Hannah is miserable. Her love life is in ruins, her contract demands a sequel to her bestselling crime debut – and she’s out of ideas.
After a mortifying TV interview, her agent ships her off to a sun-drenched Sicilian villa with a simple order: finish the book. No distractions. No excuses. But inspiration doesn’t strike – murder does.
When a night out ends in murder, Hannah finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation … again.
The police want her out of the way, and the only person who seems to believe her is a young but charming Italian police officer. That is, until she doesn’t.
Soon Hannah is chasing suspects, fleeing crime scenes, and doing whatever it takes to avoid becoming the next victim. She came to write a crime novel. Now she’s trapped inside one.
Jenny Lund Madsen is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed scriptwriters (including the international hits Rita and Follow the Money) and is known as an advocate for better representation for sexual and ethnic minorities in Danish TV and film. She made her debut as a playwright with the critically acclaimed Audition (Aarhus Teater) and her debut literary thriller, Thirty Days of Darkness, first in an addictive new series, won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the year, was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key Award, longlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and won the Crime Fiction Lover Award for Best Crime Book in Translation. She lives in Denmark with her wife and young family.
My thoughts: Hannah wrote a brilliant crime novel after her involvement with a murder in Iceland, but now she’s stuck again. She’s under contract for another crime novel, but wants to go back to her literary fiction roots. So her agent, Bastian sends her to a friend’s villa in Sicily to write.
And she gets involved in another murder. She’s even a suspect, which is crazy because she barely knows the victim. The police don’t believe her, her lawyer doesn’t seem bothered either. What can she do? Well, she’ll just have to solve the case and prove her own innocence. Obviously. And then write a book all about it.
Chaos ensues, especially after her Icelandic lover (with husband and children in tow) shows up, Hannah has a holiday fling with the one police officer who believes her, and after discovering whose house she’s staying, calls the one person she vowed never to, because she really needs help.
Hannah’s life is completely crazy, despite her insistence that it isn’t, and maybe she should stop leaving home as she seems to encounter murder everywhere she goes.
It’s actually a really funny book and would make a great movie on Netflix, the sort of film I would definitely watch (I love a crazy crime caper). More please!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 