The Oslo Detectives are back in another slice of gripping, dark Nordic Noir, and their new colleague has more at stake than she’s prepared to reveal…
Pub date: 30 April 2020 ISBN 13: 978-1-913193-02-7 EPUB: 978-1-913193-03-4 Price: £8.99
Oslo detective Frølich searches for the mysterious sister of a young female asylum seeker, but when people start to die, everything points to an old case and a series of events that someone will do anything to hide…
Suspended from duty, Detective Frølich is working as a private investigator, when his girlfriend’s colleague asks for his help with a female asylum seeker, who the authorities are about to deport. She claims to have a sister in Norway, and fears that returning to her home country will mean instant death.
Frølich quickly discovers the whereabouts of the young woman’s sister, but things become increasingly complex when she denies having a sibling, and Frølich is threatened off the case by the police. As the body count rises, it becomes clear that the answers lie in an old investigation, and the mysterious sister, who is now on the run…
A dark, chilling and up-to-the-minute Nordic Noir thriller, Sister is also a tense and well-plotted murder mystery with a moving tragedy at its heart, cementing Kjell Ola Dahl as one of the greatest crime writers of our generation.
PUBLICATION DATE: 5 MARCH 2020 | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99 | ORENDA BOOKS
Hamburg state prosecutor Chastity Riley investigates a series of arson attacks on cars across the city, which leads her to a startling and life-threatening discovery involving criminal gangs and a very illicit love story… Night after night, cars are set alight across the German city of Hamburg, with no obvious pattern, no explanation and no suspect. Until, one night, on Mexico Street, a ghetto of high-rise blocks in the north of the city, a Fiat is torched. Only this car isn’t empty. The body of Nouri Saroukhan – prodigal son of the Bremen clan – is soon discovered, and the case becomes a homicide. Public prosecutor Chastity Riley is handed the investigation, which takes her deep into a criminal underground that snakes beneath the whole of Germany. And as details of Nouri’s background, including an illicit relationship with the mysterious Aliza, emerge, it becomes clear that these are not random attacks, and there are more on the cards…Continue reading “Review: Mexico Street, by Simone Buchholz, translated by Rachel Ward”
Pub date: 5 March 2020 ISBN: 978-1-913193-19-5 EPUB: 978-1-913193-20-1 Price: £8.99 Dunedin’s favourite young police officer Sam Shephard is drawn into a perplexing investigation when a series of shipping containers wash up on a sleepy New Zealand beach, and a spate of unexplained deaths ensues… Chaos reigns in the sleepy village of Aramoana on the New Zealand coast, when a series of shipping containers wash up on the beach and looting begins. Detective Constable Sam Shephard experiences the desperation of the scavengers first-hand, and ends up in an ambulance, nursing her wounds and puzzling over an assault that left her assailant for dead. What appears to be a clear-cut case of a cargo ship running aground soon takes a more sinister turn when a skull is found in the sand, and the body of a diver is pulled from the sea … a diver who didn’t die of drowning… As first officer at the scene, Sam is handed the case, much to the displeasure of her superiors, and she must put together an increasingly confusing series of clues to get to the bottom of a mystery that may still have more victims…Continue reading “Review: Containment, by Vanda Symon”
Continuing the unique, explosive Six Stories series, based around six podcasts comes a compulsive, taut and terrifying thriller, and a bleak and distressing look at modern society’s desperation for attention. Beast will unveil a darkness from which you may never return…
In the wake of the ‘Beast from the East ’ cold snap that ravaged the UK in 2018, a grisly discovery was made in a ruin on the Northumbrian coast. Twenty-four-year-old vlogger, Elizabeth Barton, had been barricaded inside what locals refer to as ‘The Vampire Tower’, where she was later found frozen to death. Three young men, part of an alleged cult, were convicted of this terrible crime, which they described as a ‘prank gone wrong’.
However, in the small town of Ergarth, questions have been raised about the nature of Elizabeth Barton’s death and whether the three convicted youths were even responsible. Elusive online journalist Scott King speaks to six witnesses people who knew both the victim and the three killers – to peer beneath the surface of the case.
He uncovers whispers of a shocking online craze that held the young of Ergarth in its thrall and drove them to escalate a series of pranks in the name of internet fame. He hears of an abattoir on the edge of town, which held more than simple slaughter behind its walls, and the tragic and chilling legend of the Ergarth Vampire…
PUBLICATION DATE: 6 FEBRUARY 2020 | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99 | ORENDA BOOKS
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…
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.
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.
In Falkenberg, Sweden, the mutilated body of talented young jewelry designer Linnea Blix is found in a snow-swept marina. In Hampstead Heath, London, the body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds to Linnea’s. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Hebner will do anything to see himself as a human again. Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald? Emily Roy, a profiler on loan to Scotland Yard from the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, joins up with Linnea’s friend, French true-crime writer Alexis Castells, to investigate the puzzling case. They travel between Sweden and London, and then deep into the past, as a startling and terrifying connection comes to light.
Paperback, 300 pages Published October 1st 2017 by Orenda Books (first published February 5th 2017) ISBN:1910633704 ISBN13: 9781910633700 Series Emily Roy & Alexis Castells #1
My Review
Last year I reviewed Blood Song, the third book in the Emily Roy & Alexis Castells series. It was so good that I ordered the first two and I’ve just read them so I’m reviewing both, but in separate posts. Today it is book 1, Block 46. Tomorrow I will review Keeper.
This was a rather fantastic novel, linking events in Buchenwald Concentration Camp (where the author’s grandfather had been a prisoner for being a French Communist?/Resistance member) and murders in modern Falkenburg, Sweden and London, UK.
The main characters are introduced, although it is clear they have a past relationship and complex personal histories. Their backgrounds and personalities are slowly revealed. Emily Roy could be an unsympathetic character but for the pieces of vulnerability Gustawsson reveals in the narrative. I wasn’t sure about Alexis Castells, she seemed very self-involved, although that changed as I read, again her past was revealed in little bites that made her more understandable. They are both very complex, slightly damaged characters.
The plot was sufficiently twisted that I didn’t see the truth coming, even though the clues were there, looking back. I enjoyed the way the life of the criminals and the investigation intertwined throughout the novel, shifting between perspectives and giving clues to the reader while still hiding the truth. It didn’t feel contrived that a writer and a profiler would know each other or become involved in the investigation (even if I personally have reservations about the scientific validity of profiling) or that they would both end up in Sweden.
It was fascinating to learn about the Buchenwald Camp via fiction, I didn’t know that the prisoners and International Resistance had cached weapons and fought the SS as the Allied Forces got closer to them. I wonder how many SS officers escaped by pretending to be prisoners? *shudder*
Not having read the original novel, because my French is not great and Swedish non-existent, I can’t comment on the translation’s fidelity, but Karen Sullivan, who runs Orenda Books, wouldn’t allow a dodgy translation so I’m going to run with it being accurate.
I highly recommend this book, and the series actually, Also, the publisher, who is an absolute delight.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 