Outstanding Swedish Crime Novel from Peter Mohlin and Peter Nyström (Overlook Press)

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Layered and lethal … The only thing better than the pleasure of this suspenseful and tightly plotted “Scandi noir” investigation is knowing there’s a sequel on the way.”

FBI fan? Witness protection reader? Scandinavian noir collector? The Bucket List, first in a new Swedish series of “Agent John Adderley” crime fiction, satisfies all these enthusiasms at once, in a stunning debut that’s layered and lethal.

Authors Mohlin and Nyström bring both journalism and screenwriting skills to this intense and unusually long first effort. FBI agent John Adderley, wrapping up an undercover stint to break up an international drug ring, knows he’ll never go back to his old life afterward, and that’s fine. Until, that is, he gets a packet from his long-estranged and dying mother in Sweden, calling him to investigate a cold-case murder being blamed on his half brother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was 12. Deliberately breaking the witness protection rules after the trial’s over, he head to his home town of Karlstad to dig for the truth, no matter the cost.

At first, chapters alternate with the earlier time of disappearance of Emilie Bjurwall, college-age heiress to a clothing empire, as seen through her father Heimar’s eyes. If Emilie is a rebel, her dad is a defeated misfit, resigned to being the eye-candy husband of his powerful wife, whose family owns the company. He’s the complete opposite of John Adderley, whose ability to plan and instant commitment to action should mean a great record in crime-solving—but backfire as he misleads his own team.

Then the action increases in pace, and drives directly through until the unexpected and impressive finale, based on John’s own deadly choice:

“John felt his palms go clammy, as Ruben continued. ‘I’ve not spoken to the boss yet. I wanted to find out what the situation was myself—see whether you were going to make contact with your brother and leak details of the investigation. But so far, all you seem to have done is drive by the house—so I’m willing to give you a chance to tell Primer yourself. He doesn’t have to know about our conversation here. With a little luck, he won’t throw you off the case. But it might also end in immediate dismissal and an internal investigation for gross professional misconduct.’

‘I realize this is going to have professional consequences,’ said John. ‘But the most important thing is that my true identity doesn’t get out. You have to understand that there are people out there who want nothing more than to see me dead.’ …

His colleague started the engine—a clear sign the conversation was over.

‘I’ll give you until the end of the week,’ he said. ‘If you haven’t told Primer who you are by then, I will.’”

Boosted by smooth and deft translation by Ian Giles, The Bucket List—the title refers to a mysterious tattoo on the arm of the missing-presumed-murdered heiress—weaves in lively side episodes of passion and pretense. Adderley’s unethical mother and brother make everything tougher. And whether the international syndicate will catch up with him before the crime’s actually solved means the pressure of that ticking clock never lets up.

The book’s already taken a debut novel award in Sweden (“Crimetime Award”) and merits more. The only thing better than the pleasure of this suspenseful and tightly plotted “Scandi noir” investigation is knowing there’s a sequel on the way.

Newest Simon Serrailler Investigation from Susan Hill, British Crime Fiction

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

The ninth book in the Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler series from British author Susan Hill is a tour de force—a complicated emotional roller coaster among several deaths, a serial murderer, and Serrailler’s anguished self-examination about whether he still wants his job back after a prolonged recovery from an attack that’s cost him a limb.

The Comforts of Home makes it clear that home is about far more than where you hang your hat, be it an official uniform cap or a disguise. For Simon Serrailler in his self-doubt and anger, “home” for recovery at first is on the island or Taransay, off the British coast, swept by fierce winds and storms. Staying with friends who won’t pry into his grief (although their sweet young son wants to know all about the new prosthesis), Simon builds a set of protective walls, postponing decisions, walking, visiting with the locals. To be with his own family would be too intense, and he’s not yet confident of his working self, that most crucial component.

He had a strange sense of re-entering his old life, as if then he had been another man. … He had been young. He had been fit, hale, whole, but he was not whole now though the physical effects of having lost a flesh-and-bone arm and gained a prosthetic one had been far easier to cope with than the psychological ones. He was haunted by the loss of his limb.

When a lone woman on the island is found dead, and her death turns out to be a complicated killing, Simon’s the only police professional available to lead an investigation. So begins his slow return to a recognizable profession. He’s well on his way to solving this small but poignant case when his sister’s new husband, who happens to also be Simon’s chief constable, calls for his help on a cold case.

Soon the psychology of the killer (or killers?) and that of Simon’s own father make a complicated dance of dysfunction around Serrailler. Readers of the earlier eight books of the series will appreciate how the demands of the cases tug him back toward characters they’ve come to trust and admire, because Simon trusts them, and now he actually needs them, to find his strength again and to manage the challenges of pursuing those who commit murder.

Although Hill’s books are well known as award-winning crime fiction, The Comforts of Home can’t be read as a page-turner: It’s too dense, too probing, too layered with pain and loss and the kind of love that family and good friends provide in the middle of life’s major messes. As the best mysteries do, this one probes the mysteries within, especially the interaction of an investigator’s own inner darkness and that of the criminals he pursues. At stake: Can Simon Serrailler pull his personal and professional lives back into a whole person? Or must he see himself as crippled by the only career he’s embraced?

While it’s not necessary to read the earlier titles in the series first—this one’s compact and well planned—some threads don’t quite tie together without more of Simon Serrailler’s back-story. So it’s worth going to the others after reading this powerful ninth in the series, and appreciating the growth of Susan Hill’s own fusion of the personal and professional, the interior and the complex plot maven. A fine read, memorable and satisfying in its dark tangles and solutions.

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

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Strong British "Father Anselm Thriller" from William Brodrick, THE SILENT ONES

Some British mysteries might get stranded on the other side of the Atlantic, if it weren't for the sturdy persistence of The Overlook Press, hauling them over "the pond." The newest to savor, with a US publication date of October 16, is THE SILENT ONES by William Brodrick. What an excellent read!

Brodrick won acclaim with his 1999 opening of the Father Anselm series, The Sixth Lamentaion, and took a Crime Writers' Assocaition (CWA) Golden Dagger Award for A Whispered Name. The newest in the series via Overlook, THE SILENT ONES, came out in 2015 in Britain -- alas for the 3-year wait! But now it's here ...

It's hard to write about The Church these days without confronting the specter of child sexual abuse. And that's what Father Anselm knows he'll have to look into when he's assigned to trace the missing Father Littlemore, a member of an order of monastics that is distant from his own Larkwood Priory community. He'll have to head for London and leave the treasured silence of the Priory, and leave his beehives. But an order is an order (double meaning intended), and sometimes silence must be sacrificed.

To Father Anselm's shock (and near despair), once the missing man is "located," he wants Father Anselm -- a former barrister himself -- for his legal representative. But Father Littlemore won't speak in his own defense. And the facts of the matter are far from clear:

R v. Littlemore  opened in Court Twelve at the Old Bailey on a Thursday in the first week of August. It was a warm day with clouds drifting carelessly across a cobalt sky. A crowd had gathered in the street behind a row of grey metal barriers. Police officers in fluorescent jackets stood on the pavement, keeping the entrance clear. Seeing the gathering as he approached on foot from Ludgate, Anselm lowered his gaze. For months he'd lived in dread of this moment. Now that it was upon him he wanted to turn around and go back to Larkwood; to deal with his bees and the other simple obligations of a quiet life. The clouds were drifting there, too. Bede's parting words rang hoarsely in his ears:

'Find out what really happened . . .'

Despite the "newsworthy" side of the proposed crime, THE SILENT ONES is actually a traditional mystery, well framed, salted with a slow accretion of clues, and paced with enough room to enjoy the atmospherics. Plus it tenderly probes the forms of affection and loyalty that grow within a monastic community -- as well as the frictions and sometimes cruel words.

Pick up a copy if you treasure the genre of English justice mysteries; if you enjoy peeking behind the scenes among clerics (Father Brown lovers, grab two copies); and if you value an author who can write of affection in a way that warms your heart and gets you ready for a better week ahead.

One small caution: As usual with Brodrick's books, the first few chapters can be a bit choppy (overworked, perhaps?). Slide on through and enjoy the rest of the book. I did.

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

Investigator in Pain, Revealing the Cost of Murder, in R. J. Ellory's THE DEVIL AND THE RIVER

The moment I opened the American publication of R. J. Ellory's THE DEVIL AND THE RIVER, I knew I was hooked. Although I spread my reading time for the nearly 400 pages over several days, I would have loved to skip work and just stay on the couch with this book. Not only does it probe life in a sleepy Mississippi town, with a pointed finger trailing through voodoo as well as murder -- but it probes the residue of the Vietnam War through the flashbacks and soul-deep damage to investigator John Gaines. Here's the first paragraph, under the chapter heading "Wednesday, July 24, 1974":

When the rains came, they found the girl's face. Just her face. At least that was how it appeared. And then came her hand -- small and white and fine like porcelain. It surfaced from the black mud and showed itself. Just her face and her hand, the rest of her still submerged. To look down the riverbank and see just her hand and her face was surreal and disturbing. And John Gaines -- who had lately, and by providence or default, come to the position of sheriff of Whytesburg, Breed County, Mississippi, and before that had come alive from the nine circles of hell that was the war in Vietnam, who was himself born in Lafayette, a Louisianan from the start -- crouched on his haunches and surveyed the scene with a quiet mind and a steady eye.

This is what we demand of our best crime-solving people: a quiet mind and a steady eye, and an inner recognition of the horrors and pain embedded in violence. If only it could all be balanced neatly! But as Gaines will soon discover, to probe the roots of this death will also mean reactivating his own most terrible memories of the war, and facing what it has done to him.

The body surfacing from the muddy river bank turns out to be that of Nancy Denton. When she was just 16, two decades earlier, she'd gone for a walk in the Whytesburg woods -- and never returned. Very quickly, John Gaines realizes hers is not a recent death, but perhaps one that dates to the day of her disappearance. How has the body been preserved? What actions were taken before it found a resting place? And who felt the need to kill this lovely young woman?

Gaines is an inexperienced sheriff, driven by poignant and forceful memories of killing and survival in the Vietnam jungles, as well as by a longing to have his returned-to-America life carry some goodness, some meaning, and deep justice. He soon finds that Nancy's teen years took place in a small group of close friends, where romances were both budding and frustrated. And a powerful Southern family, the Wades, is somehow involved in covering up what happened 20 years earlier.

Gaines's most direct route back to the "cold case" is through another veteran, this one of an earlier war: Michael Webster, one of the lucky ones who returned from live action in World War II, minus all the others in his fighting group. Could it be Michael, with his own raw PTSD, who killed Nancy Denton? One of the Wade family members, defending Michael, challenges Gaines to go easy on this veteran so similar in some ways to himself:

"You are perhaps made of stronger stuff than Lieutenant Webster. Some men are just a little more fragile than others, you know?"

"You're telling me that he is the victim here? Are you f**ing crazy?"

"Oh, I am saying nothing of the sort, Sheriff. I am well aware that a heinous crime has been perpetrated here, that some poor girl was abused and murdered, but this was all twenty years ago ... I just think Michael Webster is incapable of establishing any kind of stable ground for his own defense, and I would like to think I am assisting him with his constitutional right to fair representation when it comes to his day in court."

"This is just bullsh**, if you don't mind me saying, Mr. Wade."

What Gaines suspects, beyond the possible violent act in the past by Webster, is that Wade himself is somehow involved in the coverup, for reasons of his own. Or could Wade have been the killer?

It's complicated. And Sheriff John Gaines can't get to the truth without sorting his own war memories and what they have done to his capacity to be human, to be caring, to take part in community.

Don't be confused by earlier releases of the book in the United Kingdom; this is the American release, orchestrated by Overlook. If, like me, you carry conflicting emotions and memories of the Vietnam War years, here is a potent narrative in which to reconsider your own past, as well as the country's. And if you value a crime novel that probes the vulnerability and courage of the mind -- as Charles Todd has done with his World War I-era detectives, for instance -- you'll want the book on your shelf for repeated reading. Add it also to novels of the South and the grief and beauty entwined there.

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

Noir That Lingers, in A DARK AND BROKEN HEART, R. J. Ellory

British author R. J. Ellory wins long-term fans for his dark crime fiction through his characters -- mostly men, whose shadowed lives are twisted, bitter, yet somehow vulnerable. A DARK AND BROKEN HEART is already a classic of his work -- and it just arrived for American readers through Overlook Press.

What's with Detective Vincent Madigan, anyway? Doesn't he know crime won't pay, after being a cop for so long? Actually that seems to be the opposite of what he's learned with the NYPD and the corruption surrounding him. His own struggles have put him deep into debt to both a bookie and drug lord and to his lawyer (it all makes bitter sense). Not to mention alimony. And underneath all of Madigan's horror at the tangled mess of his life is a small, persistent hope: that somehow, some day, he can do something that will delight his teenage daughter and hear her speak his name with happiness and excitement.

That's the dreamy and tender kernel to the man that can make this worth reading, through violent scenes of desperate efforts gone wrong. Even Madigan knows his plan of using three career criminals to help him steal that drug lord's cash delivery is way too risky. He can picture what Sandia, the crime boss, would say after catching Madigan in the act:

You killed my people and you stole my money to pay your debt to me. You paid me back with my own money. And don't insult me by telling me you didn't. Tell me the truth and I'll kill you quickly. Lie to me and I will have someone torture you for a month.

As Madigan assessed the situation, "This was what he had. It didn't get much worse than this."

But it can indeed get worse, and does. Buckle up for more than 300 pages of bad decisions and bloody consequences. If you stick with it -- and readers who already like Dave Zeltserman's crime fiction and the deep gritty noir that Overlook is so skilled at finding will indeed be hooked -- don't count on a happy ending. Madigan may expect it (that's why readers hang with him), but he's been wrong so often that the finale is bittersweet, but not exactly unexpected -- unless, of course, you are the often high, always scheming, ever hoping Madigan himself.

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

Political Thriller with Supernatural Twist: FORETOLD BY THUNDER, E. M. Davey

Here's a debut thriller that's clearly positioned in the Dan Brown subgenre: The abrupt death (by lightning strike) of an investigating professor leads to mysterious documents reaching journalist Jake Wolsey -- papers that point to a missing and highly significant ancient Etruscan manuscript. Jake soon discovers that his inquiry into the professor's death and the documents has made him a lightning attractor for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Partnering with a knowledgeable (and attractive) archaeologist, Florence Chung, Jake begins a risky race toward information that at the very least was valued by Winston Churchill ... and may affect the rise and fall of civilizations.

FORETOLD BY THUNDER is a fast-paced thriller, and fans of the subgenre will appreciate the detailed sense of history that E. M. Davey brings into the unfolding situations. Don't expect to bond deeply with the protagonist, though -- Davey's more interested in spinning a global and inclusive conspiracy theory, and less in the depth and motivations that spur Jake onward with his life at stake.

I particularly enjoyed the small interludes Davey tucks into his writing, not always essential to the plot but written with the eye of a good storyteller, like this:

It always made Jenny Frobisher smile to see Hollywood's depiction of a Secret Service incident room. There would be banks of glowing monitors, agents roaming around some 3D-rendered desert, satellites being repositioned at a moment's notice. The reality was somewhat different, Jenny thought, as she looked about her base of operations. Four computers, four telephones, whiteboard, kettle. The only impressive thing was the view of the Thames. She could make out a guide pointing up at them from the deck of a tourist ferry as he honed his James Bond spiel.

Then again, there are moments when Jake too takes an aside and it becomes critical to the plot:

This was the prophecy of the turning of the wheel. And the war of civilizations would go on.

Jake awoke, gasping for breath. For the second time he was disorientated. Was he still asleep? A dream within a dream? He sat up to find himself on a sofa in a pay-by-the-hour hotel room. ... the despair of its climax was all-pervasive. Something Florence had said about Etruscan faith came back to him.

A dark religion. Before the Gods man was a complete nonentity, his fate entirely in their hands.

Jake shook his head again ... his phone began to ring.

London calling.

Pick this one up for light reading and an intriguing conspiracy theory that stretches across millennia. And let's keep an eye out for how this debut author develops his series, via The Overlook Press.