Books in translation – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: Hotel Cartagena, by Simone Buchholz

Pub date: 4 MARCH 2021
ISBN 13: 978-1-913193-54-6
EPUB: 978-1-913193-55-3
Price: £8.99

Twenty floors above the shimmering lights of the Hamburg docks,
Public Prosecutor Chastity Riley is celebrating a birthday with friends in
a hotel bar when twelve heavily armed men pull out guns, and take
everyone hostage. Among the hostages is Konrad Hoogsmart, the hotel
owner, who is being targeted by a young man whose life – and family –
have been destroyed by Hoogsmart’s actions.

With the police looking on from outside – their colleagues’ lives at stake
– and Chastity on the inside, increasingly ill from an unexpected case of
sepsis, the stage is set for a dramatic confrontation … and a devastating
outcome for the team … all live streamed in a terrifying bid for revenge.
Crackling with energy and populated by a cast of unforgettable
characters, Hotel Cartagena is a searing, stunning thriller that will leave
you breathless.

Review: Death Deserved, by Jorn Lier Horst & Thomas Enger, translated by Anne Bruce

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm
never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography,
Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits
Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and
signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number ‘one’ has been
pinned to the TV.
Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missingpersons
investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of
a hostage situation nineteen years earlier, when he killed the
father of a five-year-old girl. Traces of Nordstrøm soon show up at
different locations, but the appearance of the clues appear to be
carefully calculated … evidence of a bigger picture that he’s just
not seeing…
Blix and Ramm soon join forces, determined to find and stop
a merciless killer with a flair for the dramatic, and thirst for
attention.
Trouble is, he’s just got his first taste of it…

PUBLICATION DATE: 6 FEBRUARY 2020 | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Review: Keeper, by Johanna Gustawsson, translated by Maxim Jakubowski

38468901. sy475 — Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror.

London 2015: actress Julianne Bell is abducted in a case similar to the terrible Tower Hamlets murders of some ten years earlier, and harking back to the Ripper killings of a century before.

Falkenberg, Sweden, 2015: a woman’s body is found mutilated in a forest, her wounds identical to those of the Tower Hamlets victims.

Profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells again find themselves drawn into an intriguing case, with personal links that turn their world upside down.

Published April 28th 2018 by Orenda Books (first published March 15th 2017)
Original Title: Mör
ISBN:1912374056
ISBN13: 9781912374052
Edition Language: English
URL : http://orendabooks.co.uk/book/keeper/
Series
Emily Roy & Alexis Castells #2

My Review

So, today I’m reviewing the second Emily Roy & Alexis Castells novel, and introducing Alienor, who I adored when I read Blood Song.

This book is as twisted as the first novel, Block 46, and just as tightly plotted. We learn more about Emily and Alexis, their backgrounds and neuroses. The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 were tenuously linked to the investigation as the background for the abusive family history of the murderers. The modern murders are confusing until you get to the revelations later on. The betrayal at the end was an unexpected twist but made the whole book make sense.

As with books 1 and 3, Gustawsson alternates between the investigation and the personal history of the murderers. I like the insight I got into the background to the crimes but was frustrated that I didn’t put the clues together. I’m not very good at that, clearly.

Another fantastic book from Gustawsson and Orenda.