Tag Archives: #NordicNoir

Review: SON, by Johana Gustawsson & Thomas Enger

PUBLICATION DATE: 13th MARCH 2025
HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £ 16. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Description

Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo
Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by
night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who
disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.

Still grieving for her dead husband, and trying to pull together the
pieces of her life, she is thrust into a shocking local investigation,
when two teenage girls are violently murdered in a family summer
home in the nearby village of Son.

When a friend of the victims is charged with the barbaric killings, it
seems the case is closed, but Kari is not convinced. Using her skills
and working on instinct, she conducts her own enquiries, leading
her to multiple suspects, including people who knew the dead girls
well…

With the help of Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she discovers
that no one – including the victims – are what they seem. And that
there is a dark secret at the heart of Son village that could have
implications not just for her own son’s disappearance, but Kari’s
own life, too…

Continue reading “Review: SON, by Johana Gustawsson & Thomas Enger”

Review: Pursued By Death, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett

Description

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.

Continue reading “Review: Pursued By Death, by Gunnar Staalesen, translated by Don Bartlett”

Book Review: Thirty Days of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen

PUBLICATION DATE: 9 MAY 2024
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £16.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

A snobbish Danish literary author is challenged to write a crime novel
in thirty days, travelling to a small village in Iceland for inspiration,
and then the first body appears…

Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and
her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually
reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that
she’s doing something wrong.

When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly
challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose
face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjörður – a quiet,
tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for
inspiration.

But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is
pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material
quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to
uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah

Continue reading “Book Review: Thirty Days of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen”

Book Review: Stigma, by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, trs, Rosie Hedger

PUBLICATION DATE: 12th OCTOBER 2023
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £9.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Description

Alexander Blix is a broken man. Convicted for avenging his daughter’s death, he is now being held in one of Norway’s high-security prisons. Inside, the other prisoners take every opportunity to challenge and humiliate the former police investigator.

On the outside, Blix’s former colleagues have begun the hunt for a terrifying killer. Walter Kroos has escaped from prison in Germany and is making his way north. The only lead established by the police is that Kroos has a friend in Blix’s prison ward. And now they need Blix’s help.

Journalist Emma Ramm is one of Blix’s few visitors, and she becomes his ally as he struggles to connect the link between past and present, between the world inside and outside the prison walls. And as he begins to piece things together, he identifies a woodland community in Norway where deeply scarred inhabitants foster deadly secrets … secrets that may be the unravelling of everyone involved.

Continue reading “Book Review: Stigma, by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, trs, Rosie Hedger”

Review: Thirty Days Of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen, Translated by Megan E. Turney



PUBLICATION DATE: 11 MAY 2023
HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £16.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Blurb

A snobbish Danish literary author is challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days, travelling to a small village in Iceland for inspiration, and then the first body appears…

Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and
her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually
reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that
she’s doing something wrong.

When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly
challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose
face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjörður – a quiet,
tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for
inspiration.

But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is
pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material
quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to
uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah.

Continue reading “Review: Thirty Days Of Darkness, by Jenny Lund Madsen, Translated by Megan E. Turney”

Review: Unhinged, by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, Translated by Megan Turney

His colleague is dead. His daughter may be next. It’s time to do things his way…

Two of Nordic Noir’s most accomplished writers return with the explosive, staggeringly complex and unbearably emotive third instalment in the international bestselling Blix & Ramm series.

When police investigator Sofia Kovic uncovers a startling connection between several Oslo cases, she attempts to contact her closest superior, Alexander Blix, before involving anyone else in the department. But before Blix has time to return her call, Kovic is shot and killed in her own home – execution style. And in the apartment below, Blix’s daughter Iselin narrowly escapes becoming the killer’s next victim.

Four days later, Blix and online crime journalist Emma Ramm are locked inside an interrogation room, facing the National Criminal Investigation Service. Blix has shot and killed a man, and Ramm saw it all happen.
As Iselin’s life hangs in the balance, under-fire Blix no longer knows who he can trust, and he’s not even certain that he’s killed the right man…

Continue reading “Review: Unhinged, by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, Translated by Megan Turney”