Having lived in Iceland for over ten years, Quentin Bates got to know the country and its politics well, before moving back to the UK during Iceland’s continuing economic crisis. He had observed political corruption there with fresh eyes, and he now uses his outrage as the basis of this complex and unusual murder mystery in which he illustrates how some elected officials are able to parlay their connections into illegal gains and large personal bank accounts. Officer Gunnhildur, a widow described as a “big fat lass with a face that frightens the horses,’ has been with the police department for sixteen years and now runs the police station in the small village of Hvalvik. When the body of an unidentified young man is found in the water beside the docks, Gunna investigates, and when she discovers that one of the victim’s close friends was killed in a road accident the previous spring, she becomes sure that it is murder. Both had been interested in Clean Iceland, an organization which promotes clean energy and keeps an eye on dams, the environment, and power sources. At issue is a contract that has been awarded recently for the building of a privately run smelting company across the bay, and that company and its public relations offshoot, Spearpoint, are directly connected to the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and run by the wife of one of the ministers.
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In The Snowman, the latest of five Nesbo novels to be translated into English, is a complete surprise with its element of horror, but it may soon become his most popular novel here in the U.S., a breakthrough novel which may finally put to rest the misperception that the Norwegian Nesbo, with a total of sixteen award-winning novels, is some kind of “successor” to the Swedish Stieg Larsson. A series of disappearances and/or murders, all involving a snowman on the site, challenge Harry Hole and his men as they try to find a serial killer who began his killings in 1992 and has continued to 2004, as the novel opens. The novel is detailed and intelligent, and will keep even the most jaded mystery lover intrigued and wanting to see how it is all resolved. When the last little piece falls into place at the end, every detail at every point in the novel suddenly all makes sense—and provides a satisfying sense of finality to this challenging case. A non-stop thriller that may very well keep you up reading till the wee hours—and great fun!
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Camilla Lackberg is the most profitable author in Swedish history, outstripping even Stieg Larsson in total book sales. Setting her novels in Fjallbacka, Sweden, a small fishing village in western Sweden (and her home town), Lackberg shows that even small fishing villages hold secrets, including murder. In this second novel in the Fjallbacka series, Chief Investigator Patrik Englund learns that six-year-old has discovered a woman’s naked and beaten body in a ravine. Underneath that body are the skeletons of two more women who disappeared in 1979. Autopsies prove that all three had been slowly tortured over the course of many days before merciful death interceded. Lackberg spends as much time on the lives and motivations of her characters as she does on plot development, and when yet another young girl disappears from town, Patrik and his crew (which also has frictions and rivalries) realize they may have a chance to find her before she dies of the same tortures which were inflicted on the previous young women. Good psychological insights by a young author.
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Eva Gabrielsson, the common-law wife of Swedish author Stieg Larsson, has finally published her own book about Larsson, his books, their thirty-two years of living together, and his legacy, which she believes has been sullied by his father and brother who have claimed the multimillion dollar estate and all rights to his work. According to Slate.com, Gabrielsson’s book, which is apparently her revenge against the commercialization of his legacy, also discusses the fourth book in the Millenium series, which is on a laptop in her posssession. The English translation of this book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
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A man’s compulsion to do what he considers good and right, even though it requires him to act in ways that society and the law consider morally and legally wrong, permeates this book on all levels, with several characters assuming this role of “Redeemer” in their actions throughout the novel. Norwegian author Jo Nesbo, in this fourth novel of the Harry Hole series to be published in English, introduces three seemingly disparate plot lines in this thriller set in Oslo—a hired assassin from Croatia is fulfilling contract killings in Europe and has just arrived in Oslo for his last job; the Salvation Army, its officers and soldiers, are trying to fulfill their mission by providing food, clothing, and shelter to those most in need of their help, no questions asked; and Harry Hole, an alcoholic police inspector, who is sometimes off-the-wagon, is still trying to find the Big Boss behind the gun-running and related crimes which brought down one of his fellow police inspectors in The Devil’s Star, the previous novel in this series. Despite his unwillingness (and sometimes inability) to follow the rules, Harry believes in justice, no matter how it is brought about. He, too, can be a Redeemer.
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