What makes life perfect? Insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen knows the answer because he calculates everything down to the very last decimal. Until he is faced with the incalculable, after a series of unforeseeable events. After suddenly losing his job, Henri inherits an adventure park from his brother – its peculiar employees and troubling financial problems included. The worst of the financial issues appear to originate from big loans taken from some dangerous men who are very keen to get their money back. All improbable and complicated problems. But what Henri really can’t compute is love. In the adventure park, Henri crosses paths with Laura, a happy-go-lucky artist with a chequered past, whose erratic lifestyle bewilders him. As the criminals go to increasingly extreme lengths to collect their debts and as Henri’s relationship with Laura deepens, he finds himself faced with situations and emotions that simply cannot be pinned down on his spreadsheets…
ABOUT ANTTI TUOMAINEN Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author in 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the ‘King of Helsinki Noir’ when Dark as My Heart was published. With a piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. A TV adaptation is in the works, and Jussi Vatanen (Man In Room 301) has just been announced as a leading role. Palm Beach Finland was an immense success, with Marcel Berlins (The Times) calling Tuomainen ‘the funniest writer in Europe’. His latest thriller, Little Siberia, was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger, the Amazon Publishing/Capital Crime Awards and the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. In total, Antti Tuomainen has been short- and longlisted for 12 UK awards.
My thoughts: this is a very funny book, I giggled all the way through. My sense of humour is a bit weird. I think Henri would be confused as to why I found his misadventures so funny.
Henri is part of what makes it so entertaining, he has a very precise way of seeing the world, he is an actuary after all. Everything he does he weighs up and runs the numbers.
Having worked at an indoor soft play centre (known as Hell to staff) I could picture the adventure park Henri inherits from his financially disastrous brother very well. The hordes of screaming children, the deeply obnoxious parents, the dead eyed staff. I doubt our bosses ever had the bright idea of turning it into a bank though. Or getting involved with criminals who like to bake. Mostly because I’m pretty sure they were the criminals.
But Henri decides to save the park, his oddball employees, and the giant rabbit by the entrance with his rather crazy idea, and that means getting involved with loan sharks, avoiding the police inspector who’s showing a keen interest in the park, and generally trying not to panic.
It’s all utterly hilarious and charming, especially as his only ally is Schopenhauer the cat, who can’t exactly help out. And maybe Laura, who he’s rather charmed by. But Henri is determined to prevail and win the day. It’s that or a rather ugly death at the hands of the baking loan shark. I loved this book, it was over far too quickly and I need to know what became of Henri and Laura.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
You can cover up the truth, but every murder leaves a trail…
The rain was relentless. It stung Ruth Prendergast’s face as she dashed towards her house, desperate to escape the cold and settle down for an early night. But upon entering her bedroom, she finds a man, lying on her bed – a knife buried in his chest.
When Detective Isabel Blood and her sergeant arrive on the scene, Ruth claims she’s never laid eyes on the victim before. But with no sign of a break-in, how did the killer gain access to the house?
Then Ruth disappears, leaving Isabel and her team to fear the worst. Has their lead suspect escaped, or is Ruth in danger herself?
Forensic evidence at the crime scene is sparse, and it’s proving impossible for Isabel to make a breakthrough. With Ruth still missing, time is running out.
But how can you catch a killer that doesn’t leave a trace?
Uncover the mystery and solve the crime alongside Derbyshire’s best detective. This utterly gripping, unputdownable whodunit will have you hooked and reading long into the night! Fans Val McDermid, Elly Griffiths and ITV’s Vera will love Without a Trace!
My thoughts: this was a great police procedural, a man’s body found in a stranger’s bed, a man no one seemed to have a serious problem with. How did he get there and who killed him? DI Blood is supposed to be on leave as her estranged father has come to town. Instead she has to juggle dealing with her own family and its secrets as well as those surrounding the deceased.
The case was clever and I liked the way it slightly reflected Isabel’s own family, with some crucial differences. Her dad has a lot of explaining to do, as he hasn’t come alone and is playing her off against her half brother.
The team in the police station spend a lot of time eating and Zoe’s hot chocolate habit had me putting the kettle on and reaching for the marshmallows! Do not read this book while hungry! But they’re also good investigators and put the pieces together. In the end they discover that terrible mistakes have been made (though not by them).
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
His old life in the rearview, Del Castigliano has left Wisconsin to work homicide for the Seattle PD. Breaking him in is veteran detective Moss Gunderson, and he’s handing Del a big catch: the bodies of two unidentified men fished from Lake Union. It’s a major opportunity for the new detective, and Del runs with it, chasing every lead—to every dead end. Despite the help of another section rookie, Vic Fazzio, Del is going nowhere fast. Until one shotgun theory looks to be dead right: the victims are casualties of a drug smuggling operation. But critical information is missing—or purposely hidden. It’s forcing Del into a crisis of character and duty that not even the people he trusts can help him resolve.
The Last Line Excerpt
Del drove from the parking garage into a blustery and cold November morning—cold being relative. In Madison, anything above freezing was balmy for November, though Del was starting to understand what Seattleites meant when they said it wasn’t the temperature that chills you; it’s the dampness. He could feel the cold in his bones. A stiff wind rocked his metallic-blue Oldsmobile Cutlass.The wind had started blowing late the prior evening; branches of a tree scraping against Del’s bedroom window had kept him awake half the night.
He drove from Capitol Hill with the defroster on high and worked his way around the southern edge of Lake Union, noting marinas and water-based businesses. He pulled into a parking lot where Moss stood beside a black Buick LeSabre, sipping coffee and towering over a patrol officer. Moss was almost as big as Del, who stood six foot five and weighed 250 pounds.
Del pulled up the collar of his coat against the howling wind as he approached the two men. He recognized the green logo on Moss’s Starbucks coffee cup, the company name taken from Captain Ahab’s first mate on the Pequod, the whaling ship Moby Dick sent to the bottom of the ocean. The logo, a green siren, tempted sailors to jump overboard and drown. Neither was a good omen.
“Look what the cat dragged out. Did we wake you, Elmo?”
“Funny.” Del had heard iterations of Elmo since his teens, when the beloved puppet first appeared on Sesame Street. Moss introduced Del to Mike Nuccitelli, the patrol sergeant. “How’d you get here so quick?” Del asked Moss. He understood Moss lived in West Seattle, twenty minutes farther from the marina than Del’s apartment.
“I didn’t take time to do my hair.” Moss rubbed the bristles of a crew cut. “I’m like my name. You know. A rolling stone.”
Del knew. More than once, Moss had told him his parents bequeathed him the moniker because as a child he never remained still. Vic Fazzio had said it was more likely Moss gave himself the nickname. His Norwegian first name was Asbjorn.
“Halloway here?” Del asked.
“At this hour of the morning?” Moss scoffed. “Stayaway doesn’t come out this early on a cold morning unless he thinks the brass might show up and he can shine their badges with his nose.”
“What do we got?” Del asked.
“Two grown men. Looks like they drowned,” Nuccitelli said. “We’re waiting for the ME.”
“What more do we know about the victims; anything?” Del asked.
Nuccitelli raised the fur collar of his duty jacket against the wind. “Hispanic is my guess, though the bodies are pretty bloated and their skin the color of soot. I’m guessing roughly late twenties to early thirties, but again . . .”
“They didn’t have any ID?” Del asked.
“Not on them,” Nuccitelli said.
“That strike you as odd—they didn’t have ID?”
Nuccitelli smiled.“Not my job.That’s your job.”
“How far out is the ME?” Moss looked and sounded disinterested.
Nuccitelli checked his watch.“Should be here in ten.”
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series, which has sold more than seven million books worldwide. He is also the author of the bestselling Charles Jenkins series; the bestselling David Sloane series; the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, Damage Control, The World Played Chess, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, for which Dugoni won an AudioFile Earphones Award for narration; and the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post best book of the year. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and a three-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He is a two-time finalist for the Thriller Awards and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, as well as a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award for mystery and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards. His books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than two dozen languages.
From books to movies to television, police procedurals are incredibly popular with audiences. What do you think is the appeal of these stories?
I think the appeal is readers and viewers have good guys to root for and bad guys to root against. Readers also like a good mystery. They like to see if they can solve the crime, determine the bad guy and figure out what he did and how he did it, just like the detectives. It keeps them engaged in and part of the story.
Do you recall the first detective story you ever read or perhaps you have a favorite? What was it about this type of story that made you want to write in the genre?
Years ago, I remember reading Michael Connelly’s The Poet. I don’t know if it was the first detective story I read, probably not, but it was visceral and stuck with me. I do recall reading All The President’s Men when I was in high school, and though Woodward and Bernstein were not detectives, per se, they very much functioned like detectives in that story—finding clues, trying to piece together those clues, and then solve the puzzle. In many ways, that’s what a good detective story is all about: solving a puzzle. I think that is one of the appeals to writers, as well as readers and viewers.
Del Castigliano, the police detective in your newest release The Last Line, has worked in narcotics, arson, sexual assaults, robbery, and now homicide. He has definitely seen the worst that humans have to offer. What keeps him sane and on the job?
For most police officers I’ve spoken with, they do the job knowing that they are keeping people safe—maybe people they know or even love. It’s a tough job and burnout can be a problem. Most detectives have to be mentally tough and can be frequently rotated to help minimize burn out. It’s one of the reasons detectives and uniformed officers, I believe, are underappreciated. It’s a tough job.
Throughout The Last Line, readers get to see Del at his worst—he faces loss, failure, insecurity, loneliness…yet we also respect him. He is honest, hardworking, and clever. How do you see him? If you were to sit down to have a beer with him, what would you talk about?
In The Last Line, I see Del as a guy trying to find his way after life has thrown him a curveball. If we sat down for a beer, I’d ask him if, looking back, he has any regrets, or if time has helped him put life in perspective and he realizes that what he went through as a young man actually helped him to get to a better place in his life.
The Last Line ends in a way that will have readers wanting more. Do you have any future plans for Del and the larger cast?
Very much so. Del is a central character in the Tracy Crosswhite series, and in Tracy #9, What She Found, the story of Del’s first case from The Last Line comes back to Tracy, who is now working a cold case and trying to figure out what happened 24 years ago.
For fans of your bestselling Tracy Crosswhite series, will they feel at home with Del as the lead protagonist? For readers who haven’t discovered Tracy yet, will they be able to dip right in?
Absolutely. The Last Line is a standalone story that predates Tracy arriving at Seattle PD. I’ve had so many readers ask me for more of Del and Faz! Writing The Last Line was an opportunity to dig into how they got started and what shaped them. I have a thought now about Tracy #10 being a cold case that Del and Faz investigated 25 years earlier and telling the story from both time periods leading up to Tracy solving the crime in the present.
What do you have coming up next?
The third book in the Charles Jenkins espionage series, The Silent Sisters, will be published, February 22, 2022, followed by Tracy #9, What She Found, which will be out August 23, 2022. Beyond that, readers can look for a new standalone legal thriller introducing criminal defense attorney Keera Duggan. I’m excited about that novel and working hard to get it finished soon.
My thoughts: this was a nice little police procedural that introduces Del Castigliano and provides some reference to his case as mentioned above. It definitely made me want to read the Tracy Crosswhite series, and find out more. Especially that ending! Whether you’re a fan already or, like me, new to the author, it’s well worth a read and won’t take long at all.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
The perfect daughter… Jess Harper has spent her whole life trying to make her mum, Abigail happy and proud. And everything Jess does, from the clothes she wears, the job she has, the men she dates, are all approved by Abigail first. The perfect boyfriend… So when Jess announces that she has a new man in her life – plumber Adam – Abigail is less than impressed. ‘A plumber? Really, Jessica….’ Adam encourages Jess to break free from her mum’s manipulation, can’t she see what’s happening? The perfect mother…. But Abigail is only doing these things to keep Jess safe, to protect her from getting hurt again…isn’t she? Or the perfect liar? Jess, caught in the middle, doesn’t know who to believe or trust. And then Adam vanishes without trace. Now Jess is the police’s prime suspect and they want to know if Jess really is as perfect as she seems…. A gripping new psychological thriller for fans of Sue Watson, Shalini Boland and S.E.Lynes. Amazon
About the Author Alex Stone, originally an accountant from the West Midlands, is now a psychological suspense writer based in Dorset. This beautiful and dramatic coastline is the inspiration and setting for her novels. She was awarded the Katie Fforde Bursary in 2019 and her debut thriller The Perfect Daughter will be published by Boldwood in October 2021.
My thoughts: Jess has a monster for a mother, controlling, manipulative and cruel. Isolated from friends, with no one else to turn to. She meets Adam, who she starts to realise is very similar to her mum.
Then Adam disappears and Jess starts to question things that have happened in her past, her dad leaving, her only friend turning against her, the way her relationships fell apart. Her mother always telling her things were her fault. But what if they weren’t?
A dark, twisted psychological thriller about manipulation, gaslighting and finally seeing the truth. Gripping and clever, this was a highly enjoyable read and I rooted for Jess to find her way out of the lies and finally live for herself.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
In the cosmic realm of Eternity, there’s only one private eye to hire when your world gets turned inside out—Angela Hardwicke.
Darla Fyne, a college freshman and galaxy design savant, is suffering from a nervous breakdown—or is she the victim of an urban legend known as the Scarlet Raj?
As Hardwicke follows the intersecting worlds of art galleries, college dorms, and a semi-secret clan that patches up tears in the Universe, her investigation will either uncover a hoax gone wrong or a plot that could shift the balance of power across the entire realm. If only she can fight through her own paranoia to tell the difference.
In Russ Colchamiro’s new Sci-Fi mystery Fractured Lives, Angela Hardwicke is confronted by a PI’s worst nightmare—dark secrets from her past that will irrevocably change her future.
Excerpt I reach inside my jacket, hand on the grip of my weapon. I don’t want to use it. I don’t want to need it. I want this to be nothing more than another awkward, misconstrued moment in an awkward, misconstrued career taking on awkward, misconstrued cases. I want to be free of danger. I want to stop putting myself in danger. I want to come home every night and hug my son. I want him to hug me back. I want to let go of the demons that haunt me, the past that defines me, and a future that frightens me. I want to sleep at night. I want to wake up in the morning believing my life doesn’t have to be one mystery after another, one dark path leading down a darker alley of a bitter, lonely labyrinth that inevitably reveals someone’s pain. Their ugly secrets. But most of all, I want to be Angela Hardwicke. Not Angela Hardwicke, Private Investigator. Just Angela Hardwicke. Me. Whoever that is, and whatever that means. Which is all well and good, but if I don’t get myself out of this particularly awkward, misconstrued moment, I might not have the chance to find out.
Russ Colchamiro is the author of the rollicking space adventure, Crossline, the zany SF/F backpacking comedy series Finders Keepers: The Definitive Edition, Genius de Milo, and Astropalooza, and is editor of the SF anthology Love, Murder & Mayhem, all with Crazy 8 Press.
Russ lives in New Jersey with his wife, two ninjas, and crazy dog Simon, who may in fact be an alien himself. Russ has also contributed to several other anthologies, including Tales of the Crimson Keep, Pangaea, Altered States of the Union, Camelot 13, TV Gods 2, They Keep Killing Glenn, Thrilling Adventure Yarns, Camelot 13, and Brave New Girls.
He is now working on the first novel in a new series featuring his hardboiled private eye Angela Hardwicke, and the first of three collaborative novella projects.
My thoughts: this is the second Angela Hardwicke book I’ve read and while some of the concepts take a little while to wrap my brain round – I like science-y things but I don’t always get them, I really enjoyed this. I think the characters are great, not just Angela but all her PI contacts, her eccentric cabbie friend, her tech guru, her sidekick, the whole team. Plus her adorable son who’s still getting his words together and has a sweet lisp (I have one too). We get a lot more of Angela’s past too, and it’s really sad. It explains her tough exterior and refusal to get too close to people.
I’m starting to understand the concept of the city a lot more too – they literally live in the building blocks of the universe – at least I think that’s right. The case has Angela delving into the designs for new universes – and a really messed up system that treats the designers as a conveyor belt – they don’t even get credit for their work. I’m intrigued to see where this series goes next as there’s some clever concepts at play here and a PI can go almost anywhere.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
An uninvited guest…a deadly secret….and a terrible crime.
When a well-loved family of five are found dead sitting around their dining table with an untouched meal in front of them, it sends shockwaves throughout the community.
Was it a murder suicide, or was someone else involved?
It’s one of DCI Whitney Walker’s most baffling cases, and even with the help of forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish, they struggle to find any clues or motives to help them catch the killer.But with a community in mourning and growing pressure to get answers, Cavendish and Walker are forced to go deeper into a murderer’s mind than they’ve ever gone before.
Sally Rigby was born in Northampton, in the UK. She has always had the travel bug, and after living in both Manchester and London, eventually moved overseas. From 2001 she has lived with her family in New Zealand (apart from five years in Australia), which she considers to be the most beautiful place in the world.
After writing young adult fiction for many years, under a pen name, Sally decided to move into crime fiction. Her Cavendish & Walker series brings together two headstrong, and very different, women – DCI Whitney Walker, and forensic psychologist Dr Georgina Cavendish. Sally has a background in education, and has always loved crime fiction books, films and TV programmes. She has a particular fascination with the psychology of serial killers.
My thoughts: it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of this series, and its spinoff, so I was thrilled to start reading this new book. It’s another cracking case for Walker and Cavendish, with a family murdered and a rather odd meal left on the table for them. It seems the parents both had secrets, and one of them has led to the deaths of the whole family.
As well as that both Whitney and George have plenty going on in their personal lives, but manage to keep their investigative skills sharp as they sort through the suspects and find not only the killer but the motive too. Unfortunately the delightful Chief Super, aka Dickhead, is connected to the case personally and is breathing a little too heavily down Walker’s neck. It’s a race against the clock before he finds a reason to reassign the case. Another cracking read. And now I impatiently wait for the next one!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
She’ll do anything to save her son. But what if telling the truth means losing him for ever?
On a crisp winter’s evening, Beverly is cooking for her son. Eight-year-old Riley is climbing a tree in the garden, and Beverly smiles as she watches him. Nothing makes her happier than her precious child having fun – she never thought they’d be happy again.
The water on the stove is boiling, and Beverly slides in a handful of spaghetti. When she glances out of the window again, Riley is not there.
She races outside, her heart thumping. Riley is nowhere to be found.
Instinctively, Beverly knows that her son has not just run away. She knows this because of her secret – the one she has kept for eight years. The one that means she has no choice but to keep neighbours at a distance, that stops her sleeping at night.
She thought she’d made the right decision, that she was protecting her son. But now he’s gone. Could this be all her fault?
She’ll do anything to save him. Yet if she tells the truth, she could lose him for ever…
A totally gripping psychological thriller that will get your pulse racing like crazy as it hits you with twist after twist after twist! If you loved The Wife Between Us or The Girl on the Train you’ll be utterly glued to this page-turner.
Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because, as her professor pointed out, ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’
She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree. In between raising three children, working for her husband and renovating houses, she has published six novels. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
My thoughts: this was very clever and I didn’t see the twists coming at all. I got the identity of Riley’s abductor completely wrong, all signs pointed to different people, very nice work. The slow build up to Beverley’s nightmare, having her son taken, then the unravelling of all her secrets was very enjoyable. That second epilogue! I need a sequel.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Something a little different today, to celebrate this year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival. Read on for info on the Festival and a review of one of the books being celebrated there.
Cheltenham Literature Festival is the world’s first literature festival, leading the way in celebrating the written and spoken word, presenting the best new voices in fiction and poetry alongside literary greats and high-profile speakers, while inspiring over 9,000 school children with a love of books through its Literature for Schools programme.
Cheltenham Literature Festival is part of Cheltenham Festivals – a charity delivering a pioneering year-round educational programme culminating in four internationally-acclaimed Jazz, Science, Music and Literature Festivals. Cheltenham Festivals creates experiences that bring joy, spark curiosity, connect communities and inspire change.
The Festival has an accompanying year-round programme of education and talent development outreach including its flagship Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils project which has rolled out nationally, enabling teachers and their pupils to rediscover the joy of reading. The other programmes include: the award-winning Beyond Words, a creative writing project working with vulnerable young people unable to access mainstream education in Gloucestershire, Words That Burn, a national human rights poetry project created in partnership with Amnesty International and Write Now, a unique mentoring, workshop and networking project that nurtures young people’s creative writing abilities.
One of the writers featured at the festival is crime writer Mick Herron, who will be at an event celebrating the life and career of John Le Carrè. Herron is sometimes seen as Le Carrè’s literary heir and his most recent title is Slough House, which I was kindly sent to review below.
Slough House – the crumbling office building to which failed spies, the ‘slow horses’, are banished – has been wiped from secret service records.
Reeling from recent losses in their ranks, the slow horses are worried they’ve been pushed further into the cold, and fatal accidents keep happening.
With a new populist movement taking a grip on London’s streets, the aftermath of a blunder by the Russian secret service that left a British citizen dead, and the old order ensuring that everything’s for sale to the highest bidder, the world’s an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.
But the slow horses aren’t famed for making wise decisions.
My thoughts: this was very enjoyable, with lots of intrigue and conspiracies to keep the characters occupied in chasing around London and out into the countryside after a pair of Russian assassins, who are chasing after Jackson Lamb’s team and he’s not happy about it.
Diana Taverner might be First Desk at M15 but she’s not as in control as she thinks, stupidly getting entangled with dangerous men who play the political long game and far better than she can. She’s in it up to her neck and only Lamb and his band of misfits can sort things out, whatever their reputation as slow horses suggests.
Jackson Lamb is probably the unhealthiest spy around, overweight, chain smoking, perpetually drunk and living on a diet of terrible takeaways, he’s hardly the suave, sophisticated ideal, but he’s survived a long time in this world and under the dishevelled appearance is a top notch brain. Same goes in many ways for the rest of his team – they might not be the ones pipped for bright futures but they’ve got skills and are innocuous enough that they don’t look like much of a threat.
I’ve only read one other book in this series, a while ago, but the writing is very clever and the plot gripping, just the right amount of convoluted. I might just have to check the rest of the series out, see what else Lamb and his slow horses have been up to.
This ends with question marks over the future for the team and indeed the life of one member. Will they be allowed to stay at Slough House, quietly doing boring busy work for MI5 or will there be changes coming?
*parts of this blog post were created using a press release but the opinions expressed in the book review are my own.*
Estranged sisters Áróra and Ísafold live in different countries, and are not on speaking terms. When their mother loses contact with Ísafold, Áróra reluctantly returns to Iceland to look for her. But she soon realizes that her sister isn’t avoiding her … she has disappeared, without a trace. As she confronts Ísafold’s abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend Björn, and begins to probe her sister’s reclusive neighbours – who have their own reasons for staying out of sight – Áróra is drawn into an ever-darker web of intrigue and manipulation. Baffled by the conflicting details of her sister’s life, and blinded by the shiveringly bright midnight sun of the Icelandic summer, Áróra enlists the help of police officer Daníel, to help her track her sister’s movements, and tail Björn. But she isn’t the only one watching…
Icelandic crime-writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written four crime novels, with Snare, her English debut shortlisting for the CWA International Dagger and hitting bestseller lists worldwide. Trap soon followed suit, with the third in the trilogy Cage winning the Best Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year, and was a Guardian Book of the Year. Lilja’s standalone Betrayal, was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel. The film rights have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California. Lilja is also an award-winning screenwriter in her native Iceland. She lives in Reykjavík with her partner.
My thoughts: this was very good, which isn’t a surprise when you consider the author. A clever, twisting narrative, where all the characters have secrets and you can’t quite work out who the killer is, there’s something very odd about Ísafold’s neighbour and he certainly knows more than he’s saying. Àroŕa might be an excellent financial investigator but she’s stumped by her sister’s disappearance and distracted by hotelier Hakon and his dubious financial dealings.
Flicking between different perspectives, slowly the events surrounding Ísafold’s disappearance start to coalesce. Then there’s Olga and Omar downstairs, with their own reasons for not wanting to speak to the police, trying to keep out of the way. But also not attract suspicion, unlike Ìsafold’s ex-partner, Bjorn, a thoroughly unlikeable man who thinks he’s above it all, despite being the main suspect.
It’s all very cleverly done, with the overlapping narratives weaving together as Daniel, the sisters’ sort of uncle, using his detective skills first unofficially, then very much opening a case, to try to find Ìsafold in the long sunny Icelandic summer. The writing is crisp and precise, keeping the reader hooked. A pleasure to read.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
The phone rings. It’s the call every parent dreads. My beautiful son is dead.
He’d been the centre of my world from the moment he was born. Now my perfect life is shattered. In the midst of my grief, I receive an anonymous letter telling me that Tom’s death was not an accident.
So I’ve come to the apartment where my only child lived to find out what really happened. Tom was newly qualified as a doctor, he had a bright future ahead of him. Nothing about the day he died makes sense.
As I get to know the medical staff Tom worked with and his friends living nearby, I’m drawn into a tangled web of lies. Whispers and rumours circulate along the hospital corridors and I start to question how well I really knew my precious boy.
But a mother knows when things don’t add up.
His girlfriend has been keeping her pregnancy secret. His best friend betrayed him in the weeks before Tom’s death. His neighbours all have something to hide.
Which one of them would kill? As I get closer to the truth, the stakes become more dangerous. And I realise I could be next on their list…
Liz Lawler grew up sharing pants, socks, occasionally a toothbrush, sleeping four to a bed. Born in Chatham and partly raised in Dublin, she is one of fourteen children. She spent over twenty years as a nurse and has since fitted in working as a flight attendant, a general manager of a five star hotel, and is now working with trains. She became an author in 2017 when her debut novel Don’t Wake Up was published by Twenty7. FacebookTwitter
My thoughts: this was really interesting, I don’t think the title quite fits as one of the things Ruth isn’t is silent. She’s asking questions and tracking down the people in her son’s life. She knows Thomas wouldn’t have done the things he’s accused of, none of it adds up and the police have closed the case. It’s her job to find the truth.
When the real story starts to come out, it’s shocking and Ruth has wound up right in the heart of it. People she’s seen as a locum GP aren’t who they first appear and by staying in her son’s flat she’s able to find out details the police missed. A clever and twisted story of malice and grief.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book book exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 