Book Reviews

Book Review: Look Closer by David Ellis

Look Closer by David Ellis—The illusion of a normal, wealthy Chicago couple constructed and demolished on a grand scale.

Look Closer is the first book I’ve read by author David Ellis, and I was impressed with the writing. The novel is cleverly plotted and fast-paced, just what I look for in a suspenseful thriller. It considers complex issues— family, trust, loyalty, and manipulation—and draws on themes around greed, long-standing grudges, and revenge.

Look Closer

by David Ellis

Publisher: Penguin Random House

on July 05, 2022

Genre(s): Suspense & Thriller, Crime Mysteries

ISBN 9780399170928

464 Pages

From the bestselling and award-winning author comes a wickedly clever and fast-paced novel of greed, revenge, obsession—and quite possibly the perfect murder.

Simon and Vicky couldn’t seem more normal: a wealthy Chicago couple, he a respected law professor, she an advocate for domestic violence victims. A stable, if unexciting marriage. But one thing’s for sure … absolutely nothing is what it seems. The pair are far from normal, and one of them just may be a killer.
 
When the body of a beautiful socialite is found hanging in a mansion in a nearby suburb, Simon and Vicky’s secrets begin to unravel. A secret whirlwind affair. A twenty-million-dollar trust fund about to come due. A decades-long grudge and obsession with revenge. These are just a few of the lies that make up the complex web…and they will have devastating consequences. And while both Vicky and Simon are liars, just who exactly is conning who?
 
Part Gone Girl, part Strangers on a Train, Look Closer is a wild rollercoaster of a read that will have you questioning everything you think you know.

Look Closer unfolds in multiple time frames with much of the focus on Halloween night in 2022, and the days and weeks before and after. Also, the book focuses on two characters, Simon and Vicky–in the past and present. We learn theirs is a marriage of two people who met when they were both at low points in their lives and came together for mutual support.

“It started with small talk, what she does for a living, how long we’ve been married, and pretty soon I was opening up about Vicky’s childhood, growing up in poverty in West Virginia, running away from home at seventeen, getting hooked on drugs and doing degrading things to support herself. How she was a mess when I met her, but so was I in different ways, both of us adrift and helping each other back to the shoreline.”

This theme of relationships–their flaws and fragility–is also reflected in a third timeline, years before Simon and Vicky met. Ultimately this story is about secrets, lies, and betrayals. Ellis gives us snippets of past events that lead up to and provides the catalyst for things that alter the character’s lives forever.

Simon and Vicky couldn’t seem a more normal and realistic couple. But are they? They seem wealthy with a stable marriage. He’s a respected law professor hoping to become tenured. Vicky works for a Chicago domestic violence victim advocacy organization. Simon loves her, but he knows Vicky doesn’t love him back. Vicky cares about Simon, but isn’t in love with him and knows she isn’t the right woman for him. They both know they are housemates more than a couple. Then some startling things occur, a sea change.

By happenstance, Simon runs into the woman (Lauren), his first love, who broke his heart decades earlier. He hadn’t known she was back in town. Simon avoids her at first but can’t forget her and the memories of their shared past. Then he obsesses about her. Eventually, he engineers a meeting with her. They talk. One thing leads to another, and although they are both married, a steamy affair ensues. Simon contemplates leaving Vicky when he learns Lauren has an unhappy marriage and says she wants to be with him. There’s a sense of irony here in that Vicky has her own plans for the future that don’t include staying with Simon. She’s counting the days until a date she’s been waiting on arrives. Then Vicky can walk away with what she has wanted from the start and truly live the life she wants.

The present here plays out against a backdrop of mutual grief. Although Simon’s mother died (suicide) over two decades earlier, his sense of loss is still very strong. He blames his father for his mother’s death and still holds a grudge, even though his father is long dead. And Vicky feels grief too over her older sister’s suicide, who left behind a husband and two daughters. Vicky struggles with blaming herself for not saving her sister.

Although Ellis offers us a great cast of characters and–ultimately a myriad of twists around the secrets everyone is keeping–the strength for me here is nothing is ever as it seems in this book. And the reader does not truly appreciate that until the end. That’s what makes this book so spectacularly good. The writing is exceptional and the plotting outstanding and imaginative. Ellis grabs your interest by the throat in the first pages and doesn’t let you go until the end.

I found this book a gripping, entertaining read, and I definitely want to read more of this author’s work. For those who love trying to figure out whodunit before the cops in the novel do, remember one thing. In Look Closer, nothing is ever as it seems. And that’s a big reason why it’s one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year.

Penguin Random House will publish Look Closer by David Ellis from July 05, 2022. I received an advance reader’s copy of the book from the publisher via Net Galley used for this review, representing my honest opinions.

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Book Reviews

Book Review: The Match by Harlan Coben

The Match by Harlan Coben—A solid thriller with a host of intriguing characters.

I’m new to Harlan Coben’s books, with The Match being the first I’ve read. But it won’t be my last. His long and celebrated career as a novelist suggests he consistently produces quality work and this, his latest novel suggests the same. The Match, the second book is Coben’s Wilde series, offers a solid and satisfyingly suspenseful plot and a host of intriguing characters.

The Match

by Harlan Coben

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (Hatchette Book Group)

from March 15, 2022

Genre(s): Thriller & Suspense

ISBN‎ 9781538748336

352 pages

From the modern master of suspense comes a gripping new thriller in which Wilde follows a tip that may finally reveal the truth behind his abandonment only to end up in the sights of a ruthless killer.

After months away, Wilde has returned to the Ramapo Mountains in the wake of a failed bid at domesticity that confirms what he’s known all along: He belongs on his own, free from the comforts and constraints of modern life.

Suddenly, a DNA match on an online ancestry database brings Wilde closer to his past than he’s ever dreamed, and finally gives Wilde the opening he needs to track down his father. But meeting the man leads to more questions than answers. So Wilde reaches out to his last, most desperate lead, a second cousin who disappears as quickly as he resurfaces, having experienced an epic fall from grace that can only be described as a waking nightmare.

Was his cousin’s downfall a long time coming? Or was he the victim of a conspiracy as cunning as it is complex? And how does it all connect to the man once known as The Stranger, a dangerous fugitive with a growing following whose mission and methods have only turned more dangerous with time?

Thirty-five years ago, Wilde, our main character, was discovered living alone in the woods at an age doctors estimated to be between six and eight years old. He had no memory of parents or caregivers. After his rescue, he was raised by foster parents. The book opens with Wilde somewhere between forty and forty-two.

Deciding to learn something about his origins, Wilde submitted a DNA sample to a genealogy website and locates his sixty-one-year-old biological father (Daniel Carter). But when he visits Carter, Wilde discovers his father never knew he existed. Carter says Wilde must have been conceived during a one-night stand during Carter’s military service in decades past. Learning nothing from his father, Wilde tries to follow up with another contact from the genealogy site, and second cousin, who he eventually identifies as Peter Bennett.

Unfortunately, it proves more difficult to connect with Bennett than Wilde expects. Bennett, a one-time reality television star, caught in a scandal and canceled, has disappeared. Bennett’s sister believes he took his life, but Wilde is unconvinced. He keeps looking and enlists the help of his foster sister and his deceased best friend’s mother, a high-powered attorney, to help. When someone murders a retired cop who had trolled Bennett after his fall from grace, Wilde’s cousin becomes a suspect. But Wilde can’t let it go and continues the search, only to end up in the sights of a ruthless killer.

I like that Coben provided the background on Wilde at the beginning for the benefit of readers like me that haven’t read the first book in the series. And I’m sure those who have, also appreciated it since it likely continues Wilde’s character arc from the first book. There are a few other threads in this book beyond the main story—Wilde’s relationships with his foster sister (Rola Naser), David’s (his dead best friend) widow (Laila), his godson (Matthew), and David’s mother, renowned criminal defense attorney Hester Crimstein—that offer readers more access to who Wilde is and the man he is. Another intriguing and important thread concerns a group of six people led by a man named Chris Taylor. The group identifies and wreaks vengeance on destructive trolls they learn about who harass and torment innocent people online. The group plays a significant role in the overall plot.

Coben offers twist upon twist in this face-paced, well-written thriller with an imaginative plot that keeps readers guessing as the suspense builds to the ultimate climax. I found the book hugely entertaining and satisfyingly suspenseful. Now I plan to pick up the first book in the series to catch up before the next one comes out. Fans of other mystery and thriller writers like Baldacci and Crais will feel right at home with Coben’s writing style. I can’t believe I haven’t read him before and appreciate another reviewer friend who recommended Coben to me. If you’re new to Coben as I was, The Match is not a bad place to get acquainted.

Grand Central Publishing publishes The Match by Harlan Coben from March 15, 2022. I received an advance reader’s copy of the book used for this review from the publisher via Net Galley, representing my honest opinions.

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Book Reviews

Book Review: Girls Who Lie by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Girls Who Lie by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir—Intricate plotting explores the deeper psychological dimensions of good and evil.

Girls Who Lie

by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Translator Victoria Cribb

Published by Orenda Books

from May 22, 2021

Genre(s): Police Procedural, Nordic (Icelandic) Noir, International Crime Fiction

ISBN‎ 978-1-913-19373-7

348 pages

This second installment of Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s Forbidden Iceland series examines dysfunctional family connections, and features toxic mother-daughter relationships that lead to murder as we meet girls who lie.

It occurred to me as I read this novel, something I like best about Ægisdóttir’s books is they are as much about human nature—the best of it and the worst of it—as about the solving of crimes. It’s this insight into human behavior that makes her books such addictive reads.

When a depressed, alcoholic single mother disappears, everything suggests suicide, but when her body is found, Icelandic Detective Elma and her team are thrust into a perplexing, chilling investigation.

When single mother Maríanna disappears from her home, leaving an apologetic note on the kitchen table, everyone assumes that she’s taken her own life … until her body is found on the Grábrók lava fields seven months later, clearly the victim of murder. Her neglected fifteen-year-old daughter Hekla has been placed in foster care, but is her perfect new life hiding something sinister?

Fifteen years earlier, a desperate new mother lies in a maternity ward, unable to look at her own child, the start of an odd and broken relationship that leads to a shocking tragedy.

Police officer Elma and her colleagues take on the case, which becomes increasingly complex, as the number of suspects grows and new light is shed on Maríanna’s past – and the childhood of a girl who never was like the others…

Breathtakingly chilling and tantalisingly twisty, Girls Who Lie is at once a startling, tense psychological thriller and a sophisticated police procedural, marking Eva Björg Ægisdottir as one of the most exciting new names in crime fiction.

I’ve been a fan of Icelandic novelist Eva Björg Ægisdóttir since reading her tantalizingly twisty debut novel, The Creak on the Stairs, which I very much enjoyed. Her latest, Girls Who Lie, is an intriguing read that unfolds in many time frames and from several points of view. Ægisdóttir effectively pulls this off through the use of short introductory sections that precede almost every chapter. They seem almost like prologues and give the reader flashbacks information that compliments the progression of the story, chapter by chapter. These sections are set off from the chapters themselves with italicized print. The narrator isn’t identified, but seems the same person each time. Sill, we can’t be sure since we don’t learn the person’s identity until near the very end.

After the brief chapter introductions, the book then reenters the present and follows an investigation that begins after two young boys staying in a nearby summer house with their parents find a woman’s body inside a cave in the Grábrók lava fields. It’s obvious she’s been there for some time. The authorities suspect the dead woman is a single mother named Maríanna who disappeared seven months previously after leaving an apologetic note for her daughter. Everyone assumes she took her own life. But once the forensics team and pathologist arrive, they determine someone murdered the woman who they identify as Maríanna.

Elma, an Akranes police detective, and her colleague Sævar get to work on the investigation. The police had investigated Maríanna’s disappearance seven months earlier, but since they believed she had disappeared voluntarily, they had put little effort into it. So, Elma and Sævar must again cover much old ground in order to find their footing before pushing the investigation forward.

Elma is a realistic and likeable main character. She is still adjusting to life in her hometown after recently moving back from Reykjavik and still coming to grips with the death of her former partner who took his own life. But she is now looking toward her future and deciding what she wants from it. She is involved romantically with her neighbor across the hall, but only in a casual sense. It’s clear she feels an attraction to her colleague, Sævar, and he seems to reciprocate. But Elma fears taking the relationship beyond friendship could make things awkward if it didn’t work out since they work together.

As much as I liked the debut novel in this series, I liked this one more. It seemed the plotting was more imaginative, the characters richer, and the pacing stronger. There was also more psychological depth as all sorts of mother-daughter implications manifest themselves and play out. As with the first book, there were plenty of tantalizing twists to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning. Also, there were more than a few surprises, especially near the end.

Even though the outcome of the investigation felt a little unsatisfactory in a justice-not-truly-served kind of way, I enjoyed how the book ended on a happy note. That left me eager to read the next novel in the series to see how Ægisdóttir builds on the ending to continue Elma’s character arc. Girls Who Lie is quality writing and an excellent read and further evidence of why Icelandic crime fiction continues to grow in popularity in international markets.

Orenda Books published Girls Who Lie by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir from May 22, 2021. I purchased the copy of the book used for this review, representing my honest opinions.

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Book Reviews

Book Review: For Reasons of Their Own by Chris Stuart

For Reasons of Their Own by Chris Stuart—A formidable display of stunningly written scenes that cohere into a fully satisfying narrative.

For Reasons of Their Own

by Chris Stuart

Published by Original Sin Press

from July 20, 2021

Genre(s): Detective Fiction, Police Procedural, International Crime Fiction

ISBN 9780473514921

309 pages

For the past several years, I’ve read all the novels from the shortlist for the Ngaio Marsh Awards, literary awards presented annually in New Zealand. But this year, several things conspired to prevent me from doing so. Still, I was determined to at least read the books picked as the best novel and best first novel. So, that’s how I came to pick up of a copy of For Reasons of Their Own by Chris Stuart, the Ngaio Marsh Awards 2021, recipient for best first novel.

Stuart was quick to lure me in and before I knew it, I was hooked. She offers a strong female lead—both likeable and complex—but a woman at a tough place in her life for several reasons.

Can the past ever be left behind? Ask a flawed detective, a former refugee and a government desperate to misuse a dead body to reshape Australia’s security policy.

Melbourne is a city on the brink, from arson fed bush fires, searing heatwaves and the potential threat of terrorism.  Detective Inspector Robbie Gray, falling foul of Police bureaucracy, gets called to a body found lying in a rural swamp. When the nationality of the victim is revealed, ASIO take over her investigation and she is sidelined. Convinced they are misinterpreting the evidence, along with a disenfranchised Aboriginal policeman, she secretly digs for the truth and discovers an entirely different motive, one which transcends international borders and exposes corruption in the humanitarian world.  When the killer is arrested, DI Robbie Gray realises that the past contains only hurt and pain and she asks herself whether in certain circumstances, murder may well be justified. 

“For Reasons of their Own,”  is aimed at international readers who love the psychology of crime, who prefer to empathise with a strong female protagonist, who want to learn and understand something quite different about the humanitarian world and who look forward to the next book in the planned series.

For Reasons of Their Own is a bleak chronicle of implacable fate, revenge, and murder set in 2014 in and around Melbourne, Australia, where a tired and frustrated Robbie Gray, a Victoria detective inspector, broods over the assignment her boss (Ted Hobbs) has given her, to attend undercover a week-long International Disaster Conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Partly, Gray’s assignment stems from concerns by the Australian federal government over the high number of Muslim conference attendees, considering rising tensions from Islamic fundamentalism in neighboring countries. The government wants an experienced police officer monitoring the conference and participants on the lookout for anyone using the conference as cover for entering the country to commit a terrorist act. But Gray knows the real reason Hobbs has tapped her for the assignment.

During a recent murder investigation Gray’s team had conducted, a large quantity of cocaine went missing. While an internal police enquiry exonerated Gray and her team, a cloud of suspicion still hovers over them all. So, Gray acknowledges the true reason for the conference assignment is that her superiors have lost confidence in her because of the missing narcotics, which she considers a professional slap in the face.

From the international disaster conference, the focus shifts to the discovery of an unidentified body in a wetlands area of the rural community of Acacia Glen near Palmerston. Almost by happenstance, DI Gray gets the case when it becomes apparent the someone murdered the victim. In time, the police identify the victim as Dr. Hasam Alamri, a Jakarta-based UN official and one of the Muslims who had been in Australia for the disaster conference. Painstakingly, Gray and her understaffed team of investigators piece together facts they hope will lead to Alamri’s murderer. The case is rife with complexities from the start. But things become truly convulsed when the Australian federal police and intelligence services establish a tenuous link between Alamri and a terrorist plot. They pull the rug out from under Gray and take over the case. But she can’t let it go.

After gaining the approval of her obstinately uncooperative and politically sensitive boss Hobbs, she doggedly pursues a parallel investigation. The intrepid Robbie Gray, however flawed and troubled, is perhaps the most fully human and sympathetic character I’ve encountered in a novel this year. Stuart’s artful fusion of a murder investigation with the multi-layered obstacles Gray must overcome to solve it—including exorcising her own personal demons—is accomplished using vivid imagery and a formidable display of stunningly written scenes that cohere into a fully satisfying narrative that confers horrific intensity on the escalating chaos, while precisely dramatizing the sense of issues that stalk and punish Stuart’s characters.

This is a strangely beguiling book. On one level, it’s the story of a complex murder investigation. On another, it’s about a strong woman’s faith being tested in a myriad of ways. The closure we’re offered at the end isn’t as complete as I would have liked, nonetheless, this is magnificent writing. And, perhaps it’s not the sort of story where every thread should be wrapped up tidily in a bow.

I’ve read some truly exceptional crime fiction books in 2021, but For Reasons of Their Own is easily my favorite of the year. Anyone who enjoys reading excellent crime, mystery, and thriller writing will love this book. I’m left eagerly anticipating what Stuart will do for an encore after writing such a brilliant and extraordinary debut novel.

Original Sin Press published For Reasons of Their Own by Chris Stuart from July 20, 2021. I purchased the copy of the book used for this review, representing my honest opinions.

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Book Review: Death by the Thames by Gretta Mulrooney

Death by the Thames by Gretta Mulrooney—Mulrooney demonstrates a flawless touch with characterization and clever plotting.

In this ninth installment of the Tyrone Swift Detective series, a grieving bride-to-be hires Swift to investigate the death of her fiancé that the London police ruled a suicide. I came late to this delightful series, starting with the eighth novel, which I thoroughly enjoyed. As I alluded to in my review of Murder in Pembrokeshire, Gretta Mulrooney demonstrates a perfect touch with characterization and clever plotting. While I fully intend to read all of the books in the series as time permits, one thing I appreciate about Mulrooney’s writing is you can enter this series at any point without feeling lost. Mulrooney does a neat job of offering readers easily digested snippets of backstory that help us understand Swift’s background and give us what’s important to know about other recurring characters.

Death by the Thames

by Gretta Mulrooney

Published by Joffe Books

from December 22, 2021

Genre(s) Detective Mysteries

ISBN 978-1-80405-026-2

Pages 318

One dead bridegroom.

Financier Sam Goddard never made it down the aisle. Instead, his body is pulled from the Thames. Everyone says he rode his bike into the water. And he didn’t die alone . . .

A teen tearaway with a taste for older men.

Riding in his sidecar, there’s an underage girl. On his phone, a text.

So sorry to do this to you . . .

The police know a suicide pact when they see one, and as far as they’re concerned, it’s case closed.

But Toni — Sam’s grieving fiancée — can’t believe it’s true. Desperate to uncover the truth about Sam’s death, she turns to Tyrone Swift for answers.

But is she prepared for the killer secrets he’s about to unearth?

Death by the Thames is a seamlessly crafted, twisty crime thriller that will have you gripped from start to pulsating finish.

When the book opens, we meet Toni Sheringham, a woman in her thirties, on her wedding day. Just as she finishes dressing and puts the finishing touches on her makeup, the police arrive with horrific news. Her fiancé Sam Goddard has drowned in the Thames, and from a text message on his phone, the police are leaning towards suicide as the explanation. As though that wasn’t bad enough, the police also tell Toni that a fifteen-year-old girl drowned with Sam, and they believe she and Sam had shared an illicit affair. Although numb with grief, Toni refuses to accept that Sam had been involved with a teenager or had committed suicide. So, she hires London private investigator Tyrone Swift to investigate and determine the truth.

I really liked the characters Mulrooney offers us here, and it is clear characterization is one of the author’s true strengths. They are so lifelike they almost leap from the pages. But, one thing I struggled with in the first Mulrooney novel I read was again in evidence here, the vast array of characters introduced. The cast is large and, I tend to get bogged down trying to remember who is who (Conor, Lucy, Naomi, Mila, Eli, Jerome, Araminta, Hester, Lexie, Yuna, et cetera). But while keeping track of the cast was a small distraction, every character played enough of a vital role in the overall plot that I can’t say the author should have ditched any of them.

I really like the lead in this series, Tyrone “Ty” Swift. He shares a few characteristics of the archetypical private detective (single, strong and silent type, women find him attractive, but he avoids commitment) but has plenty of other traits that set him apart. As an example, he has a young daughter with a hearing disability from his most significant failed relationship that he dotes on. I love the role his daughter plays in his life. And despite how he seems to somewhat callously discard women he gets involved with romantically when it comes to his friends and clients, he has a heart of gold. While flawed, Swift has none of the stereotypical, contrived flaws we often see in detective mystery fiction. That makes him all the more interesting.

Plotting is another area where Mulrooney shines, and here the plot was more complex than expected with many threads. I’d actually guessed who the murderer was before the end but enjoyed the twists and turns nonetheless, and the motive wasn’t entirely clear until it was. It was more the traits and characteristics that Mulrooney used to paint the character that gave it away for me than any failure to keep the murderer’s identity hidden sufficiently. Despite all the potential suspects, she offered to confuse the issue, this one person seemed the most capable of being a cold, calculated murderer of the lot.

What’s important is whether I liked this book. And yes, I loved it. Those who enjoy Agatha Christie-like detective mysteries will love it too.

Joffe Books publishes Death by the Thames by Gretta Mulrooney from December 22, 2021. I received an advanced reader’s copy of the book from the publisher via Net Galley used for this review, representing my honest opinions.

Book Reviews

Book Review: Whiteout by Ragnar Jónasson

Whiteout by Ragnar Jónasson—A convincing and uniquely Icelandic thriller dripping with tension and suspense.

Whiteout is the fifth book I’ve read by best-selling Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson, who reliably delivers absorbing and suspense filled thrillers with complex plots and multi-layered characters every time. I’ve had this book on my to be read list for a while now, but only just got to it. That’s because it’s a book I purchased. And I always give priority to reading and reviewing the advance reader copies I receive from publishers over titles from my personal collection. But having enjoyed Jónasson’s books so much in the past, I was eager to get to this one. Whiteout is the fourth book (in publication order), or fifth book (chronologically) in Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series.

I’ve commented on the settings of his books before, but I’ll mention it again since Jónasson puts such a strong emphasis on it. The setting—the bleak portions of the natural Icelandic landscape, the bitter cold with snow and ice, the dark winters, and the summers with the midnight sun—becomes almost a character in its own right. That all combines to contribute a sense of foreboding and tension from the moment you start reading. Like Jónasson’s other books, beyond the desolate setting, this novel includes brutal crimes in an otherwise quiet and outwardly safe community, a tortured protagonist, and a strong plot with multiple complex threads and unexpected twists.

Whiteout

By Ragnar Jónasson

Translator Quentin Bates

Published (in English) by Orenda Books

on January 1, 2020 (first published October 20, 2013)

Genre(s): Mystery Thriller, International Police Procedural, Icelandic Noir

ISBN 9781910633892

Pages 240

Dark, chilling and complex, Whiteout is a haunting, atmospheric and stunningly plotted thriller from one of Iceland’s bestselling crime writers.

When the body of a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted Icelandic village of Kálfshamarvík, police officer Ari Thór Arason uncovers a startling and terrifying connection to an earlier series of deaths, as the killer remains on the loose…

Two days before Christmas, a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted village of Kálfshamarvík.

Did she jump, or did something more sinister take place beneath the lighthouse and the abandoned old house on the remote rocky outcrop?

With winter closing in and the snow falling relentlessly, Ari Thór Arason discovers that the victim’s mother and young sister also lost their lives in this same spot, twenty-five years earlier.

As the dark history and its secrets of the village are unveiled, and the death toll begins to rise, the Siglufjordur detectives must race against the clock to find the killer, before another tragedy takes place.

As a lover of mysteries, thrillers and crime fiction, I knew I had found a new must-read author after reading my first Ragnar Jónasson novel, Blackout. I liked the main character of his Dark Iceland series, Ari Thór Arason, from the moment I first met him in Blackout, and enjoyed meeting him again in Whiteout.

Ari Thór is the quintessential tortured protagonist, a police officer with a painful past. In this fourth book in the series, he is back with his partner Kristin, who is pregnant with their first child. He also teams up once again with his former boss and mentor, Tómas, now assigned to the Serious Crimes Department of the Reykjavik police force, for an investigation. But Ari Thór and Tómas don’t appear until Part Two of the book.

The book opens with a brief but chilling prologue where a little girl falls from a cliff to her death. Then in the first chapter we meet a young woman in her thirties, Ásta Káradóttir, who has returned to visit Kálfshamarsvík and the childhood home she left at age seven. There she renews old acquaintances with people still living in the house that Ásta and her family once lived in when her father was a light house keeper on the Skagi peninsula. There she occupies her old room in the attic, and things take a sinister turn.

In Part One, Jónasson offers us some interesting insight—in snippets—from Ásta about her childhood, when she lived with her family in the house beside the lighthouse. We can’t quite work out why Ásta has returned to the house for a visit, since it seems clear the place holds no happy memories for her. And more than once, Ásta questions whether she should have come.

I appreciated that Jónasson dives right into the action in Part Two. Tómas phones Ari Thór two days before Christmas and tells him there has been a sudden death at Kálfshamarsvík and the local police are too busy with another situation to handle the investigation. Tómas tells him he is coming north from Reykjavik and needs Ari Thór’s help on the case. Tómas assures his junior colleague that the death looks like a suicide investigation they should wrap up before Christmas, but then mentions something ominous about a backstory. In response to Ari Thór’s questions for clarification, Tómas mentions “terrible things that happened to the mother [of the victim] and her daughters” in the past. With the heightened suspense, there’s no question of a lagging plot. This sets the book’s pace and engages the reader from the start as the action moves to Kálfshamarsvík.

Although we realize we’re yet to learn more about Ásta and the ominous past that Tómas mentioned, everything seems straight-forward as the two police officers begin the investigation. But slowly things change and therein lies the strength of Jónasson’s storytelling style. It’s not only about the action. He offers us further snippets of information, providing deeper insight that calls into question the assumptions we’ve made about the death. The plot is twisty and Jónasson, as he always does, throws in a surprise towards the end that he masks well.

As with the other books in the series I’ve read, Jónasson’s major strengths continues to be the relatability of his characters and the ease of his storytelling. I appreciated how he expanded Ari Thór’s arc by continuing to develop his character. My favorite part of this book was unexpected, as I found myself captivated by the relationship dynamics unfolding because of Kristin’s pregnancy. She accompanies Ari Thór when he travels to Kálfshamarsvík to connect with Tómas because she has some personal business to attend in the area. This allows us to see how the pregnancy affects their relationship and insight into how Ari Thór feels about becoming a father considering his own difficult past. Ultimately, this was a satisfying read with a lot of surprises thrown in—many of which I did not see coming. I easily rate it as another 5-star read by one of the best crime fiction writers in the business.

I purchased the copy of Whiteout used for this review, representing my honest opinions.

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Book Reviews

Book Review: Shaking Hands with the Devil by Bryan J. Mason

Shaking Hands with the Devil by Bryan J. Mason—A satirical tale from a master wit at his quirky, provocative best.

I’ve been remiss in not posting this review of Shaking Hands with the Devil by Bryan J. Mason sooner. It certainly offers something quite new as far as serial killer novels go. As soon as I started reading, I fell in love with the way Mason wrote this book—from the point-of-views of Clifton Gentle, the serial killer—who’s resplendent with quirks and a smidge of mad, and the annoyingly arrogant but inept DCI Dave Hicks.

Shaking Hands with the Devil

by Bryan J. Mason

Published by Pegasus Publishers

Genre(s): Serial Killers, Literature & Fiction

ISBN: 978-1-80016-154-2

Pages 344

‘WE ARE ON THIS CASE LIKE A BONER FIDO BLOODHOUND…
AND MY MEN ARE BARKING AT THE LEASH’

In this darkly comic novel, Clifton Gentle is an ordinary man without much to distinguish him. Not much, that is, apart from being a serial killer who is leaving bits of his young male victims scattered around North London
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DCI Dave Hicks is the larger than life policeman determined to catch him. His attempts to find ‘the nutter’ through a combination of spoonerisms, personal abuse and a belief that something will turn up don’t go well. All that turns up are yet more body parts.

In a sleazy London dogged by growing squalor and an IRA bombing campaign in the last days of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, the gruesome murders spur an over-the-top media and merchandising frenzy.

The hunt becomes an increasingly personal one and a race against the clock as Clifton, Dave Hicks, a would-be victim, and a copycat killer each try to uncover what – or who – they hold responsible for their own problems.

If you enjoy your serial killer novels with a healthy dose of dark comedy, Shaking Hands with the Devil by Bryan J. Mason is the book for you. I very much enjoyed this book. There’s a definite sense of wit and lightness in it, but it reminds us that our impressions of people may not always be correct, that people’s personalities come in various shades of grey and can often surprise us. This isn’t a whodunit, as we meet villain, Clifton Gentle, our serial killer, on the opening pages. The plot centers on whether the largely inept, and arrogantly and pompously boastful Detective Chief Inspector Dave Hicks, can identify and arrest the suspect, leaving body parts strewn willy-nilly around his patch in London.

What I liked most about Shaking Hands with the Devil was the same thing I like about the movie Dumb and Dumber. While I rarely like slapstick comedy, in the film, the two imbecilic best friends in the film are so relentlessly stupid that it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. In this novel, instead of two imbecilic best friends, we have Clifton Gentle and Dave Hicks, two quirky men who in their own rights are so relentlessly half-witted that it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. The deeper into the book we go, the more absurdly cerebrally challenged they reveal themselves to be.

There’s a sense of predictability here and I think readers will clearly see where this book’s going, but Mason also throws in some surprises. I felt the plot probably wasn’t as robust as I typically like, but whatever its flaws, the book gives you no chance to get bored. The characters are uniformly interesting and Mason does a fine job with offering the reader some great background texture and layers of complexity. That helps us understand why the main characters are who they are and behave as they do.

Shaking Hands with the Devil, while a work of fiction, is a bit of a study in culture and society. Bryan J. Mason wrote this novel in the late 1980s, “but reluctantly put it away in a drawer after his agent narrowly failed to get it published.” As you read the book, you notice immediately the story is set at a time before the stifling contemporary onset of political correctness that demands we all conform to accepted language and practices that don’t risk offending the political sensibilities of the overly sensitive.

Pegasus Publishing published Shaking Hands with the Devil on September 30, 2021. I received a print copy of this book from the publisher used for this review, representing my honest opinions.

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly

The Dark Hours is the fourth book in the Renée Ballard series by Michael Connelly, best-selling crime fiction author of thirty-six novels.

The Dark Hours is the fourth book in the Renée Ballard series by Michael Connelly, best-selling crime fiction author of thirty-six novels, most notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. I’ve read and enjoyed all of Connelly’s novels. Like many Connelly fans, the Bosch books remain my favorites, but Connelly is another author who never writes a bad book. So, I give all his novels high marks. He always delivers intriguing thrillers with complex and often-flawed characters. While I enjoyed the previous three Ballard books, The Dark Hours is certainly my favorite so far. I found myself invested in Ballard’s fate from the first page and intrigued by the unfolding plot.

Besides great characters, another of Connelly’s strengths is the settings of his books. He demonstrates an uncanny ability to give readers a sense of “place” from the novel’s start. Within the first few pages, the reader feels they are right there in Los Angeles or, concerning books from other series, wherever the action occurs. This book is no different in that regard. Still, from the beginning where we find Renée Ballard and Detective Lisa Moore sitting in a parked police car beneath an overpass outside a homeless encampment waiting tensely for “the annual rain of lead” from revelers welcoming in the new year with a barrage of gunfire, this book focuses less on the where and more on the fast-paced what.

The Dark Hours

by Michael Connelly

Published by Little, Brown and Company

on November 9, 2021

Genre(s): Thrillers & Suspense

ISBN 9780316256568

Pages 401

A brazen and methodical killer strikes on New Year’s Eve and LAPD Detective Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch must join forces to find justice for the victim in a city scarred by fear and social unrest, in the new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly.

There’s chaos in Hollywood at the end of the New Year’s Eve countdown. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD Detective Renée Ballard waits out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. Only minutes after midnight, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party.

Ballard quickly concludes that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky and that it is linked to another unsolved murder—a case at one time worked by Detective Harry Bosch. At the same time, Ballard hunts a fiendish pair of serial rapists, the Midnight Men, who have been terrorizing women and leaving no trace.

Determined to solve both cases, Ballard feels like she is constantly running uphill in a police department indelibly changed by the pandemic and recent social unrest. It is a department so hampered by inertia and low morale that Ballard must go outside to the one detective she can count on: Harry Bosch. But as the two inexorable detectives work together to find out where old and new cases intersect, they must constantly look over their shoulders. The brutal predators they are tracking are ready to kill to keep their secrets hidden.

I like lead character Renée Ballard. No, she isn’t Harry, but she shares many of Bosch’s traits. But filling the shoes of the venerable Harry Bosch, Connelly’s most iconic character, is a big ask. Yet like it or not, since the author has aged Bosch in real time in the novels, Harry’s days are numbered. So, Connelly is passing the torch to Ballard, who will be the future of Connelly’s Bosch franchise. I know from experience, writing a novel from the point of view of a person of the opposite sex is challenging. But I feel Michael Connelly pulls it off with ease and sensitivity. I suspect the reason for this is that, as Connelly revealed in a 2019 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he based the LAPD detective Renée Ballard character on real-life LAPD detective Mitzi Roberts. Perhaps that is why Ballard seems so genuine and realistic.

Our introduction to Renée Ballard in this novel comes on New Year’s Eve 2021, as she and another female LAPD detective are hunkered down in their city ride beneath the Cahuenga underpass just before midnight, braced for the inevitable gunfire that erupts in Los Angeles every year to welcome in the new year. Both detectives are in uniform in response to a department-wide tactical alert, a status LAPD employs on occasions like New Year’s Eve with all hands on deck and every officer in the department in uniform and working twelve-hour shifts. The suspense builds from the first page as we expect the detectives will soon speed to a call somewhere in Hollywood. Connelly also throws in “Added to that, the Midnight Men were out there somewhere” producing immediate curiosity in the reader’s mind about who the Midnight Men are and what it has to do with Ballard.

Renée is obviously a quintessential flawed character. She shares one of Bosch’s flaws in that she is so relentlessly committed to getting justice for victims that she is prone to disregard LAPD policies and defy superiors when she feels they become barriers to accomplishing her mission to protect and serve. And, like Bosch, that often gets her into trouble. Another flaw is Ballard’s inability to move on from a situation where the department treated her unfairly over a sexual harassment complaint she made against a previous supervisor. So, she lives with a chip on her shoulder. This often contributes to the trouble Ballard finds herself in with both supervisors and peers. Many times, her wounds are self-inflicted.

And then there’s the current state of the LAPD and Los Angeles in general. Connelly touches on every aspect of it all—the worsening homeless problem, the defund the police movement, the open animosity toward the police by citizens, civil unrest, and the jarring collapse of morale within the LAPD. In the spirit of self-preservation, many cops have a adopted a turn a blind eye and do as little as possible philosophy to avoid citizen complaints in the highly politicized environment where they know neither the department nor the city has their backs. He adds the pandemic and its lingering effects to the mix. I have no doubt that Connelly has captured the essence of 2021 Los Angeles in this book, a city that appears more like a failed third world country than part of the United States.

I don’t do trigger alerts. The term itself is part and parcel of the disgusting coddling culture that has swept the country over the past four or five years. I say only that any adult who picks up a realistic crime fiction novel should expect to encounter a good amount of violence and this book has its share, including descriptions of violence again women. Interestingly, I recently listened to a talk by Michael Connelly where he acknowledged the violence in The Dark Hours, and explained why he wrote the book the way he did. The violence isn’t gratuitous or meant to entertain. I think after hearing Connelly explain it, that it serves as a stark reminder of the realities that we face living in contemporary society. As someone once said, life is brutal. I don’t think that has ever been truer than it is today.

Ballard and her temporary partner get the call that we expected from the first page, and she is drawn into a shooting investigation that turns out to be a murder, one that we soon learn shares a nexus with one of Harry Bosch’s old open-unsolved cases. Then we learn more about the Midnight Men, a pair of rapists operating in tandem, a case Ballard is already in the middle of investigating. So, like past Ballard books, we follow Ballard’s efforts to get justice for her victims while juggling two cases as she tries to prevent her bosses and colleagues from messing it all up.

The only thing some might find disappointing is we get little Harry Bosch in this book, not nearly as much as in the previous Ballard books. It almost seems like a cameo appearance. But I suppose we must get used to it. And the interaction between Ballard and Bosch we got was great and added much to the story.

The plot is twisty, and Connelly throws in a surprise or two towards the end. And though there’s some justice, we’re not offered complete closure–which was fine with me as I’m excited to see what happens with Ballard in the future.

Little, Brown and Company published The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly on November 9, 2021. I purchased a digital copy of the book used for this review.

Blog Tours, Book Reviews

Book Review: The Commandments by Óskar Guðmundsson

The Commandments by Óskar Guðmundsson—smartly plotted and satisfyingly suspenseful series starter that will leave you waiting impatiently for the next book.

Guðmundsson’s brilliantly plotted and satisfyingly suspenseful first book in a series featuring Detective Inspector Salka Steinsdóttir, a strong female protagonist, shows unmistakably that he well deserves a compliment recently received from one of the top bestselling Icelandic authors of crime fiction. Ragnar Jónasson called Guðmundsson “one of the leading new talents of Icelandic crime fiction.” I agree. The Commandments, first published under the title Boðorðin in Icelandic by Bjartur, is Guðmundsson’s debut English translation. I can’t wait for more translations of his books. Having read the novels of many of the best Icelandic crime fiction authors in recent years, I’ll open this review with my opinion that The Commandments is as good as Icelandic crime writing gets.

The Commandments

by Óskar Guðmundsson

Translated by Quentin Bates

Published by Corylus Books Ltd

from October 12, 2021

Genre(s): Detective Fiction, Police Procedural, International Crime Fiction

ISBN 978-1-9163797-7-0

253 pages

Former detective Salka Steinsdóttir finds herself unwillingly pitched into the toughest investigation of her life, just as she returns to the tranquil north of Iceland to recover from a personal trauma.

The victim is someone she had pursued earlier in her career – and had never been able to pin down. Now a killer has taken the law into their own hands and meted out brutal retribution for ancient crimes.

Salka is faced with tracking down the murderer of a stalwart of the church and the community, a man whose reputation stretches deep into the past, and even into the police team tasked with solving the case.

As the killer prepares to strike again, Salka and her team search for the band of old friends who could be either killers or victims – or both.

A bestseller in Iceland, The Commandments asks many challenging questions as it takes on some highly controversial issues.

The distinctive cover of The Commandments suggests that there is a religious theme to the book. It features a cross, the most recognized icon of Christianity. A blood smear forms its transverse bar, and a corroded Roman-era iron nail its upright post. That immediately put me in mind of crucifixion, the method of capital punishment used by the Romans and others in which they nailed the convicted person to a large wooden beam affixed to a post and left them to hang until their eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. Combined with the cross, the title called to mind the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses. So, before I’d opened the book, I assumed there was a religious theme to the book and that perhaps someone had broken the fifth commandment, “You shall not kill.” That assumption proved correct as I started reading, but I soon learned that the fifth commandment wasn’t the only commandment someone broke.

Salka Steinsdóttir is a former police detective and most recently a former civilian crime analyst with the Metropolitan Police CID team in London after she and her husband Eysteinn moved to Britain from Iceland some years previously. We meet Salka after she has returned to Iceland, on hiatus while sorting some difficult marital problems. But when someone brutally murders a local priest in Akureyri, her hometown, members of the short-staffed Akureyri police recruit her to help with the investigation. At first, Salka refuses. Besides her marital problems, she is also back in Iceland because she’s concerned about her aging father, who is in failing health. She isn’t even sure she intends to return to police work after the break. But once she learns the victim is the priest she once investigated for sexual abuse, the murder piques her interest. She agrees to take a look at the crime scene at least and to offer her opinions.

Something I found interesting is we don’t meet Salka, the novel’s main character, until the fifth chapter. That’s unusual since the usually accepted convention is that authors should introduce the main character in the first chapter of a novel, if not the very first page. Some books open with a preliminary first chapter that sets the scene or tone of what’s to come before the main character enters. But I can’t recall ever reading the first four chapters of a novel before the protagonist appears. Yet, the story doesn’t suffer as a result. That’s because Guðmundsson cleverly and effectively used those early chapters to quickly build momentum and suspense by teasing out bits of information to the reader that he then uses to plant questions in our minds that we want to be answered. That keeps us turning the pages.

Despite her earlier reluctance, Salka ends up taking charge of the murder investigation, which candidly came as no surprise. She starts gathering pieces of the puzzle and works out the probably why behind the murder, well before she identifies the who—the murderer. Guðmundsson offers up enough believable suspects to keep us guessing right along with Salka until almost the very end.

Beyond the murder investigation, Salka muses about the dwindling prospects that her marriage will survive the difficulties even though a part of her wants things to work out. Also, she’s distracted by her father’s failing health and a casual romance that entwines her. The book is full of interesting, well-drawn characters. Still, Guðmundsson devotes most of his attention to Salka, revealing a complex, multi-layered—somewhat flawed but fascinating protagonist.

This ambitious Icelandic crime tale will resonate with readers who enjoy fast-paced, suspenseful thrillers that double as legitimate whodunits with a strong female main character who can take care of herself. There is a truly mind-blowing twist at the end, which I never saw coming, something I always enjoy. The Commandments is among the best Icelandic crime novels I’ve read this year, perhaps ever, and I’ve read many excellent ones. Translator Quentin Bates does his usual extraordinary job delivering an outstanding English translation that reads as smooth as glass. Fans of the genre won’t want to pass this one up. It’s that’s good.

Corylus Books Ltd published The Commandments on October 12, 2021. I received an advance reading copy of the book from the publisher used for this review, representing my honest and unbiased opinions.

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Book Reviews

Book Review: Silver Pebbles by Hansjörg Schneider

Silver Pebbles by Hansjörg Schneider—an engrossing, realistic police procedural with a host of compelling characters on both sides of the law.

silver-pebbles-by-hansjorg-schneider

Silver Pebbles

by Hansjörg Schneider

Translated by Mike Mitchell

Published by Bitter Lemon Press

from February 22, 2022

Genre(s): Detective Fiction, Police Procedural, International Crime Fiction

ISBN 978-1-913394-622

205 pages

I’ve been reading a lot of very impressive international crime novels recently, and Silver Pebbles by Hansjörg Schneider is yet another. A die-hard fan of crime fiction for decades, I’ve purposely expanded my crime fiction reading beyond the borders of my own country. So it delighted me when a publicist for Bitter Lemon Press offered me a copy of this book, and Schneider, a Swiss writer, and dramatist did not disappoint. While Silver Pebbles has elements of a slow-burn crime thriller, it fits best in the police procedural genre, a sub-genre of detective fiction. A police procedural differs from other cop novels. Instead of a single policeman getting called in to solve a crime and doing it alone, an entire squad cooperates to solve the crime using the methodology of detection based on real-life police work. Inevitably certain characters are more interesting or intelligent than others and get more space in a novel, but putting the bad guys away and solving the crime is a team effort.

“An elegant young Lebanese man, carrying diamonds in his bag, is on the train from Frankfurt to Basel – a drug mule on the return journey. At Basal train station, Hunkeler is waiting for him after a tipoff from the German police, but the courier first manages to flush the stones down the public toilets. Erdogan, a young Turkish sewage worker, finds them in the pipes under the station. To him they mean wealth and the small hotel he always wanted to buy near his family village. To his Swiss girlfriend Erika, the jewels signify the end of their life together. She knows that Erdogan has a wife and children in Turkey.

For the courier, finding the stones is a matter of life and death. His employers are on their way to ‘tidy things up’. For Hunkeler the diamonds are the key to finding the people behind the drug deal. They turn out to include, not only the bottom-feeding criminal gangs, but the bankers and politicians very high up the Basal food chain.”

Typically in a police procedural, someone commits murder, and a squad of police detectives gets called upon to find the killer. However, what drew my attention to Silver Pebbles was that it isn’t about a murder but a drug courier transporting a fortune in diamonds back to his employers in payment for the delivery of drugs. That fresh and creative approach is one of the things I liked best about the book. It captured my imagination and made for a more compelling premise than my usual steady diet of murder novels.

As the book unfolds, we first meet a key criminal in the story, Guy Kayat, a young Lebanese man working for a drug cartel as a drug mule and courier. Kayat is on the train from Frankfurt to Basel (a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine). In his bag, Kayat carries a fortune in perfectly cut diamonds received in payment for a delivery of narcotics which he is couriering back to his cartel bosses. Unfortunately for Kayat, the Swiss police are on to him, thanks to a tip from the German police, and a squad of detectives is waiting on him at the Basel train station. Schneider does an accomplished job painting this character for us. As the story progresses, we learn much about Kayat, why he does what he does, and what motivates him to participate in the drug trade. Once we learn about him, even though he is a criminal, it’s difficult not to feel a measure of sympathy for him.

A few pages later in the first chapter, we meet the main character, Peter Hunkeler, a detective inspector with the Basel police and the detective in charge of the squad tasked with apprehending Kayat and seizing the illicit diamonds. Hunkeler, as the protagonist, gets more space in a novel than his police colleagues, and naturally, we get a more in-depth look at his life than the lives of the other cops involved in the investigation. We see the investigation develop primarily through his eyes. In a real sense, the book often seems less concerned with solving a crime than examining the complex life, motives, strengths, and weaknesses of Hunkeler.

The biggest challenge for some readers of this book might be that the Hunkeler character seems a bit clichéd. After all, he has all the usual flaws one expects from the main character in a novel of the genre. First, he smokes and wants to quit but can’t. Second, Hunkeler struggles with his long past divorce and estrangement from his adult daughter, who remains the most important person in the world to him. Third, the detective inspector is cynical and burnt out. Fourth, he is a maverick and doesn’t get on well with his supervisor, and sometimes he drinks excessively. Finally, Hunkeler has an intimate relationship with a woman he hasn’t married, which he uses mostly for only sexual satisfaction and fulfillment of his emotional needs.

I get it. Crime novel characters must have flaws to appear like real people. As I know from personal experience, policing is a stressful job, no doubt about it. But not so stressful that every single cop hits the bottle the moment their shift ends. Yes, many police marriages don’t always survive, and divorces happen. But cop marriages can be as strong as anybody else’s. It’s one of the things that can help a police officer cope with the stress. Unfortunately, at least in the opinion of readers not devoted to the genre, crime fiction writers don’t always spend enough time pushing out from safety zones of the genre conventions. They believe that’s why we end up with tropes and clichés.

Alternatively, those like me who are devoted to the genre aren’t particularly bothered by reliance on the usual conventions, even if they might agree that sticking to them results in tropes and clichés. We sort of expect that from a police procedural. And from an author’s perspective, sticking to the conventions still sells books. Just consider an American super-star of cop novels, Michael Connelly, whose Harry Bosch is in the pantheon of all-time great police detectives. If you know much about Bosch, you know he shares all the same flaws with Hunkeler.

To be fair, there is far more to Hunkeler than the predictable flaws we’ve come to expect from police detective main characters. He possesses characteristics that make him unique and multi-layered. Examples include his political and social world views and his disdain for capitalists and politicians, many of whom Hunkeler regards as the true criminals while acknowledging their wealth and positions makes them virtually untouchable. Also, while Hunkeler enforces drug laws, he feels a high degree of sympathy for drug addicts. All in all, I find Hunkeler a compelling, multi-faceted, and believable character.

As much as I liked Hunkeler, the character in the book which most captured my attention and I like most is Erika, the Swiss girlfriend of the Turkish sewage worker, Erdogan, who eventually finds the discarded diamonds in a sewer pipe beneath the Basel train station.

Erika might be considered a only a minor character in the overall scheme of the novel. She is a single, childless, middle-aged woman, past her prime, who works as a supermarket cashier and desperately clings to the relationship of mutual convenience that she shares with Erdogan. Yet it is with Erika I believe Schneider’s expertise with drawing realistic, believable, and complex characters shows through most brilliantly. Moreover, the crafting of Erika is a virtuoso performance. We feel immediate empathy for Erika and sympathy for her difficult life while at the same time feeling astonishment upon learning she is a woman of grace, character, strength, and wisdom.

If you’re unfamiliar with the works of Hansjörg Schneider, as I was before reading this book, I think it fair to say that stylistically, Silver Pebbles reads quite like a Henning Mankell Wallander novel. Even those who haven’t read Mankell have likely seen the popular films based on his Wallander character. Silver Pebbles isn’t a whodunit. Both the police and the reader know who the criminals are and what they’ve done out the outset. The story is about the systematic attempts by the police to solve the crime by bringing the bad guys to justice and how the criminals try to get away. The book has its suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat moments, but at times the pace of the story lags as we wait for something to happen, some catalyst to reignite the action. However, that is the nature of the police procedural, which seeks to mirror the realism of actual police investigations that play out similarly. The police do not solve crimes in an hour, as television dramas portray.

I found Silver Pebbles a gripping and entertaining read and came away impressed with Schneider’s obvious and considerable talent as a crime writer. He is the author of several highly acclaimed plays and the bestselling Hunkeler crime series, with ten titles published. The Basel Killings, the first in series published in English, was awarded The Friedrich Glauser Prize, Germany’s most prestigious crime fiction literary award. Silver Pebbles is the second book in the series to be published in English. I found not a single awkward passage in the book, revealing that translator Mike Mitchell did an admirable job with the translation. Those of us who enjoy reading novels from international authors first published in other languages always appreciate that. If you’re a devoted fan of detective fiction and police procedural novels, you’re sure to like this book. I truly loved the ironic denouement. The resolution was both appropriate and most satisfying.

Bitter Lemon Press will publish Silver Pebbles from February 22, 2022. I received an advance reading copy of the book from the publisher used for this review, representing my honest and unbiased opinions.

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