THE BREAKOUT SUPERNATURAL THRILLER FROM ICELANDIC WRITER JOHANN THORSSON
Detective John Dark’s daughter has been missing for two years. In his frantic and unfruitful search for her two years ago, John Dark overreached and was reprimanded and demoted.
Now suddenly back into the homicide department, Dark is put on a chilling case – a man who killed his wife in their locked house and then dressed the body up to resemble a deer, but claims to remember none of it. A few days later an impossibly similar case crops up connecting the suspects to a prep school and a thirty year old missing persons’ case.
Just as he is getting back into his old groove, a new lead in his daughter’s disappearance pops up and threatens to derail his career again.
Time is running out and John Dark needs to solve the case before more people are killed, and while there is still hope to find his daughter.
In the style of True Detective and Silence of the Lambs, WHITESANDS is a thrilling supernatural crime novel.
“Tense, breakneck storytelling. WHITESANDS is a dash of Thomas Harris swirled with supernatural elements that leave you speeding through the pages.” – Kristi DeMeester, author of SUCH A PRETTY SMILE and BENEATH
“Johann Thorsson’s fast-moving debut WHITESANDS, packs enough incident for a novel twice its size, until it’s impossible to turn the pages fast enough.” – John Langan, author of Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies
“… certainly one of the best thrillers I have read this year.” – Khasif Hussain, The Best Thriller Books
Johann Thorsson is a writer of fiction with a supernatural slant, mainly short stories, mainly in English.
He was born in 1978 in a small town in Iceland (dark and cold, close to the sea). When he was nine he moved to Israel, and later to Croatia. He now resides in the Reykjavik area with his beautiful wife and two little kids.
His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Every Day Fiction, eFiction Magazine, eFiction Horror and Fireside Fiction.
Most recently, a story of his was selected for in the forthcoming anthology Apex Book of World SF 4 and Garden of Fiends
His favorite books are 1984, Flowers for Algernon, I am Legend, The Things They Carried and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels. Oh, and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone. Romeo and Juliet. (This could go on for a while).
My thoughts: this was a clever and creepy crime story with revenge at its heart. After a man murders his wife and insists someone else did it, despite all the evidence, Detective John Dark thinks something weird is going on, a second murder convinces him. The only link is that the two killers attended the same boarding school – Whitesands. Did something happen in their shared past that’s finally manifesting?
Dark is an interesting character, tormented by the disappearance of his daughter some years before, he’s never stopped looking, but his bosses need him to focus on his career before he loses his job. He’s willing to believe in the supernatural in order to solve this case, since it genuinely seems to be the case.
I can imagine this book growing into a series where Dark investigates other strange crimes while still hunting for his daughter and turning to both his wife and his partner at the police station Monique as well as his new friend, schizophrenic psychic Daniel, to access as much support as he can.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 