2024
Format: Paperback
Price: £ 9. 99
Publisher: Orenda Books
Description
Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.
Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?
As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.
When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key?
Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…
Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press, and television. Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in 23 countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France, receiving critical acclaim across the globe, and Yule Island has won multiple awards, including Book of the Year with France’s biggest retailer, Cultura, and has been optioned for the screen.
Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.
PUBLICATION DATE: 7th NOVEMBER 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Description
Two years ago, Alexander Blix was the lead investigator in a missing person’s case where a young mother, Elisabeth Eie, had been kidnapped. The case came to a standstill when Blix’s own daughter was killed and he was arrested for avenging her. Blix is a now free man again, but Elisabeth’s kidnapper has found him, leaving evidence of her murder in Blix’s mailbox.
The police are unwilling to accept Blix’s help. Even if he was acquitted of his crime, his career in law enforcement is over. But Elisabeth’s murderer continues to pursue him, leading Blix to his new victims, while making it clear that he knows details from Blix’s private life that the former investigator has never shared with anyone…
Meanwhile, Emma Ramm has been contacted by a teenage girl, Carmen, whose stepfather has been arrested on suspicion of killing a childhood friend. But there is no body. Nor are there any other suspects…
Blix and Ramm can rely only on each other. And when Blix’s fingerprints are found on a child’s drawing at a crime scene, the present comes uncomfortably close to the past. A past where a victim has found their very own form of therapy. And it is clear that someone is watching…
Shocking, relentless and unbearably tense, Victim marks the return of the international bestselling, blockbuster Blix & Ramm series from two of Norway’s finest crime writers.
PUBLICATION DATE: 10th OCTOBER 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Description
When Áróra receives a call telling her that a child she’s never met is claiming to be her missing sister reincarnated, she is devastated … as ridiculous as the allegations might seem. For three years she has been searching for her sister without finding a single clue, and now this strange child seems to have new information.
On the same day, Icelandic detective Daníel returns home to find a note from his tenant, drag queen Lady Gúgúlú, giving notice on her flat and explaining that she has to leave the country. Daníel is immediately suspicious, and when three threatening men appear, looking for Lady, it’s clear to him that something is very wrong…
And as Iceland’s long dark nights continue into springtime, that is just the very beginning…
Enjoy a visit to the idyllic Cotswolds where the blackberry jam is delicious, the pumpkins are ripe and a killer is plotting death.
Vivian Plover is an unlikely murderer but needs must. If her bumbling husband is ever going to reach the exalted office of Lord-Lieutenant, Vivian, in sensible shoes, twin set and pearls has some murderous work to do. She is beset by challenges, from her godson’s fake fiancée to Dee’s meddling.
With the worthies of Little Warthing falling foul of accidents, can Dee FitzMorris thwart her scheme or will she find herself yet another victim?
Rarely has murder been so amusing.
Indulge in this quirky and humorous cosy crime novel that will keep you entertained from start to finish. Set in modern-day England, amidst the charming British Cotswold countryside, “Season for Murder” delivers a captivating blend of mystery and comedy. With its light-hearted atmosphere and engaging whodunit plot, this British detective series is a must-read for fans of cosy crime murder mysteries.
My Review
I was supposed to review this book for the blog tour but I couldn’t write a positive review. I was feeling very unhappy with this book, but I’ve decided to try to write a constructive review and post it now that the tour is over. I’m also not going to tag the author, because I don’t want to upset anyone.
So, here are my problems:
It’s all tell, no show.
The characters are caricatures. I don’t need to read all their inane thoughts.
There’s no mystery, the murderer tells the reader when, how, and why they did it.
The main character isn’t really made clear until a few chapters in.
The author keeps jumping from head-to-head.
It feels like the author read about NPD and decided to make their murderer a caricature of someone with NPD and loudly signal it with one of the minor characters studying narcissistic personality disorder for university.
I got bored, but pushed through in the hopes it’d improve. It didn’t
The thing is, if it was better written, it’d be a really good mystery. People in a Cotswolds village mysteriously almost dying, clearly murder attempts, but unsuccessful.
I had so many questions:
Who is the main character meant to be?
Is it the older woman who does taekwondo and is involved in her community. She, her daughter, and her granddaughter could have been the main investigators, helped by two admiring police officers, but they aren’t.
Or is it the young couple in a ‘fake couple becomes a real couple through surviving overbearing relatives and murder attempts’ narrative, but they aren’t.
Or it could even have been told exclusively from the villain’s perspective, but it isn’t.
It could have been a sensitive exploration of childhood trauma, the changing nature of wealth and country life, and village pettiness. But it’s heavy-handed, unsubtle, and not funny. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but I could be wrong.
I do feel sorry for the murderer’s husband, but he needed bringing into the story more, and some of the side characters have an outsized position in the plot, but their scenes barely add to the narrative. There are clearly difficulties in the marriage of one couple, but it doesn’t seem important to the plot, for example.
I tried to find something positive, but even the complicated relationship between Emily and Tristan, which could have been a driving force for emotion and comedy in the plot, isn’t engaging. The inclusion of an Italian family, a disabled side character and a gay couple in a long-term relationship feel shoved in for ‘diversity’, rather than being a solid part of the plot. The author treats their ‘differences’ from the majority of the characters as something that needs to be mentioned repeatedly, rather than just a thing that is.
It’s like the author wrote down the village gossip and threw in a murdering posh woman and gave her NPD as the cause, to produce a cosy mystery novel. And it doesn’t work like that in fiction!
I know there will be readers who love the POV shifting and seeing the day to day lives and thoughts of the characters, but my head is loud enough without adding fictional characters thoughts to the jumble, and it slows down the story and confuses the plot.
Okay, I failed at writing a constructive review. I tried. It’s up to you though, if you enjoy cosy crime/slice of village life fiction, borrow a copy from the library and see how you feel. I understand there are two other books in the series.
Talking of libraries, when you borrow a book from the library the author gets a small payment. Twice a year, the ALCS collects and distributes payments to authors, writers, and, journalists. I get about £100 a year from ALCS payments; it’s a life saver. Support your local library – they’re one of the few third spaces left where you can just go and hang out, use a computer, read a book, get help. They also support authors.
Series: Rivers of London (#9.5) Characters: Kimberley Reynolds Format: 211 pages, Hardcover Published: June 8, 2023 by Orion ISBN: 9781473224377 (ISBN10: 1473224373)
Description
When retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson calls in an ‘X-Ray Sierra India’ incident, the operator doesn’t understand. He tells them to pass it up the chain till someone does.
That person is FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds. Leaving Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town – and there’s no sign of Henderson.
Things soon go from weird to worse, as neighbours report unsettling sightings, key evidence goes missing, and the snow keeps rising – cutting off the town, with no way in or out…
Something terrible is awakening. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases – a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness – Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today…
My Review
A novella from last year that’s been sat on my TBR pile for a while! I’ve been prompted to read it by the arrival of the latest Rivers of London novella. I thought I’d better get up to date.
Kimberley Reynolds is sent to the Great Lakes in the middle of winter to deal with an incident with unusual characteristics, and is snowed in almost immediately. Stuck without back-up, and her contact missing, she must discover what’s going on, what it has to do with an exhibition by the Virginia Gentlemen in 1848 and where Henderson in. Unfortunately, she’s not the only one looking into things, and it gets complicated when the local meteorologist takes her out to the site of the 1848 winter camp. Malevolent forces are at work, a teenage genius loci comes to the rescue, and Kimberly falls in love.
Kimberley Reynolds is a character that pops up in some of the novels but to be honest, she never struck me as a interesting character, or one I’d taken much note of. However, this novella gives the reader more information about her background and develops her character. I enjoy these novellas because they allow Aaronovitch to explore characters and locations without a full novel focused on Peter. He does make an appearance, over the phone and in her head, but it’s mainly about Kimberley and her slowly blossoming romance with William, while investigating both modern and historical crimes.
PUBLICATION DATE: 15th AUGUST 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.
The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it’s personal. With all the witness testimony painting a picture of a dedicated church and family man, what possible motive could there have been for his murder?
But when Sam starts digging deeper into the case, it becomes apparent that someone wants the sins of the past to remain hidden. And when a new potential witness to the crime is found brutally murdered, there is pressure from all quarters to solve the case before anyone else falls prey.
When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline ‘YOUNG MAN MISSING’, he realises he’s seen the youth just a few days earlier – at a crossroads in the countryside, with his two friends. It turns out that the three were on their way to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen.
Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he’s pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.
Is the body he’s found connected to the death of a journalist who was digging into the fish farm’s operations two years earlier? And does either incident have something to do with the competition between the two powerful families that dominate Solvik’s salmon-farming industry? Or are the deaths the actions of the ‘Village Beast’ – the brutal small-town justice meted out by rural communities in this part of the world.
Shocking, timely and full of breath-taking twists and turns, Pursued by Death reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s greatest crime writers.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 