Book Review: THE BELL IN THE LAKE and THE REINDEER HUNTERS by Lars Mytting

 

Every now and then you stumble across a book that just takes your breath away, and THE BELL IN THE LAKE and its sequel THE REINDEER HUNTERS fell into that category for me! I loved everything about this story, even though it also broke my heart into a million pieces.

 

Set in a small remote village in Norway in the late 1800’s, we get to meet the unforgettable characters that will soon worm their way into our hearts and minds. Astrid Hekne, the beautiful and clever daughter of a local landholder, who yearns to get out of the confines of her village and a different life. Kai Schweigaard, the young pastor who has just been posted to the village and has ambitious plans for the town, hoping that his progressive ideas will elevate his status and give him a ticket to grander locations. And Gerhard Schoenauer, the young German architect who has been sent to draw up plans of the church before it gets sold, dismantled and moved all the way to Germany. Butangen’s stave church features like a character itself, with its myth about the “sister bells” and its strong connection to the community, so it’s little wonder that its fate is strongly tied to that of its parishioners.

 

With a strong sense of place and time and a setting so vivid that I thought I was in Norway, the book took me on one unforgettable journey I only came out of reluctantly, dazed and completely emotionally wrung out. Mytting tells his tale so convincingly that his characters came to life for me, and I remember them as flesh and blood people whose fate touched me in ways only few fictional characters can. A heads up: have some tissues ready because I cried floods of tears!

 

Despite being 400 pages long, the story came to an end way too soon, but the good news was that there is a sequel! THE REINDEER HUNTERS takes the story up where THE BELL IN THE LAKE ended, with a new, younger generation of Butangen residents now in the forefront of the novel. Myttings trilogy (I can’t wait for the third instalment, which hasn’t been released yet) is deeply steeped in history and folklore, making it an interesting as well as educational read. Be prepared to spend hours googling “stave churches” after reading it. I was also fascinated by the details about midwifery and the knowledge of the midwives in the late 1900’s, with so many challenges to overcome, distance and poverty amongst them. Mytting’s keen observations of human behaviour fill his novels with tales of love & hate, jealousy & forgiveness, kindness and compassion and greed and the dynamics of a small remote community steeped in tradition and folklore. Here the progressive ideas of a young pastor may not be kindly received by all, and the ideas of the church often clash against more traditional views.

 

There is so much more I could say about these wonderful novels but I will leave it at that and urge you to pick them up for yourself. You will be rewarded with a story that will stay with you for a long time, and some magnificent armchair travel to Norway (which makes me want to go out and buy a ticket right now to explore it for myself). I can’t wait for the release of the third book in the trilogy to find out more about the fate of the sister bells and the sisters’ weaving depicting Skrapanatta.

Book Review: A QUESTION MARK IS HALF A HEART by Sofia Lundberg

 

Title: A QUESTION MARK IS HALF A HEART

Author:  Sofia Lundberg

Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Read: December 2020

Expected publication: 23 March 2021

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

 

Book Description:

 

By age 50, Elin Boals has created for herself a perfect life: her wildly successful business as Manhattan’s preeminent fashion photographer is flourishing. Her handsome, patient husband is devoted to her; her teenaged daughter, Alice, has been accepted to the ballet academy of her dreams. But then Elin receives an innocuous looking envelope. Folded inside is a star-chart, with an address written by a familiar hand.

Shaken, Elin begins to have startling flashbacks, to a life very different from the childhood in a Paris bookstore that she has so lovingly recounted to Alice. In these images, a poverty-stricken little girl cares for her two ragged baby brothers, laughing with her family on the good days, sheltering them from her mother’s sadness and her father’s wrath on the bad days. Elin also remembers vivid walks with a young classmate, Fredrik, whose steadfast friendship and starlit confidences shaped her young life. As Elin becomes consumed by these memories, though, her New York life begins to crumble dramatically. Finally, her family’s troubling questions drive her to face, at last, the brutal secret from her past.

At once a heartwarming family story and a page-turning mystery, A Question Mark Is Half a Heart traces a surprising journey across continents to reconciliation, and toward finding a true sense of home.

 

My musings:

 

I admit that it took me a little while to get invested in this book, but in the end it was very worthwhile and it tugged on my heartstrings!

 

We first get to meet the adult Elin, a prominent photographer who has alienated her husband and daughter by putting work before family and hardly ever being present at home. Despite their twenty-or-so years of marriage, her husband Sam knows very little about Elin’s background, and her brooding silences and odd behaviour at times have driven him to the point of leaving her. Elin’s teenage daughter Alice has also moved out of the family home, and every time they meet up she ends up being frustrated by Elin’s refusal to talk about the past.

 

The story started to get more emotional for me as the author gradually revealed the details of Elin’s childhood which have brought her to this point in her life, and suddenly I found myself fully engaged and more sympathetic towards the adult Elin. A father in jail, an emotionally unstable mother and a terrible tragedy when Elin is a teenager will have lasting effects on her life. From here on, the book became a touching story of family secrets, guilt and finally redemption. It also showed how we can run from our past, but never escape it until we have made peace with it.

 

Set in small town Sweden in the 1970s and present day New York, I also felt Elin’s displacement as an immigrant, even though she has tried to put physical distance between herself and her country of birth in an effort of leaving the past behind. It was interesting to see Elin’s character develop as she slowly let her family see the darker corners of her psyche and allow her wounds to heal.

 

 

Summary:

 

All in all, A QUESTION MARK IS HALF A HEART was part a heartbreaking coming of age story, and part a touching tale of facing up to our darkest secrets and deep-seated guilt. I really enjoyed watching Elin’s character go through stages of grief, growth and healing, and some aspects of the story broke my heart. This is a book that will appeal to readers who like slow-burning stories focused heavily on character development and the gradual unravelling of family secrets. I really enjoyed it and would love to read more from this author in future!

 

 

 

Thank you to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: AFTER SHE'S GONE by Camilla Grebe

Title: AFTER SHE'S GONE

Author: Camilla Grebe
Read: September 2019

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2

Book Description:

In a small backwater town in Sweden, a young boy with a dark secret comes across a diary. As a cold case investigation suddenly becomes eerily current, a police investigator mysteriously disappears. What links these seemingly random events?

As atrocious acts from the past haunt the present and lives are changed forever, some will struggle to remember - while others struggle to forget . . .

My musings:

I was very excited when I stumbled across THE ICE BENEATH HER earlier this year. I love Scandinavian thrillers, and Camilla Grebe ticked all the boxes for me with her police procedural. I was hoping to see psychological profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön back in another book, and with AFTER SHE’S GONE my wish has been granted!

The story starts out with the type of atmospheric setting that makes this book series so irresistible for me. Ormberg, a small backwater town amidst a large Swedish forest in the snow is as good as it gets as far as backdrops to dark Nordic thrillers go. Add a few eclectic small town characters, an abandoned factory, a mysterious cairn and a couple of bodies and the scene is set. It was at this point that I knew I was in for a real treat, and the book surely delivered it all!

Grebe uses three narrators to tell her latest story, and manages to pull off one of the most difficult things a writer can do – to make each of them as interesting and compelling as the others, so I was equally invested in all their fates. Jake, a young teenage boy who witnesses something on a dark winter night that will have huge implications for many lives – but he cannot tell anyone, for reasons of his own. Malin, a young police officer who had been born and raised in Ormberg and has now been forced to return here from her new city home to help with a murder investigation. And last but not least there is Hanne, who has been found wandering the dark forest covered in blood and no memory of what has happened to her. Peter, her lover and partner has disappeared and the police hold grave fears that he has come to harm.

Grebe has created a multi-faceted plot here that takes some time to establish, but she does so skilfully and with that constant air of underlying menace and tension that makes this genre so compelling for me. As the small town of Ormberg came to life in my mind, I realised that it shares the characteristics of small dying towns everywhere. In a place where people have been robbed of their livelihoods by outsourcing, where small businesses have long gone bust and resentment is rife, a simmering hatred is looking for someone to blame. And who could be more convenient scapegoats  than the group of asylum seekers that have been houses in the abandoned factory buildings? Grebe brings up a lot of contemporary issues here, which made this both an entertaining but also thought provoking read.

If you have met Hanne in Grebe’s earlier novel, you will know that she has a long battle ahead of her. Suffering from early onset dementia she is faced with losing everything she holds dear. Her struggle is well portrayed, and my heart ached for her in this latest book. I am not sure how Hanne will fare, but she seems so real to me that I am truly saddened by her plight. To help her remember, Hanne keeps a journal where she writes everything that happens in her day, which allows her to still use her extensive knowledge of criminal profiling to assist in murder cases. Her diary features strongly here, even maybe not in the way you would expect. It gives a heartbreaking insight into her life, and one that made this book touch me in a way that many other police procedurals haven’t managed to.

I really appreciated the way Grebe slowly leads us to the final reveal in a way that the reader can follow the breadcrumbs and see where they are leading – only to be completely gobsmacked by another aspect of the story that was simply genius. So whilst I could see some aspects of the final reveal fall into place, I was not prepared for the whole complexity of this very clever plot!

Summary:

All in all, AFTER SHE’S GONE is a perfect read for anyone who loves complex, well thought out Nordic thrillers featuring contemporary issues and an atmospheric setting. I have really come to love this series and hope that the next instalment will be translated into English soon so I can find out how Hanne will fare in future. 

Book Review: THE ICE BENEATH HER by Camilla Grebe

Title: THE ICE BENEATH HER

Author: Camilla Grebe
Read: March 2019

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description (Goodreads):

Winter’s chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home—a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing ten years earlier. But this time there’s a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found.

To homicide detectives Peter Lindgren and Manfred Olsson, nothing about the suave, high-profile businessman—including a playboy reputation and rumors of financial misdeeds—suggests he conceals the dark heart and twisted mind of a cold-blooded killer. In search of a motive, Lindgren and Olsson turn to the brilliant criminal profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön. Once a valued police asset, now marooned in unhappy retirement and a crumbling marriage, she’s eager to exercise her keen skills again—and offer the detectives a window into the secret soul of Jesper Orre.

But they’re not the only ones searching. Two months before, Emma Bohman, a young clerk at Orre’s company, chanced to meet the charming chief executive, and romance swiftly bloomed. Almost as quickly as the passionate affair ignited, it was over when Orre inexplicably disappeared. One staggering misfortune after another followed, leaving Emma certain that her runaway lover was to blame and transforming her confusion and heartbreak into anger.

Now, pursuing the same mysterious man for different reasons, Emma and the police are destined to cross paths in a chilling dance of obsession, vengeance, madness, and love gone hellishly wrong. 

My musings:

I really love a slow, character driven psychological thriller that focuses on the human mind, which is what attracted me immediately to Camilla Grebe’s writing when I picked up SOME KIND OF PEACE earlier in the year. Since then, I have been eager to read more of her books, and am happy to report that I liked this one equally as much!

THE ICE BENEATH HER starts with a gruesome murder, like any good Scandinavian thriller should ;) A beheaded woman is found in the home prominent Stockholm businessman Jesper Orre. Her identity is unknown, and the homeowner is nowhere to be found. What makes it even more puzzling is that the murder bears an uncanny resemblance to another killing ten years ago, which has never been solved. Could these two murders be related? But what could possibly link the two victims? Without a motive and a suspect who has vanished off the face of the earth, homicide detectives are at a loss of where to start.

Grebe tells her story through three different POVs: there is homicide detective Peter Lindgren, who is a somewhat tormented soul with a bad track record of ill-fated relationships; criminal profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön, who is trapped in an unhappy marriage and an illness-enforced early retirement; and Emma Bohman, a store clerk whose romance with the murder suspect Jesper Orre has gone terribly wrong. As Peter and Hanne work together in the present to solve the murder, we first meet Emma in the weeks leading up to the killing, in which she tells her personal story. What unfolds is a simply brilliant story of love, madness and the dark corners of the human psyche.

With an uncanny insight into what makes people tick, and not afraid to showcase a bunch of flawed but enigmatic characters, Grebe has delivered an irresistible and compelling mystery that immediately drew me in and kept me interested to the end. I found myself drawn to each character equally, which is a difficult balance to achieve, but Grebe managed to bring so much backstory to her characters by just including snippets of memories and reflection that they all seemed like flesh and blood people to me. Each one of the three main players appears wounded and vulnerable in some way, which immediately made me warm to them despite their failings.

The mystery unravelled slowly, and each time a layer was peeled away, there was a new revelation that brought a new depth to the story, like a stack of intricately painted Russian dolls. And when you get right to the last one – BAM! Here it was, the totally unexpected. I loved it! There are a lot of thrillers out there, and it’s difficult to find one that totally surprises me, but Grebe not only pulled it off but also made me question my own sanity by the end of it, as I was coming up with wild and wonderful theories as to how this would all come together. And come together it did – beautifully.

I am happy to see that there are two more books to come in this series, as I was so taken by these characters that I would love to see what happens to them from here. There’s nothing better than discovering a book you love and finding out it’s the start of a series. If you love Scandinavian crime fiction as much as I do, then I urge you to give this one a go!

Book Review: THE BOY IN THE HEADLIGHTS by Samuel Bjørk

Title: The Boy in the Headlights

Author: Samuel Bjørk
Publisher: Random House UK, Transworld Publishers
Read: February 2019

Expected publication: 21 March 2019

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

Book Description:

Munch and Krüger. An unexpected pairing. A brilliant team.

Winter 1999. An old man is driving home when his headlights catch an animal on the empty road up ahead. He stamps hard on the brakes. But it is not an animal at all. It is a young boy, frightened and alone, with a set of deer antlers strapped firmly to his head.

Fourteen years later, a body is found in a mountain lake. Within weeks, three people have died. Each time, the killer has left a clue, inviting Special Investigations Detectives Munch and Krüger to play a deadly game – a game they cannot possibly win. Against the most dangerous and terrifying kind of serial killer. One who chooses their victims completely at random.

To find the killer they must look deep within their own dark pasts, but how can you stop a murderer when you cannot begin to predict their next move?

My musings:

One of my favourite things about Scandi crime is the atmospheric setting, which normally includes a bleak winter landscape. True to the genre, Bjørk manages to set the stage of The Boy in the Headlights very quickly and immediately drew me into the chilling scene of a lonely, wintry country road, where an old man is driving through the night. Suddenly his headlights illuminate a creature he thinks is an animal crossing the road. But when he gets closer, he realises it’s a small boy running through the night with deer antlers strapped to his head. My interest was immediately piqued, even though it wasn’t until the very end that this particular thread came full circle and I managed to slot the piece of the puzzle into its rightful place.

The rest of the story follows more traditional guidelines of a Scandinavian murder mystery. There appears to be a serial killer on the loose, seemingly picking his victims at random and staging them in different locations in the Norwegian countryside. With no pattern or apparent motive to go on, this type of “thrill killer” is a detective’s worst nightmare. Investigative team Holger Munch and Mia Krüger, officers of the elite homicide squad, are pitching their brilliant minds against the devious plans of the murderer, racing against time to catch him before he can strike again – which will challenge even these two brilliant minds.

When I started reading The Boy in the Headlights, I didn’t realise that it was the third in a series featuring the two main investigators Munch and Krüger, and I wished immediately that I had read the other two books first before tackling this one. Whilst it can easily be read as a stand-alone, both Munch and Krüger are complex and interesting characters with a rich backstory. Munch, whose daughter is still recovering from injuries sustained in an attack that was somehow related to one of his investigations, still harbours regrets about his involvement and his recent marriage breakdown. Krüger, who has lost a sister to a drug overdose, is also still struggling with her own personal demons. With a brilliant mind but also very highly strung and prone to anxiety and depression, Mia makes a very clever but also volatile investigator. Her impulsive nature often sends her off on different tangents not obvious to the clue-by-clue detective, and I found her thought processes fascinating.

Bjørk makes good use of all the elements that make Scandi crime so enjoyable for me: an atmospheric setting, a brutal and yet imaginative and clever killer and an investigative team whose own personal stories will leave you wanting to see them in many more books to come.

I admit that the final reveal didn’t totally work for me, as I found aspects of it slightly baffling and far-fetched. I am wondering, however, if reading the earlier novels in the series would have filled in those gaps for me and am keen to start the series from the beginning to see what I have missed. 

Summary:

All in all, I really enjoyed this original police procedural and think it will appeal to readers who like interesting, complex detectives that don’t quite fit the mould of your average investigator.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Armchair travel to Sweden: SOME KIND OF PEACE by Camilla Grebe & Åsa Träff

Title: Some Kind of Peace

Author: Camilla Grebe &  Åsa Träff
Read: January 2019

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

Book Description (Goodreads):

Siri Bergman is a thirty-four-year-old psychologist who works in central Stockholm and lives alone in an isolated cottage out of the city. She has a troublesome secret in her past and has been trying to move on with her life. Terrified of the dark, she leaves all the lights on when she goes to bed—having a few glasses of wine each night to calm her nerves—but she can't shake the feeling that someone is watching her through the blackened windows at night.


When the lifeless body of Sara Matteus—a young patient of Siri's with a history of drug addiction and sexual abuse—is found floating in the water near the cottage, Siri can no longer deny that someone is out there, watching her and waiting. When her beloved cat goes missing and she receives a photo of herself from a stalker, it becomes clear that Siri is next. Luckily, she can rely on Markus, the young policeman investigating Sara's death; Vijay, an old friend and psychology professor; and Aina, her best friend. Together, they set about profiling Siri's aspiring murderer, hoping to catch him before he kills again.


But as their investigation unfolds, Siri's past and present start to merge and disintegrate so that virtually everyone in her inner circle becomes a potential suspect. With the suspense building toward a dramatic conclusion as surprising as it is horrifying, Siri is forced to relive and reexamine her anguished past, and finally to achieve some kind of peace.

My musings:

I love Scandi crime and Camilla Grebe has been on my TBR list for a long time, so I am very happy that I finally got the chance to pick up one of her books and take the plunge into a new addictive crime series!

Siri Bergman is a psychologist (first big tick of approval – I love psychologists as MCs, they add such a unique perspective to the story) who is still recovering from the death of her husband five years ago. Still reeling from her loss, she now lives alone in their isolated cottage near the coast just out of Stockholm (second tick of approval – a remote, atmospheric setting). Things start spiralling out of control in Siri’s life when one of her patients is found floating in the sea not far from her house, and Siri has the feeling that she is being watched. One night, waking in the dark, she finds a wet footprint just inside her front door – someone has been in her house (third tick of approval – a constant sense of danger and foreboding for our MC). When her cat disappears and Siri receives a threatening note she realises that there is someone out there who wishes her harm. But who is it, and why would they want to hurt her?

You can see that Some Kind of Peace contains all the elements I love about a good thriller: an interesting MC, an old house, a remote atmospheric setting and constant tension that had me turn the pages frantically. The foreshadowing was so well done that I just knew something terrible was about to happen, but there were enough suspects to keep me guessing until the end. Whilst there is a murder, the descriptions weren’t as gruesome as some books in the genre, which suited me fine, as the underlying tension more than made up for it. As Siri’s life started to unravel, I was pulled along with it like in a tidal rip, aided by short, crisp chapters that moved the story along and made it flow. I also really enjoyed the case notes of Siri’s sessions with her patients, which added an interesting element and extra depth to the book, and found out after the fact that Grebe’s sister, who co-authored the novel, is in fact a psychologist. 

Summary:

All in all, I really enjoyed my foray into this new crime series and am very happy that it can now fill the void left by the end of the Frieda Klein series by Nicci French, which also featured a psychologist as a main protagonist and which I have followed for years. I am looking forward to meeting Siri and her colleagues again in future books and can’t wait to find out what the author team have in store for them next.

Book Review: RED SNOW (Tuva Moodyson #2) by Will Dean

Title: Red Snow

Author: Will Dean
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Read: December 2018

Expected publication: 10 January 2019

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

 all the stars!

Book Description:

TWO BODIES

One suicide. One cold-blooded murder. Are they connected? And who’s really pulling the strings in the small Swedish town of Gavrik?

TWO COINS

Black Grimberg liquorice coins cover the murdered man's eyes. The hashtag #Ferryman starts to trend as local people stock up on ammunition.

TWO WEEKS

Tuva Moodyson, deaf reporter at the local paper, has a fortnight to investigate the deaths before she starts her new job in the south. A blizzard moves in. Residents, already terrified, feel increasingly cut-off. Tuva must go deep inside the Grimberg factory to stop the killer before she leaves town for good. But who’s to say the Ferryman will let her go?

My musings:

Dark Pines was one of my favourite books of 2017, so I did a very merry happy dance when I received an ARC of Will Dean’s latest book, Red Snow, which was a must-read for me before I even knew of its existence. I absolutely adored Tuva Moodyson, the journalist who starred in Dark Pines and makes her comeback here, getting drawn into yet another dark and sinister crime story in the small town of Gavrik in Sweden’s north.

After the death of her mother and the events that unfolded in Dark Pines, Tuva has come to the decision that small town living is not for her, and secured a new job in Malmoe, in the South of Sweden. Her decision is being reinforced by the inclement weather, the bone-chilling cold that keeps people indoors, the masses of snow that make roads impassable, and the permanent gloom of February that has people seeking out the comfort of their heated homes and UV lamps to beat their dose of seasonal affective disorder. Inside the Grimberg liquorice factory, Gavrik’s biggest employer, business goes on as usual, until one of its owners plunges to his death from one of the factory’s chimneys in front of dozens of workers. Was it suicide or has someone driven him to commit this terrible act? This was going to be Tuva’s last story, until more bodies start piling up and it seems that someone has a serious grudge against the Grimberg’s.

Like in Dark Pines, Will Dean has done a fantastic job is creating a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere brimming with weird and wonderful characters that made this an unputdownable read for me. I loved the fact that a lot of the characters from Dark Pines make a comeback here: there are the woodcarving sisters, the cooking ghostwriter and the creepy taxi driver, but there also is the wonderful Tammy and Tuva’s colleagues, who have supported her during her time in Gavrik. However, nothing compares to the strange family dynamics of the Grimberg family! These people were so weird and so intriguing that I had no idea where this would all lead. I am not exaggerating when I say that these are some of the best characters I have encountered in a mystery in a long, long time. The skill here is that Dean offers just the right amount of information at exactly the right time to keep the mystery tense and suspenseful, but never over the top or requiring the suspension of disbelief. With the amount of psychological thriller I read, I know that this is a fine art that not everyone can achieve, and I savoured it like the rare and wonderful treat it was.

Armchair travellers will be happy to hear that this is a trip to a wintry northern Sweden they are not likely to forget in a hurry. Some of the scenes had me shivering right next to Tuva, trapped in a blizzard in her old car. And the old factory was deliciously creepy, a very unique setting for a suspenseful read that worked a treat for me. And Dean knows just how to add small details to step up the tension – like the addition of the snow skulls suddenly appearing everywhere (who ever knew that such things existed!).

Summary:

I could go on and on about how much I loved this book, but will sum it all up in just four words: I LOVED this book. I really, really hope that this will not be the last we see of Tuva, but that she will make a comeback in a future novel (please, pretty please!). If you love atmospheric Scandinavian mysteries with unforgettable characters that will stay with you long after the last page has been turned, then this one is a must-read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Oneworld Publications for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: THE HUMMINGBIRD by Kati Hiekkapelto

Title: The Hummingbird

Author: Kati Hiekkapelto
Publisher: Arcadia Books
Read: December 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

"Anna saw nothing wrong with looking for a better quality of living. Surely it was natural for everyone to search for such a thing? Why should it be restricted to people who already had everything they needed?"

Book Description:

Anna Fekete, who fled the Yugoslavian wars as a child, has just started working as a criminal investigator in a northern Finnish coastal town, when she is thrust into a rolling murder investigation. It doesn t help that her middle-aged new partner, Esko, doesn t bother hiding his racist prejudices. Anna s work as a criminal investigator barely gets off the ground before she is thrust into a high-profile, seemingly unsolvable case that has riveted the nation. A young woman has been killed on a running trail, and a pendant depicting an Aztec god has been found in her possession. Another murder soon follows. All signs point to a serial killer, but can Anna catch the Hummingbird before he or she strikes again?

My musings:

I am a huge fan of Scandinavian crime novels, but found I had never before read one set in Finland – this needed to be remedied ASAP! Kati Hiekkapelto is a new author for me, and I am happy to say that I really enjoyed her writing style. In particular, main protagonist Anna Fekete is a well-drawn and intriguing character who really drove the story. Born into a Hungarian minority group in Yugoslavia, Anna had to flee the war-torn country with her parents as a child and has spent most of her childhood in Finland, yet still remains an outsider, identifying herself more with her Hungarian background than her Finnish one. She recently left her old workplace to commence a new position as criminal investigator in the same northern Finnish coastal town she grew up in, where her estranged brother is still living. Starting her new job knowing that she was hired to represent an ethnic minority in the workforce, Anna knows that she will be likely to battle prejudice and pressure from some colleagues, who are resenting the ever-growing number of migrants coming to the country. However, she has not bargained with being partnered with the worst offender, Esko, who is not afraid to tell her how he feels about “bloody foreigners” in general.

Anna’s migrant background and her feelings of constantly being torn between her heritage and her new adopted country rang true for me, and added a depth to the story missing in many other crime novels. Without Anna, the murders themselves, whilst interesting, would otherwise have blended into the fray of many other similar stories. As an added bonus, Hiekkapelto also introduces an interesting side story to the main murder-mystery, that of a teenage Kurdish girl who has made a phone call to emergency services to call for help but now claims that this has been a misunderstanding. Anna knows that many of these girls disappear without a trace, forcibly married off to strangers by their own families, and suspects that the girl is too afraid to talk to her for fear of retribution from her parents.

I loved the way Hiekkapelto introduces topical themes of immigration, racism and cultural differences into her story, with Anna representing one of the migrant groups who have assimilated well into their new country but still struggle with adversity, whether through feeling torn between their two home countries or struggling against people’s prejudices. The author’s spare and direct prose perfectly creates the bleak and chilly atmosphere so typical of Nordic noir, which is one of the reasons I seek out the genre above others. The only criticism I would make is that the translation could have done with a bit of tweaking to read more smoothly, which is an art that is often difficult to achieve.

Summary:

All in all, The Hummingbird was an enjoyable police procedural with an interesting main protagonist and I will definitely come back to read more in the series.

Book Review: THE LEGACY (CHILDREN'S HOUSE #1) by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

Title: The Legacy

Author: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Read: November 2018

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

Book Description:

The Legacy is the first installment in a fantastic new series featuring the psychologist Freyja and the police officer Huldar.

The only person who might have the answers to a baffling murder case is the victim’s seven-year-old daughter, found hiding in the room where her mother died. And she’s not talking.

Newly-promoted, out of his depth, detective Huldar turns to Freyja for her expertise with traumatized young people. Freyja, who distrusts the police in general and Huldar in particular, isn’t best pleased. But she’s determined to keep little Margret safe.

It may prove tricky. The killer is leaving them strange clues, but can they crack the code? And if they do, will they be next?

My musings:

I can hardly contain my praise for this book – it’s been a long time since I have felt so excited over a new crime series! Bringing to mind the way all cogs fell nicely into place when I discovered the first book of some of my other favourite series, like Tana French, Sharon Bolton or Nicci French, knowing I was settling in for a binge-fest of many more books yet to come. It’s hard to believe that I have not come across any of Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s books before, seeing how this one ticked absolutely all the boxes of what makes a perfect read for me. Firstly, an atmospheric setting in Iceland – even though Reykjavik may not be remote for Icelanders, it still fell into that category for this reader from West Oz! Then there are the two main characters, whose flaws made them all the more likeable, with interesting dynamics between them that piqued my curiosity as to how this would develop in future books. And of course the hunt for the murderer, brutal and original like only Nordic Noir seems to be able to deliver with such conviction and thrill. I have been led to believe that Iceland is a peaceful country with few murders, so the credit must go solely to the author’s imagination here (even though she may be in some trouble with the Iceland tourism commission).

Whilst The Legacy could probably be described as a police procedural, it is so much more. Freyja, one of the main protagonists, is a child psychologist, and added a whole new dimension to the mystery for me. I found this whole aspect of the investigation utterly fascinating, and the concept of 7-year-old Margret being the witness to her mother’s murder tugged on my heartstrings. Sigurdardottir has a knack of making all her characters somewhat vulnerable and likeable, even her deeply flawed ones, so I felt totally emotionally invested in the story the whole time, despite the shifting POVs (which is not an easy thing to achieve in a novel). Having Karl’s story as a sideline to the police investigation, with the threads eventually coming together, worked really well, providing a different perspective and added depth to the novel. I loved the way the author ratcheted up the tension and suspense by including small details, like the unexplained noise in Karl’s basement or Molly’s injury (serving as an ominous foreshadowing). Also, I spent way too much time trying to crack the numerical code of the sinister radio transmissions, failing miserably (no surprise there, it was way too clever!).

I will not go into the story any more deeply, as it is best read without any preconceptions or spoilers – except to say that I loved every minute of it. So much that I immediately grabbed Book 2 of the series after finishing this one, and was seriously contemplating taking lessons in Icelandic to be able to read the third book, which sadly has not been translated into English yet. Failing this, I am anticipating a nail-biting wait for a new book to come out!

Summary:

In summary, The Legacy is an utterly addictive, binge-worthy first book of what I hope will be a looooong series. I am already halfway through the next book, eagerly devouring the story of Freyja and Huldar’s next case. Very highly recommended to lovers of Scandi Noir, it doesn’t get any better than this!