Brief Mention: CAGE by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Intense Icelandic Crime Fiction

Even before opening CAGE, the new crime novel from Iceland's Lilja Sigurðardóttir, there are three big "yes I want to read this" aspects to appreciate: (1) This is book three in Sigurðardóttir's outstanding Reykjavik noir series, which began with Snare, followed by Trap. (2) The translator is Quentin Bates, an award-winning crime novelist himself. (3) The publisher is Orenda Books, which is steadily and rapidly bringing outrageous and outstanding European fiction across the ocean. And here's a bonus point: The cover blurb is from the amazing Val McDermid.

Here is the only reason not to crack it open: The sex scenes in it are often quirky and sometimes sadistic. Although also sometimes heartbreakingly tender. Make your own choice on that basis.

The book opens with Agla, a gifted financial criminal, approaching the end of her prison sentence. Heartbroken at a lover's refusal before her time in jail, she's stayed depressed, isolated, and angry during her sentence—where she's also one of the few lesbians. When a cute and quirky woman seduces her in prison, she loses her heart all over again, and hopes for a life of love after release.

It's not that simple, though, because both of them and the people they connect with have dangerous ties to complex international criminal networks. And where there's high finance in such crime, there's also sexual trafficking of various sorts. It heats up quickly, starting with this prison visit:

'Yes, I know him,' Agla had said two weeks ago, and she had signed the visit request, even though she had never heard of this man before. Her curiosity had been sparked by the email in which he requested a visit. He had stated that there was an important business matter they should meet to discuss. She had forgotten about it until now. ...

He stood up and held his business card up to the glass. She could see a little picture of him in one corner, under the company's logo. Agla raised an eyebrow. International companies didn't make a habit of searching out convicts in Icelandic prisons to offer them work.

Pair these strands with a journalist who gets in over her head, and a pair of teens setting up an explosive hate crime, and CAGE is nonstop action all the way. Don't pick it up, of course, if the kinky sex will bother you -- but you can rely on a sort of justice eventually being established. It's a good ride.

Books by this author are arriving in the US a couple of years behind their European publication -- understandable with the time for translation. And worth waiting for.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Forceful Swedish Police Procedural from Johana Gustawsson, BLOOD SONG

Between the harsh cover design and the threatening title, readers eyeing the American release of Johana Gustawsson's "Roy & Castells Thriller" BLOOD SONG (Orenda Books) could figure the book for gory, gruesome, and dark. And some readers might not open it, as a result.

But although this detailed police procedural investigates a multiple murder that's  part of a series of killings rooted in historical horrors from Spain's Franco years, the focus of Gustawsson's writing, as in her award-winning Block 46 and Keeper, is on the tender and insight-laden interactions of two detection professionals: profiler Emily Roy, and crime historian Alexis Castells. Each woman walks with significant wounds from her courageous interludes in the past, but they've worked together before and built significant trust. So when the arc of investigation begins to curve toward their own families, each can borrow strength from the other and keep moving forward.

Gustawsson interleaves three, even sometimes four, points of view, clearly marked at the start of each chapter with place and date -- so this diverges from a traditional narrative. The most baffling flashbacks, horrible in the abuse and torment portrayed, are set in Spain in the 1930s. Only knowing that this skillful storyteller must have a purpose can pull them into the mystery at hand. At it's not until well past the midpoint of the book that the strands show their deeper connections.

Instead, the action begins with a triple murder in Falkenberg, Sweden, in December 2016, not long before the long-planned wedding for Alexis. Although Emily is based in London, she's immediately drawn into the case because the victims are family members of a younger woman she cares very much for, named Aliénor. Emily's own inner traumas are massive -- they're not explained fully here (see at least Keeper, before or after you read BLOOD SONG, or just go with the flow, as Emily's colleagues do), but her unemotional presence in crime-solving team meetings says a lot, as does her coping mechanism while investigating such horrors:

The cold struck her full in the face as Emily stepped outside the station. Greedily sucking in a few breaths of icy air, she crossed the street and went to sit on a low stone wall beside the pavement. Then she took a little black box out of her inside coat pocket. She opened it and gazed inside for a few seconds.

That was always the hardest part. Being in tune with her senses, without letting her emotions overwhelm her.

Emily tucked away the image of Aliénor in the empty box. She contemplated her friend's face for a moment, then closed the lid.

Gustawsson's writing, and her clear insistence that injustice must be exhumed and confronted, make it necessary to press forward with Emily and Alexis as the meaning of the crime finally emerges — along with other disturbing secrets. Some crimes take a generation or more to solve. But in this book, as Martin Luther King Jr. asserted, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.  

British Crime Fiction by Michael J. Malone, IN THE ABSENCE OF MIRACLES

Families. They have their noisy dysfunctions and their quiet secrets, but for the most part, they manage to get along. Until something in that managing snaps, with devastating consequences.

That's the situation in John Docherty's family, in the new crime novel from British/Scottish author Michael J. Malone, IN THE ABSENCE OF MIRACLES. John's mother's stroke won't let her go home again from nursing care, and John, clearing the house in order to put it on the market, discovers enough evidence to realize that his mother and father -- a police detective -- have hidden something he had every right to know: He is not the oldest child in his family, after all.

How much should he dig into this secret, with his mother so ill, and his father already dead? Will it only cause pain? His father's old friend, also in a nursing home, suggests as much:

"If you'll excuse an old man for speaking out of turn ..." He paused while another cough wracked his frail form. "I loved your old dad like a brother. He was a fine, fine man," he said as if he was keen to offer me something, without breaking any promises. "You need to go, son, before I say too much. But think on this: only an eejit runs away from the present by burying himself in the past."

Malone tips the point of view occasionally to that of John's own good friend Paul, who cautiously asks whether John ever suffered abuse as a child. John's answer is a firm "no" and he has no doubts. It's only Paul's odd question that unsettles him.

But John's a broken-winged creature in life, unable to keep his own promises to an important girlfriend and uneasy in his teaching career. In order to discover whether he really once had an older brother who has vanished, and to confront the long-buried demons of his soul, he and his allies will have to pull off the covers of terrible crimes, proving emphatically that the past isn't even past -- it's what shapes us now. And, short of a miracle, opening up the dark passages can be deadly.

Malone's far better known in Britain than in the US, but thanks to Orenda Books, readers can now access his award-winning crime fiction. When you visit this website, be sure to dig down a layer and sample the powerful range of his work.

Best of all, despite the horrific crimes that Docherty discovers (fair warning: some are sexual, but the book's so well written that it's bearable), IN THE ABSENCE OF MIRACLES is equally a tale of heart and friendship. Near the end of the book, John Docherty's painful realizations also generate this thought: "It's kindness that brings us back to ourselves."

Highly recommended, and released for publication in the US today.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Guest Reviews by MADonnelly: MYSTERIES by Isabella Maldonado, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Becky Clark. A. J. Mackenzie, Kirsten Weiss, Antti Tuomainen

MADonnelly is a published poet, a Vermonter, a good friend. As guest reviewer on this blog, she brings a hint of Irish delight to the space. And you know what the Irish say: May your home always be too small to hold all your friends. The same applies to a good review blog. Thanks for these pithy takes on six mysteries, Friend!

DEATH BLOW by Isabella Maldonado (A Veranda Cruz mystery, Midnight Ink)

If you like tough cop heroines and  chilling, gruesome hit jobs, this one’s for you.  Add a savagely cruel Mexican drug smuggling cartel, a violent family history, and fast paced, tense police work and you’re in for a wild ride.  The author, with over 20 years in law enforcement, joins intimate knowledge of criminality and  police procedures with considerable writing skills and  a gift for  creating some psychologically complex characters.   Occasionally some tender heartedness, devotion  or cop loyalty shine through rough exteriors to relieve the horrors and appear at the right time.

TRAP by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, trans. Quentin Bates (Orenda Books)

As if trying to get custody of her son away from an abusive and criminal husband weren’t enough, Sonja herself is part of an international drug smuggling operation and in an on-again off-again lesbian relationship with a money laundering cocaine addict.  As she realizes the connections between the  banking and  drug plots, she finds herself being drawn in deeper and deeper. The more she desperately wants to get out and live a normal life with her son, the more she finds herself with a target on her back and unable to extricate herself from the increasing corruption, danger and threats. (Note the translator, who's an Icelandic noir author himself.)

FOUL PLAY ON WORDS by Becky Clark (Midnight Ink)

Witty, self deprecating  and somewhat neurotic mystery writer Charlemagne Russo arrives in Portland  for a mystery writer’s conference thinking all she has to do is give a keynote speech, catch up with her best friend and fly home to her boyfriend.  Instead  she immediately discovers that she is in charge of the conference with no help, her friend’s daughter has been kidnapped and the conference hotel has  been double booked with a dog show. Her friend has told her to focus on the conference  but Charlee can’t let the kidnapping go.  She must find the daughter. Motive? Financial insolvency? drug addiction? family secrets? illicit romance?  Everything’s possible  with lots of barking dogs,  rendezvous in dark passageways under the hotel, suspicious looks and cryptic remarks by staff and attendees.  The  ransom, possible multiple murders and conference deadlines  are all looming.  A  frantic, comic tale.

THE BODY IN THE BOAT by A. J. Mackenzie (Hardcastle & Chaytor Mystery, Zaffre)

There are a number and variety of strong female characters in this mystery. Particularly astute and principled is Mrs. Chaytor, who with her close friend Reverend Hardcastle  have  not only multiple murders to solve  but  troubled parishioners and refugees to tend to.  They do so with fierce intelligence and relentlessness, while struggling with their own personal sorrows and demons..     
    Romney Marsh in Georgian England during a war with the French,  is the rough, gloomy setting for this story and   its smuggling and banking worlds — and the sinister ways they are connected. Mrs. Chaytor and the Reverend, with the help of a couple of the smugglers (there are both”good” and “ very bad” smugglers) keep going over  every angle and all take pretty daring risks to uncover the chain of complicated events, the slippery perpetrators, the mysterious contrabands.

CHOCOLATE À LA MURDER by Kirsten Weiss (Midnight Ink)

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  A Ghost Detecting resident cat  (named G.D.) and  a haunted Mexican molilnolo ( a stick for stirring chocolate) are just what you might expect in a “Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum”.  But a  dead chocolatier, found covered in chocolate,  is probably not your  typical murder victim.  Museum owner Maddie Kosloski, a self appointed amateur detective wants desperately to solve the crime. She goes about it steadfastly and with wacky humor, much to the annoyance of friends, family, and the local police. There’s not as much assistance or interference from the paranormal as the name of the museum suggests, but Maddie does well without it.
  And maybe the chocolate shop, billing itself as  producing the most high end best chocolate ever, (“ hand crafted, ethically sourced, organically grown ingredients”) is not all it’s cracked up to be.



PALM BEACH FINLAND by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda Books)

Here’s a mystery that starts with a murder and the reader knows right away who did it, how and why. The real entertainment , sustained, deepened and embellished beautifully and sometimes hysterically, is in how the assortment of characters figure it out, react, compromise, diabolically pursue, bungle, cover up. There are big themes too: Life’s dreams and plans, failure, greed, friendship, revenge, brutality, love - and the ridiculous.  The author focuses masterfully on the characters’ eccentricities and inner lives.  Psychological complexity, wild humor, romance-  it’s a rich mix in the new, garish, plastic-palm-trees-and -all   Palm Beach Finland resort, “the hottest beach in Finland.”

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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Brief Mention: THE OLD YOU from Louise Voss

Orenda Books brought the new psychological thriller from Louise Voss across the Atlantic for the start of January, and it's a compulsive -- even propulsive (!) read. THE OLD YOU sets up a classic moment in the life of a couple, Lynn and Ed Naismith. Just as Louise starts a new teaching job, her husband's fumbling errors in words and ideas gets labeled with a diagnosis: a progressive dementia, untreatable and irreversible.

What makes this into a fascinating work of crime fiction and suspense is the change of character happening to Lynn's husband: violence at a level that forces her into a separate bedroom, and raises dark questions about his past. But it goes way past there -- Voss is a seasoned British thriller author, and she rapidly erects a maze of threat and risk around Lynn, where far more than her marriage is disintegrating.

If you're a Barbara Vine fan, grab this one. The situation's provocative, the secrets dark, and the suspense demanding and well paced.

The author's website is out of date; check out the Louise Voss Facebook page instead.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Murder and Life Entangle Across Centuries, in KEEPER from Johanna Gustawsson

Reading the new title from the French crime fiction author Johanna Gustawsson requires fierce concentration -- because once again, as she did in Block 46, Gustawsson tells multiple tales in multiple voices, and at multiple times. So if you enjoy feeling challenged to keep track of all the clues and see how the motives and means interact, KEEPER is meant for you.

Often gruesome, yet focused more on character, as well as the character of the times, KEEPER provides an intimate look into the lives of the London women-of-the-street who suffered at the hands of Jack the Ripper, among many other brutal people of that time. Meanwhile, we follow the reconnection of profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells as their lives become way too closely tied to an unfolding police investigation of a now-imprisoned serial murderer and possible copy-cat crimes breaking out, including in Sweden.

Most urgently, a noted actress is missing, believed kidnapped -- and because we're shown her point of view, as well as her torturer, we can see the parallels to what's taken place before. Maxim Jakubowski provides a clean, smooth translation with power and elegance, as in this reflection from the victim:

Her throat feels like it is lined with thorns. Her mouth is bone dry and her tongue unbearably heavy. Beads of sweat moisten the back of her neck, her armpits and her upper lip. As if there were a direct connection between the water deserting the inside of her mouth and the moisture pearling on the outside of her body.

Fair warning: There's a touch of Hannibal Lecter in this one. And the final plot twist are harsh and sudden. You'll want to double check the door locks and keep a few extra lights on, as you read. If that's a fair deal, grab a copy -- the book's well written and powerful, and the suspense is brutal. Released in the US by Orenda, today.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Kjell Ola Dahl's Norwegian "Gunnarstranda" Police Mysteries Continue

[Originally published in the New York Review of Books]

It’s twenty-four degrees below zero in Oslo, Norway, as police detective Lena Stigersand watches a corpse being pulled from the harbor, in contrast to the Christmas decorations around the market area. A crane hauls the body from the water: “The dead man rose higher and rotated in the air. The lapels of his jacket hung like heavy pennants. Water dripped and immediately froze into icicles on this clothes. … The water on the dead man’s face froze to ice as they watched.”

Lena’s quickly aware that this is a suspicious death, with the body identified right away but the clothing and alcohol-free stomach contents denying the proposal that it could be a suicide. Yet who would want to kill Sveinung Adeler, a relatively minor political aide?

When a journalist steps into Lena’s life, seducing her with both hot sex and hints about the dead man’s significance, things look promising: She’s feeling great about herself and she has more to add at the department meetings. Her colleague, Detective Gunnarstranda, is working on another death that looks at first like suicide, where a homeless woman’s run over by a train after leaping in front of it. When the two deaths, and then a third, show signs of being linked, the detectives must negotiate the perils of governmental interference, including a member of Parliament whose staff bites with powerful teeth.

Lena’s path is the more compelling in THE ICE SWIMMER, as she’s handling (badly) a medical diagnosis that puts her way off balance in a very recognizable way, so her errors of judgment in the investigation make perfect sense. Meanwhile, Gunnarstranda’s pursuit of the criminal behind the deaths is suspenseful and dangerous:

Gunnarstranda got up. The shadow slipped through. Gunnarstranda went after it, through the door opening. … He was standing on the edge of a sheer drop. A square hole in the floor.

He gasped as his hands groped for something to hold on to. They found nothing, but he regained his balance.

A vibration made him step back two paces without his knowing why. A crash made him start. A concrete block had landed where he had just been standing. It smashed into pieces and sprayed his face with bits of cement and gravel.

… At that moment he received a violent push and fell. He broke his fall with his hands and grazed both palms. Someone jumped over him and ran down the stairs.

Regular readers of Nordic noir may recognize Gunnarstranda as one of the two noted detectives in Kjell Ola Dahl’s Faithless, and this is the sequel, second in Dahl’s popular “Oslo Detectives” series, finally being translated and brought across the Atlantic. The translator, Don Bartlett, also works with material by Jo Nesbø and Gunnar Staalesen (the Varg Veum crime novels), and provides a smooth text that’s only slightly “foreign” in feel (more a question of the “music” of the phrasing; nothing awkward). Inspector Frank Frølich is absent from this second title in the series, except for a short visit that Gunnarstranda makes to tap his expertise. Hard to say what will follow, but it would be great if these all returned in book three in a year or so.

Although the crimes and their locations are dark, Dahl’s detectives arrive with force of character and are willing to share a bit of wisdom with each other. That’s lucky for Lena in this case, because a police detective going to bed with a journalist hints at disaster to follow, and she’s far from immune.

Well written, quickly paced, Dahl’s series fits the traditional police detective model (think Michael Connelly, and Karen Slaughter), including the hint of despair that a high-alcohol profession brings along. Good reading, and all the plot threads fit together by the end, although there’s a rather odd postscript chapter to pick up the last bit. But perhaps it’s also to lay the start for the book that comes next.

From Orenda Books, which continues to bring solid translations across the Atlantic. 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.  

"Wicked Game" Trilogy from Matthew Farrell Wraps Up in END GAME

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Matt Johnson’s “Wicked Game” trilogy began with Wicked Game, then Deadly Game, and now wraps up in End Game. A complicated mix of police procedural and antiterrorism thriller, the book is a must-read for those who’ve devoured the first two titles.

This British trilogy as a whole is based loosely on Johnson’s own career, first as a soldier, then in the Metropolitan Police for 25 years, and present at such hot-news events as the London Baltic Exchange in 1993, the Regent’s Park bombing in 1982, and a 1983 shooting at the Libyan Police Bureau—followed in 1999 by a discharge from the police to enable treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As his self-introduction admits, “Hidden wounds took their toll.”

Much of End Game unfolds from the point of view of Inspector Bob Finlay, whose hoped-for promotion just hit the skids, probably due to both his own case of PTSD (already treated) and actions he took the previous year that look questionable to some other officers. Long ago trained in hostage negotiation, Finlay responds to a call that’s specific to him, as a police constable who’s flipped out and barricaded with a hostage asks for Finlay by name. It turns out they have experiences in common, and Finlay is highly successful in ending the standoff. But in the process, he bucks the orders of a vicious and unforgiving superintendent from the “Met” Complaint Investigation Branch. And now it’s Finlay who’s in trouble.

Many segments of End Game are enormously appealing. For instance, there’s Finlay’s effort to reassure his wife, by filling her in (after their little daughters are in bed) on what’s taken place:

I wasn’t sure where to start and, to begin with I didn’t make a lot of sense. But the more we talked, the more focused the conversation became. Jenny listened as I talked, asked questions and joined in with ideas and suggestions when I seemed to be either stuck for the right words or lacking the means to describe how I felt. …

‘We need you back, Robert,’ Jenny then said unexpectedly, as she pulled away. ‘Looking after your girls.’

I was confused. ‘I’ve not been anywhere.’

‘Not in the physical sense, no. But you’ve been away in a different world, especially over the last couple of days. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve spoken to you and you haven’t even heard me.’

... ‘Kevin’s in trouble, Jen. If what I’m saying is right, somebody has fitted him up.’

 Can Finlay manage his increasing emotional distress over the case and the frame-up he sees taking place, and avoid becoming the scapegoat? The suspense is strong, and the scenes memorable.

On the other hand, Johnson narrates through multiple points of view, including that of the criminals, a difficult routine to pull off. As a result, readers often know what’s around the corner, what’s going to hit Finlay next. It’s an awkward strategy and doesn’t work well, distracting from the plot and its twists. There’s a terrorist (Arab) plot involved, as well as complications of British/UK law enforcement and malicious political maneuvers. A stronger book would have relied more on Finlay’s own growth, and less on the often jerky changes of viewpoint.

End Game will appeal most to those already enmeshed in the earlier volumes of the trilogy, and for those collecting terrorism plots. James Patterson readers may find it a good fit. But it won’t fit well for those who prefer a crime novel where the pace is more determined by the characters and their motives for investigation and growth, as in some of the Michael Connelly Bosch books; Finlay’s also not as driven or as generous as Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, and the suspense doesn’t rise the way Lisa Gardner would paint it. Dan Brown fans, however, may wish to add this to the shelf of “to be read” for the season. [From Orenda Books]

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

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News! English Translation of BLUE NIGHT, Excellent Police Procedural from Simone Buchholz

German author Simone Buchholz began scooping up major awards in European crime fiction a few years ago, and has an armful of titles -- and US readers this weekend can finally access one in English (lively and smooth translation by Rachel Ward). BLUE NIGHT is one of the most intriguing police procedurals I've read. It caught me within the first few chapters, not for the plot twists (although there are plenty), but for the piercing portraits of what friendship among big-city investigators can mean: having each other's back no matter what, celebrating together, and struggling to endure a high-stress and often high-alcohol life with little sleep and rare praise, in the midst of risk and loss.

Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley loves her job - but she's boxed out of it for now, demoted for having accused a superior of corruption and firing her weapon. So when we meet her trudging away from her broken-down car on a highway, her mood stinks for multiple reasons. It looks like she has an assignment though, if she can get back to the city: A smashed-up man in a hospital, pretty clearly the victim of a criminal-network beat-down, is unconscious and without identification. Her assignment is to figure out who he is and what happened, so the wheels of justice can start to grind.

First, of course, she'd got to find a way back in the darkness. She calls a friend, Faller, who agrees to collect her, but it will take at least an hour for him to reach her, which is why, disgusted and puffing on a cigarette, she's heading west on foot. She admits to herself, "I feel like a cowboy whose horse has been shot." Lucky thing Faller's own beat-up vehicle is temporarily running.

Chastity Riley's friends are mostly messed up right now: Faller himself is clearly having a midlife crisit, Calabretta's in mourning for a departed girlfriend, Klatsche -- whose bed she often shares -- has barely gotten to sleep after a long night at his bar, the Blue Night, and her buddies Carla and Rocco don't drive (and anyway, they're supposed to be taking care of Calabretta in his horrible depression).

When the man in the hospital wakes, he's clearly not interested in helped Chas solve the crime that landed him there. Of more concern is that Faller's midlife crisis seems to be heading into revenge mode, chasing the head of Hamburg's biggest crime/drugs syndicate.

As a group of seasoned investigators, Chas and her friends know Faller's in trouble if he's trying to become a superhero avenger:

I sigh; we clink bottles.

'You're worried about Faller,' [Klatsche] says.

'He's starting to crack up,' I say. 'He feels too strong. It's not good to feel too strong. You forget to take cover. I mean, we've been through all that. ..'

'Has he done anything that could be dangerous yet?'

'No idea,' I say. 'According to Calabretta, he hinted that he's planning something soon.'

Once Chas wins a few words from the man in the hospital, she begins to suspect his beat-down could be related to the same crime operation that her friend Faller is trying to target, run by an Albanian who humiliated Faller in the past. Unexpectedly, the powers that be allow her to step back into a bit more action when they send her to connect with to another police operation, one tracking drugs through the East German badlands, all the way to the Czech border. Yes, overlap, again. Big time.

Buchholz inserts short passages of character comments on their situations, including ones from the criminals involved. Interestingly, they don't slow the pace -- they just deepen the wrinkles and show how the plot is twisting yet again. Looks like Chastity Riley's irascible hospital patient is determined to take a role in the showdown, wheelchair and all. With a little help.

This is a slim crime novel, only 182 pages, but memorable and worth a second reading, too. Many thanks to Orenda Books for bringing it across the Atlantic, and giving us hope of more adept translations of Buchholz's dark and popular Hamburg police investigations.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Fourth Claymore Straker Thriller from Paul Hardisty, ABSOLUTION, Questions Everything

Ever read the ads in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine? I did for a year or so. Maybe that's part of why I like the Clay Straker books so much -- Paul Hardisty's compelling thriller series set in South Africa and other nations on that continent, Arabic or otherwise. Straker's not initially a soldier for hire; he's enlisted with his closest friends in defense of South Africa, and the group is largely Boer in approach and language (he calls his allies his brothers, and his office his father, in a real sense).

But in the past three books -- The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, and Reconciliation for the Dead -- we've traveled a journey of many killings and much thought with Claymore Straker. Forced to depend on black-skinned allies against everything he's been taught, learning to treasure human life regardless of national origin, and finding himself desperately in love over the long term with a woman who's left his continent have all contributed to Clay's growth and a deeper dignity.

Now, in the fourth book of the series, ABSOLUTION, Clay Straker makes mature, if highly risky, choices in order to merit a partnership of the heart with Raina LaTour. Raina, a journalist in hiding, is framed for killing her own husband and child. If Clay can save her and rediscover her family, he may lose her yet another time, for the sake of her child and possibly radicalized Muslim husband

But if he wants to truly live with himself -- or anyone else -- he's got to man up to the task. Terrorists? Multinational plots? Watch him struggle ... and take up effective arms. Yet some of the assistance he needs will have to come from the fellow South African military men he no longer identifies with:

'That's how you found me in Maputo in eighty-two,' said Clay.

Crowbar grunted.

'And again last year, before I went back to testify to the TRC. And on Zanzibar.'

Crowbar coughed. 'We've been tracking you, Straker.'

We. Clay shivered. He felt naked, stripped, lashed by the wind. ... 'But why, Koevoet? Why?' Clay had known since 1982 that Crowbar was somehow linked to the Broderbond. But never in his wildest imaginings could he have conceived of this.

Hardisty's series pulls action into harsh terrain and harsher cultural shifts. Claymore Straker's painful growth and potential losses raise the stakes of this international thriller, touching the emotional keys that Lee Child and Jeffery Deaver finger so well. There's no going back, as Clay begins to understand the truths of his world.

You'll get more out of this, and feel more of the shock, if you've read the other three books first. But it will work just fine to grab ABSOLUTION now, spin through it, then collect the others and read the entire sequence. Hardisty is a narrative force coming into his own, book by dense and thrilling book.

Thanks to Orenda Books for making sure Americans can easily access this series.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: Nordic Noir from Kjell Ola Dahl, FAITHLESS

The Oslo, Norway, sleuthing mysteries by Kjell Ola Dahl are well known in Scandinavia -- there are 11 so far -- but had to wait for translation, and for Orenda Books to start bringing them across the Atlantic. FAITHLESS arrived in the U.S. in September, and provides a rewarding new direction in dark Scandinavian mysteries: a police procedural with depth of character and a wickedly dry sense of humor.

Inspector Frank Frølich, attending an engagement party for an old friend, discovers the new fiancée is a woman Frank had just arrested, then released, under a Norwegian legal function that allows someone to pay a fine for possession of illicit drugs at a personal use level. But that complication, which after all can be managed within careful polite manners, pales beside the next twist: the women, Veronika, soon becomes a murder victim. Is it a result of the arrest or the party or something else entirely?

Frølich's own past turns out to have some of the clues, a decidedly uncomfortable situation for the Oslo detective and his partner, Inspector Gunnarstranda. But the twists of plot get even more intense when their fellow detective Lena manipulates one of their colleagues, as well as stepping over the line toward baiting a dangerous criminal.

The translation by Don Bartlett (British) is smooth and well carried out; the scenes are short and sharp; and although the crimes involved are dark ones, and the settings more than a little spooky ("atmospheric" is another descriptor), the characters carry a force of will that makes it a pleasure to follow their investigations. I'm glad Orenda's brought this award-winning Norwegian author to our attention; I'll be watching for more of Dahl's work.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Top-Notch British Thriller from L V Hay, THE OTHER TWIN

THE OTHER TWIN is a true breakthrough book: a thriller so intricate and compelling that it leaps away from previous books by the same author, into new and dangerous terrain. Presented as a "debut thriller" by Orenda Books, it hit the shelves a week ago. The author was previously known as Lucy V Hay -- but it makes good sense to see her writing drastically shifted in this new book. And the androgynous "L V" name also fits, in an entirely different way.

The book opens with an ominous scene of emotional abuse, quickly flashing instead to Poppy, a young woman way over her head in drinking and casual sex, trying to pull herself together after an all-night binge and the "mother of all hangovers," so to speak. Hers in the voice that gives us most of the story in THE OTHER TWIN. She has a past crammed with love and loss at the seacoast city of Brighton that she walked away from a year earlier, and her party life (not really balanced by her other-city job) is this cover for confused regrets and pain. Chapter by chapter, she faces the complicated mess of her past, propelled by what takes her "home again" at the start of the action: the supposed suicide-by-jumping of her younger sister India.

But there's a second voice that whispers to us periodically -- perhaps a killer's words and contorted emotions, as he enacts the twisted reality of "She Who Must Be Obeyed." Hay's mastery of suspense is echoed in the eerie sense of evil and manipulation that oozes from these scenes. Can Poppy, searching for the truths behind her sister's death, escape the seeping and vicious mind that's calling the plays around her?

The book walks an interesting knife edge of noir and violence: Much of the cruelty exerted by the shadowy perpetrators is so indirect, so disguised, that it never quite crosses into being graphic -- but the horror is even more haunting in this form.

Expect twists all the way through, and a final one that's as painful as being knocked over on a cement surface -- everybody bleeds from the heart, and as the powerful resolution arrives, it's clear there will be no escape from hurt. But maybe, maybe, there can be some escape from being hopelessly lost in a net of deceit.

Well worth reading. Yes, the title points to some meaning in the story -- but not what you might expect. And it's a stand-alone, at least so far, so there's no need to dig into Hay's earlier work -- which you can scan if you like at her (somewhat difficult to navigate) website. This title comes via Orenda Books, where the list of really fine mysteries is becoming impressive.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Long Effects of Evil in BLOCK 46, Johana Gustawsson

US cover

Sometimes the movement of a good (or great) crime novel from Europe to the United States takes a while. Then again, some of them never come across the ocean. Still, the three-year transit for BLOCK 46 from French crime writer Johana Gustawsson was too long a wait for such a blockbuster of a novel.

UK cover

Like the generation-long effects of abuse and murder in the Irish "Troubles" so hauntingly portrayed by Stuart Neville, Gustawsson's terrain of Nazi terror creates people and events steeped in evil. But this author doesn't simplify in any sense -- while the serial killer in BLOCK 46 seems to reenact some trauma of Buchenwald's killings, the novel is told from three voices: his, and those of two women.

Emily Roy, a top-tier Canadian criminal profiler who works for the British police force, demands detailed support services and instant access to crime scenes and information. Considering that she's working on a killer who has already piled up three bodies in two nations when the book begins, she needs every crumb of information and insight possible.

Alexis Castells, a close friend of the first adult that the serial killer tackles, can't walk away from the murder of jewelry designer Linnéa, who at first is the lone victim in Sweden. Haunted by an earlier crime she's been unable to finalize emotionally, Alexis determines to tag along with Emily -- who, surprisingly, allows her into the pursuit process.

The book's three-voice construction is brilliantly balanced by Gustawsson. Her details of torment at Buchenwald -- the "camp" where her own grandfather suffered -- are acute and perceptive, but also rapidly exchanged for the more civilized scenes in London and Sweden as the investigation takes place. As reader, I found myself eager to return to Emily and Alexis and the assorted police officers they're teamed with. And yet after a few pages in their company, I was also ready to look again at the cold, bitter, twisted landscape and events in the concentration camp, wanting to know how (or whether) Erich Ebler, a medical student imprisoned and debased in the camp, was surviving.

BLOCK 46 was a huge hit in Europe; the author's website exposes interviews and background that fascinate almost as much as the book. Like this:

These places define me as a woman and writer: I'm not only Marseillaise and French, but I am also a Londoner and an aspiring Swede! I arrived in London in 2009, after seven years in Paris. At the time, I was a journalist, freelancing for French magazines. I immediately felt at home in this city of various villages steeped in history, great parks and ancient pubs, all mixed with a cosmopolitan culture that inspires you. Hampstead is my favourite part of town. It is truly a haven that feels just like Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead. As for Sweden, it was my husband who brought the Scandinavian influence to our family. He introduced me to the rough beauty of the west coast, the Nordic folklore and the divine  chokladbollar !

Well done, Orenda Books, in bringing this debut crime novel across "the Pond." I will be watching for the next installment.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New Thriller from Paul E. Hardisty, RECONCILIATION FOR THE DEAD

The third in Paul E. Hardisty's Claymore ("Clay") Straker series, RECONCILIATION FOR THE DEAD, is now available, and it's a double whammy of a book: a South African soldier thriller set in the gory battles of 1971, coupled with Clay's 1996 effort to clean up his past by testifying to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Both carry their own freight of terror -- and appalling risk.

Deepening the plot are Clay's deep and desperate love affairs -- one that builds during his efforts to untangle the corruption and possible biowarfare experiments during 1971 (at what point should loyalty to brother officers be tested against moral and ethical horror?), and another that continues in 1996 in his effort to merit the love of a woman we've met with him in the two preceding books in the series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, which was short-listed for the 2015 John Creasey "New Blood" dagger from the Crime Writers Association (CWA), and The Evolution of Fear.

RECONCILIATION FOR THE DEAD -- and how can one read the title without also hearing an echo of "Requiem for the Dead"? -- can be read without the preceding books. In fact, its attachments to them barely affect this newest book, except for reinforcing Clay's motivation to give his testimony. The new title is a compulsive page-turner. Clay's earliest experiences of doubt toward the men he fights with -- his brothers in war, and the officer who in most ways is his father -- build ferociously through firefights and danger. The occasional glimpses of his future, layered into the story, give the reader confidence that in some form, Clay will survive. But the degree to which he'll compromise his integrity is in doubt at all moments, as he finds himself caught up in brutal experiments that reflect especially the racism of his country and his time.

I mostly raced through the book, eager to discover how Clay would confront his present and past, and to explore the dangerous terrain (human and geographic) of this thriller. Somehow, though, the whole time, I thought the biowarfare aspect would turn out to be fictional. So there was added shock and horror to learn in the author note that Hardisty based Clay's quandary on a real episode in the machinations of the South African apartheid government in 1981. Guess it just goes to show that truth can indeed be as dreadful and terrifying as fiction ...

Lee Child readers, espionage fans, and those savoring the new opportunities of this decade to enjoy global crime fiction will appreciate RECONCILIATION FOR THE DEAD. I expect to read it again, for the pleasure of this skilled author's layered plotting that tests the human heart and soul along with the capacity to navigate a battlefield and a crime. Highly recommended -- but leave time for this one, because it's worth savoring. And the powerfully drawn scenes and conflicts linger in my mind. Perhaps they will in yours, too.

All three titles are from Orenda Books.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Nordic Noir: Gunnar Staalesen, WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE

What a great discovery! This is the first time I've read a crime novel by Norwegian Gunnar Staalesen, and I'm really late finding his work ... he's written more than 20 titles, most significantly his series featuring detective Varg Veum, which began back in 1977.

Veum is a classic disillusioned private investigator, and at the opening of WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE he's completing a three-year binge of alcohol and self-pity relating to the death of his (female) partner, which is never fully explained here (I will have to get some of the earlier books, to find out more). And he's not in the mood to take any case that might improve his self-esteem; he's been "working" at lower and lower levels, taking assignments that can be done drunk.

But the mother who walks into his office has a plea he finds hard to resist: Her three-year-old daughter's case, a kidnapping from almost 25 years ago, is about to hit the statute of limitations, and no perpetrator was ever found -- nor was the child. Little Mette is still the center of her mother's life, and Maja, the mom, wants the case properly solved at last. Why Veum, of all people, to solve it? Well, he had solved another unrelated case of a missing child from the 1970s. And as he begins to realize he's going to take the case, he confronts a very large hurdle: getting sober enough to do this.

The dark cover of the book actually kept me from reading it for a while, so I was relieved to discover that despite the image, WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE does not contain child abuse in any of the gruesome sexually perverse modes that are currently in vogue (I hope desperately that the real world contains less of such crime than the fictional one). Instead, it's in some ways a traditional PI investigation, with some intriguing twists. For one thing, the child and her family lived in a somewhat quirky five-family environmental project, one of those miniature communes created in an attempt to use land more wisely and kindly. For another, one of the adults who lived there at the time Mette was kidnapped (and killled? it seems likely) was just shot to death in a jewelry-store robbery. There's no obvious connection, but the death has shaken Mette's mother out of her own lethargy, into pressing Veum for answers.

Although the book's blurbs refer to sharp teeth, darkness, and brutality, I found instead that Staalesen's expert storytelling tested and tasted the forms of love and commitment, along with what can go wrong inside well-meaning families. I enjoyed it a lot -- and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who enjoys a moderately dark but very humane mystery. Not for kids, but a thoughtful book that probes what it is to be an adult in a close community, and the value of trust.

Oh, if you've been reading Scandinavian noir: This is not as dark as most, despite the cover. I'd compare it more to the British crime fiction of, say, Ruth Rendell, or Colin Dexter. Good stuff, from Orenda Books via Trafalgar Square Publishing (release date Sept. 1).

Corruption in the Oil Industry and Land Deals Speeds Paul E. Hardisty's Thrillers to the Top

Things keep changing in the global publishing arena. Orenda Books is a relatively new British publisher, carried in the US by Trafalgar Square Publishing at the Independent Publishers Group. When a copy of Paul E. Hardisty's second thriller, THE EVOLUTION OF FEAR, came my way via IPG, the distributor noted that Hardisty's first novel, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, climbed onto the Crime Writers Association (CWA) charts right away: short-listed for the 2015 John Creasey "New Blood" dagger.

So of course, I picked up the first book, first.

Here's the situation as The Abrupt Physics of Dying opens: Claymore Straker's been working as an oil company engineer for a company of questionable ethics, in Yemen. His job is to conduct surveys of oil locations, present and future, and collect the test results for the company, while at the same time assuring the local people that the company only means to bring them good things: money, schools, a hospital even. He's been lying for his clients for so long that it doesn't bother him much.

But he has a vulnerability: He cares about his local driver and close friend Abdulkader. When a rebel leader named Al Shams captures Clay and Abdulkader, there's only one deal on the table: Clay must visit more of the sites being poisoned, take samples that prove it's from the oil operations, and get that information to the company leadership with a message from Al Shams: "All that is within this land is a gift from God to those who have lived here since before the prophet." Abdulkader's life depends on Clay completing this mission by a deadline that Al Shams sets:

"My people are dying. Your oil is killing them. What you must ask yourself, Mister Claymore, is if you care. ... I am giving you an opportunity, my friend, to find what you have lost."

But the oil company's corrupt -- well, Clay knew that, in a way -- and although its environmental effects are actually far worse than Clay realized, his efforts to make the leadership listen fall on deaf ears. Receiving Abdulkadar's severed hand in a package confirms that the deadline was intended, real, and fierce.

But that doesn't stop Clay's awakened conscience from driving him to fight for the Yemeni people, now that he's reawakened to caring about the land and the individuals. In The Abrupt Physics of Dying, his math and science skills are of little avail when he finds he's on the wrong side of both Yemen's secret service and the CIA.

The book's bloody and fearsome ending reshapes Clay Straker into an international race to escape being framed, in THE EVOLUTION OF FEAR. There's a woman he's begun to care about also, across barriers of ethnicity, religion, and motives. This time, it's not just the CIA on his tail: The Russian mafia, Greek Cypriots, and Turkish land developers have surrounded the woman in her role as a powerful journalist, and once again, Clay's struggling to free someone he cares about from a hostage situation. Even if he succeeds, will she accept him as lover and friend -- or push him away, symbol of the oppressive money forces operating around her. What must he give up, to maintain Rania's safety and his own sense of integrity? He struggles to understand:

"Justice isn't an event, she'd said. It isn't something you do once. There is no end to it. Forgiveness, you earn."

I have complete confidence that Paul E. Hardisty -- whose bio is outrageously interesting and laced with risk -- will carry this series forward. Consider me eagerly waiting for the next Clay Straker adventure, with its suspense and moral conflicts, as well as highly memorable characters and situations. Good stuff.

Yes, these deserve reading in sequence. Both are available via the usual sources, thanks to Trafalgar's adept US distribution.