Book Reviews

Review: Cast Into Doubt by Patricia MacDonald

Cast Into Doubt by Patricia MacDonald is an absorbing suspense thriller featuring Shelby Sloan – chief buyer of women’s apparel at a Philadelphia department store who gets forced into service as a sleuth when a vacation goes horribly wrong.

Cast Into Doubt by Patricia MacDonald, first published by Severn House Publishers Ltd March 1, 2011 and republished by Joffe Books in April 2021. I based this review on the Joffe Books version.

Cast Into Doubt

by Patricia MacDonald

Published by Joffe Books

on April 7, 2021

Genre: Thrillers / Suspense

ISBN-13: 978-1-78931-712-1

253 pages

A gripping novel of domestic suspense – Shelby Sloan, a successful Philadelphia businesswoman in her early forties, has one child, a daughter whom she raised on her own. She gives her daughter, Chloe, and son-in-law, Rob, a Caribbean cruise as a gift, while she takes the opportunity to mind her four-year-old grandson. But life becomes a nightmare when Rob calls to tell her that Chloe has disappeared overboard. The police decide it was an accident, but Shelby refuses to accept the official verdict.

Shelby Sloan’s only daughter, Chloe, and her son-in-law Rob never had a honeymoon. A well-to-do Philadelphia buyer of women’s apparel at a Philadelphia department store, Shelby gifts the couple a Caribbean cruise to make up for it and to give them a break from work and parenting with some well-deserved romantic time alone together. It’s also a chance for Shelby to spend time with her young grandson, Jeremy, while they’re away on vacation. But things go horribly wrong. A few days into the cruise, Shelby receives a heart-breaking call from Rob, who tells her Chloe has fallen overboard and is missing off St. Thomas. Unable to sit home waiting for news with her only child lost at sea, Shelby scrambles to grab a flight to St. Thomas. When she arrives, it shocks Shelby to learn that the authorities have all but given up all hope of finding Chloe, dead or alive. They show her disturbing videos that appear to show Chloe severely intoxicated shortly before her disappearance. The St. Thomas police and the cruise line insist Chloe’s demise was likely an accident. But Shelby simply can’t accept it, even when her son-in-law reveals that her daughter was a closet alcoholic. When it seems no one else is mounting an adequate investigation, Shelby takes matters into her own hands.

This was the first book I’ve read from Patricia MacDonald, whose writing style reminds me a little of that of Mary Higgins Clark. I saw the book mentioned in an Amazon promotional email, and the synopsis caught my interest. The story grabbed my attention quickly and held my interest throughout. At first I wasn’t sure if it would turn out to be a murder mystery or the story of a grieving parent unable to come to grips with the loss of her only daughter. But soon, like Shelby, I was convinced that Chloe’s disappearance and presumed death wasn’t an accident.

There was a lot of conflict in the book that kept ratcheting up the suspense and that propelled the plot forward. Shelby faced an uphill battle in convincing anyone else, including her son-in-law, that Chloe was a victim of anything more than an accident. She also had to deal with her unsympathetic older sister and a boss who seemed more interested in when Shelby would return to work than about her devastating loss.

The thing I liked most about the book was the unusual circumstances. Arriving in St. Thomas after her daughter had fallen overboard from a cruise ship, Shelby had little in the way of clues to work with while trying to determine what happened. Once it seemed someone murdered Chloe, MacDonald provided lots of suspects and inventive ways for Shelby to find the clues that helped her work through the suspect pool. Even once it was clear someone had murdered Chloe, MacDonald kept me guessing about who the killer was until the big reveal near the end. And that came with a welcome twist.

While the pace was uneven in spots, overall Cast Into Doubt moved along quickly in the way you expect from a thriller. The characters were realistic and believable. Sometimes the story required more suspension of belief than I usually like, but generally it was a story I could imagine playing out in actual life. MacDonald’s writing engaged me emotionally. More than once I felt exasperated with Shelby at points in the story where she attempted to do things she wasn’t well-suited to perform. But that only added to the realism, since it was the things you’d expect a grieving mother to do while trying desperately to find out what happened to her daughter when no one else would help her.

I found Cast Into Doubt an enjoyable read suitable for readers who enjoy suspenseful mysteries featuring an amateur sleuth. I liked the book well enough that I’m keen to read more from Patricia MacDonald.

I purchased the copy of the book used for this review.

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Review: The Corpse Flower by Anne Mette Hancock

The Corpse Flower by Anne Mette Hancock—Immersive, with more than enough action, mystery, and pulse-pounding suspense to satisfy any thriller fan.

First U.S. publication of a suspense novel that debuted at #1 on the Danish bestseller charts and  earned the author the Danish Crime Academy’s debutant award.

The Corpse Flower

by Anne Mette Hancock

Published in the United States by Crooked Lane, and imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC

on Oct 12, 2021

Genre: Mystery & Detective / Crime Thrillers

ISBN-13 (hardcover): 978-1-64385-828-9

Pages: 336

Print and electronic book versions.

It’s early September in Copenhagen, the rain has been coming down for weeks, and 36-year-old journalist Heloise Kaldan is in the middle of a nightmare. One of her sources has been caught lying, and she could lose her job over it. And then she receives the first in a series of cryptic and ominous letters from an alleged killer.

Wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of a young lawyer three years earlier, Anna Kiel hasn’t been seen by anyone since she left the crime scene covered in blood. The police think she’s fled the country and have zero clues as to her motive. But homicide detective Erik Scháfer comes up with the first lead when the reporter who first wrote about the case is found murdered in his apartment. Has Anna Kiel struck again, or is there more than one killer at large? And why does every clue point directly to Heloise Kaldan?

Meanwhile, the letters keep coming, and they hint at a connection between Anna and Heloise. As Heloise starts digging deeper, she realizes that, to tell Anna’s story, she will have to revisit the darkest parts of her own past–confronting someone she swore she’d never see again.

As someone who can never get enough of Scandinavian crime fiction, I was beyond excited to get my hands on a copy of The Corpse Flower by up-and-coming Danish crime fiction writer Anne Mette Hancock. Given its arresting cover and very intriguing synopsis, I felt confident Hancock’s debut novel would be a fantastic read and right up my alley. I first learned about Anne Mette Hancock when I saw the book mentioned on social media and noticed all the buzz surrounding The Corpse Flower, which was awarded the Danish Crime Academy’s debutant prize in 2017. Today, after devouring the book in one sitting, I’m thrilled to offer my review.

It’s early September in Copenhagen, and 36-year-old investigative journalist, Heloise Kaldan, finds herself surrounded by a firestorm of controversy when one of her sources for an expose about a fashion mogul is caught lying. Having trusted her source, Heloise hadn’t done her due diligence before writing the article, embarrassing the newspaper that employs her. She’s looking at a suspension or might even lose her job over it. Just as that crisis resolves itself, Heloise receives a series of cryptic messages from Anna Kiel, a woman accused of the grisly murder of a prominent Copenhagen criminal attorney who has been a fugitive for the past three years. The bizarre messages hint that Heloise and Anna share some connection and seem to call on Heloise to write Anna’s story. Heloise embarks on an investigation of the three-year-old murder which brings her into contact with Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer, the lead police investigator handling the murder case. While Schäfer plans to use Kiel’s contact with Heloise to find and arrest the suspected murderer, Heloise conceals critical information from him, determined to get Anna’s story first. When Heloise learns what connects her and Anna, she realizes getting the story means she will have to revisit a very painful episode from her own past.

Thematically, The Corpse Flower is novel about revenge, justice, and forgiveness.

In this story, we’re introduced to investigative journalist Heloise Kaldan, who works for a prominent Copenhagen newspaper. One thing I like most about this believable, down-to-earth character is her name, which suits her perfectly. While I was aware of the name Heloise before reading this novel, I must admit I didn’t know how to pronounce it properly until reading the book. I also especially enjoyed the literary clues associated with Heloise’s name. Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer is another well-rounded, interesting character who is easy to identify with. While initially a villain-type, Anna Kiel gains the reader’s sympathy once her story is revealed. There is also a host of other secondary characters that seem like actual people.

The Corpse Flower is a tightly plotted thriller where the suspense feels so palatable that it packs an almost physical punch. Anne Mette Hancock keeps the plates spinning throughout until the very end when she lets them fall in the satisfying conclusion.

Only by nitpicking can I find anything at all to criticize about this novel. Regarding Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer, in spots in the dialogue, his use of colloquialisms sometimes makes him sound more like an American police detective than what I’d expect a Danish detective to speak like. That felt a bit jarring, since otherwise the character’s manner of speech fits the image of him so well that the author paints for us. But it’s a small, unimportant fault.

The story mentions sexual assault, a subject upsetting for some readers. I can’t say more about that without interjecting a spoiler, which I’m unwilling to do. Just be forewarned you will encounter it.

I highly recommend this book to fans of Scandinavian crime fiction, especially for those who enjoy reading the likes of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell.

Immersive, with more than enough action, mystery, and pulse-pounding suspense to satisfy any thriller fan.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley for the purposes of this review.

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Book Review: Rupture by Ragnar Jónasson

Rupture by Ragnar Jónasson is a solid, engrossing mystery & detective read from the reigning master of Scandinavian crime fiction.

Rupture is the third book in Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series. Because the series has been translated into English years after the novels were published in Icelandic, there is some confusion about the proper reading order for these books. Adding to the confusion is the fact that two different publishers, Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press and Orenda Books published English translations.

Like many series, evolution of the major characters and past events dictate the reader read the Dark Iceland series in a specific order to avoid confusion. Don’t go by the book series orders given by book retailers like Amazon, which are incorrect. At the end of this post I have provided the proper reading order that will save readers much confusion.

Rupture (The Dark Iceland Series Book 3)

by Ragnar Jónasson

Publisher: Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press (English Translation)

on January 22, 2019

Translated by Quentin Bates

Genres: Mystery & Detective / Crime Thrillers

ISBN-13: 9781250193346 (hardcover)

Pages: 272

Print, electronic book, and audiobook versions available

When new evidence for a fifty-year-old murder surfaces, young policeman Ari Thór reopens the case and begins his investigation. Piecing together what happened that fateful night proves difficult in a town where no one wants to know the truth, where secrets are a way of life. He’s assisted by Ísrún, a news reporter in Reykjavik who is investigating an increasingly chilling case of her own. Things take a sinister turn when a child goes missing in broad daylight. With a stalker on the loose, and the town in quarantine, the past might just come back to haunt them.

Rupture takes place in winter, following the events of Blackout, the second book in the Dark Iceland series. When the story opens, authorities have locked down the town of Siglufjörður because a virulent virus is on the loose. While that sounds very familiar to contemporary readers, the virus isn’t COVID-19, but haemorrhagic fever.

A wealthy adventurer from France who had flown from Africa to Iceland unknowingly brought the virus with him. Once his condition worsened and the man died, a specialist in infectious diseases confirms he died from the highly contagious disease. With no other practical way of dealing with the disease, the National Defence Authority placed the town under quarantine. Gripped by panic, stoked by the extensive media coverage, the townspeople feel understandably terrified and everyone remains in their homes waiting for the threat to pass.

To pass the time while little else is going on in Siglufjörður, Ari Thór Arason, the protagonist, entertains the request of a local man named Hédinn who asks Ari Thór to look into the fifty-year-old death of an aunt when she was only a young woman living in a nearby abandoned settlement called Hédinsfjörður. Hédinn was a small child at the time. Now sixty, the man requests Ari Thór to review the case because he feels uncertain the woman’s untimely death was an accident or a suicide as officials ruled it was at the time it happened.

While Ari Thór pieces together what facts he can dig up on the case, Ísrún, the Reykjavik journo who first appeared in Blackout, makes an encore appearance. Ari Thór gets her to help with his suspicious death investigation, but Ísrún is also pursuing a disturbing case of her own in Reykjavik that involves murder.

None of the structural problems you might expect from putting two unrelated cases together in the same novel, like tying up increasingly low-impact loose ends, occurs in Rupture. That’s primarily the case because Ari Thór and Ísrún work their investigations independently of each other. Jónasson switches back and forth between the perspectives of the two characters and their investigations.

I enjoyed the growth of Ari Thór, that’s clear since first meeting him in the first novel of the series. No longer a rookie police officer unsure of himself, Ari Thór has developed into a capable investigator. Also, I was pleased with the return of Ísrún, my favorite character from the previous novel. We get to know her even better in this one. Another thing I liked about this book was that Ari Thór makes progress with restoring his relationship with his former partner Kristin when it had seemed the relationship had all but ended forever.

While the sense of foreboding and suspense I expect from Jónasson is mostly absent in Ari Thór’s investigation this time around since it’s an ancient cold case with no real high stakes, there is plenty of that to go around in Ísrún’s case. It’s more than enough to carry the novel and keep the reader engaged. And despite what Ari Thór’s investigation lacks in tension and danger, it’s still interesting to see how he puts together the facts to work out the truth of a secret buried for half a century.

While unspectacular, Rupture is still a solid, engrossing read from the reigning master of Scandinavian crime fiction. Dedicated Nordic noir fans will enjoy it, and there are plenty of clues in both investigations to please armchair sleuths who love to match wits with the detectives.

I purchased the hardcover copy of the book used for this review.

Proper Reading Order of The Dark Iceland Series

For the benefit of those who might be interested in reading this series, ignore the book series order given on Amazon and the sites of other book retailers. Here is the proper reading order of the English translations of these novels.

Snowblind (2010)

Blackout (2011)

Rupture (2012)

Whiteout (2013)

Nightblind (2014)

Winterkill (2020)

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Book Review: Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson

Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson is a dark, exceptional thriller from one of Iceland's finest crime writers.

Blackout by Ragnar Jónasson is the second book in the Dark Iceland series. Because the series has been translated into English from the novels originally published in Icelandic, there is a good bit of confusion about the proper reading order for these books. Adding to the confusion is the fact that two different publishers, Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press and Orenda Books have published the English translations.

Like many series, evolution of the major characters and past events dictate the reader read the Dark Iceland series in a specific order to avoid bewilderment. Going by the book series numbers provided by book retailers like Amazon, which are incorrect, guarantees you will become disoriented and confused.

Reading Jónasson’s series in the order shown on retailer sites will make it appear the series skips enormous blocks of time and that important characters’ stories seem befuddled or left incomplete. Unfortunately, if you read some of the reader reviews on Amazon, you see that many have posted some awful reviews for Jónasson’s books which are terribly unfair because it’s clear the readers read the books out of order and attributed their obvious confusion to poor writing.

Initially, I fell into the same trap by trying to read Nightblind after Snowblind because Nightblind was presented as the second book in the series, both by the publishers and on Amazon. Yet things seemed so off, I did some research and discovered that Nightblind is the fifth book in the series, not the second. That lead me to the actual second book, Blackout. Once I started reading it, everything made sense again and came back into the same sharp focus I remembered from Snowblind.

Blackout (The Dark Iceland Series Book 2)

by Ragnar Jónasson

Publisher: Minotaur, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press (English Translation)

on August 28, 2018

Translated by Quentin Bates

Genres: Mystery & Detective / Crime Thrillers

ISBN-13: 9781250171054

Print, electronic book, and audiobook versions available

On the shores of a tranquil fjord in Northern Iceland, a man is brutally beaten to death on a bright summer’s night. As the 24-hour light of the arctic summer is transformed into darkness by an ash cloud from a recent volcanic eruption, a young reporter leaves Reykajvik to investigate on her own, unaware that an innocent person’s life hangs in the balance. Ari Thor Arason and his colleagues on the tiny police force in Siglufjordur struggle with an increasingly perplexing case, while their own serious personal problems push them to the limit. What secrets does the dead man harbour, and what is the young reporter hiding? As silent, unspoken horrors from the past threaten them all, and the darkness deepens, it’s a race against time to find the killer before someone else dies.

Blackout takes place in June 2010, following the events of Snowblind, the first book in the Dark Iceland series. Ari Thór Arason, the protagonist, is in his second year as a member of the tiny police force in Siglufjörður, a small fishing town in a narrow fjord with the same name on the northern coast of Iceland. He is still struggling to acclimate to the Siglufjörður while dealing with unhappiness over his fizzled relationship with his former partner, Kristin.

When an American tourist discovers the body of a man someone beat to death next to a summer house in nearby Skagafjörður, the lead detective in Akureyri investigating the murder, calls on Ari Thór and his boss Tómas, Siglufjörður’s police inspector, to assist with the investigation since the victim lived and worked in Siglufjörður.

Besides another murder investigation for Ari Thór, Blackout offers two other story threads of interest. One concerns a dark secret from the past of Hlynur, the third member of the Siglufjörður police force and the other that involves a new character, Ísrún, a Reykjavik journo with a dark secret of her own.

As in Snowblind, Ragnar Jónasson again brings his own distinctive blend of Skandi noir crime fiction to English-speaking readers with a murder mystery at the edge of the Arctic Circle. Also, like the first novel, Siglufjörður and the surrounding areas of far northern Iceland serves as much as another character as a setting. The plot is satisfyingly taut and suspenseful. As much as I enjoyed Jónasson’s debut in this series, this second offering was even better.

As interesting a character as Ari Thór is, Ísrún is my favorite character in this book. She already has a lot on her plate even before Jónasson reveals the dark secret from her past near the end of the novel. She quickly attracts the reader’s interest and later on, the reader’s sympathy. While Hlynur’s circumstances are mostly elaboration on something the first book touched on, the situation with Ísrún is an actual plot driver.

There are plenty of twists and unexpected happenings in Blackout to satisfy the armchair sleuth who enjoys trying to solve the whodunit before the detective, but the identity of the killer in this one isn’t nearly as interesting an unexpected as the why behind the murder.

This book is a must read for fans of Nordic noir who enjoy the writing of authors like Jo Nesbø and perfectly suitable for anyone who loves a good murder mystery. The English translation is more the British than an American version of English, but that doesn’t distract in the least.

I purchased the copy of the book used for this review.

Proper Reading Order of The Dark Iceland Series

For the benefit of those who might be interested in reading this series, ignore the book series numbers on Amazon and other book retailers. Here is the proper reading order of the English translations of these novels.

Snowblind (2010)

Blackout (2011)

Rupture (2012)

Whiteout (2013)

Nightblind (2014)

Winterkill (2020)

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Book Review: The Lantern Boats by Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The Lantern Boats by Tessa Morris-Suzuki is a fascinating take on life in post-World War II Japan that is intelligent, subtle, and thrillingly emotional.

As a rule, I don’t read much historical fiction even when there is a criminal element to it. That’s somewhat surprising since when I do read historical fiction I almost always enjoy it. I gave The Lantern Boats a miss when I saw it available on NetGalley, but sometime later I saw it featured in an Amazon book marketing email and decided to read it. I am glad I did. While “atmospheric” is a descriptive term we see way too overused in literary circles these days, this is a book where I think it definitely applies.

The Lantern Boats

by Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Publisher: Joffe Books

on April 6, 2021

Genre: Historical Fiction

ISBN-13: 9781789317473

Pages: 258

Paperback and electronic book versions available

Elly Ruskin is trapped between worlds. Half-Japanese, half-Scottish, she is deported from Australia to Japan after the war, but Tokyo is a city Elly barely knows. In a whirlwind romance, she falls in love with a Scottish journalist and they marry.

Kamiya Jun is a teenage war orphan from the lost Japanese colony of Karafuto. He is smuggled to the mainland on a fishing boat. Captured by the police, he is handed over to the occupation forces, and finds himself unwillingly recruited to work in an underground intelligence unit run by a maverick American officer.

Now Elly thinks her husband is having an affair, and her suspicions will lead her down a treacherous path that will put everyone in danger. Jun might be the only person who can help her.

An absolutely beguiling story of intrigue and the human spirit set against the backdrop of Japan in transition.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki’s novel opens in Tokyo in 1951 with the observance of Toro Nagashi, often referred to by the alternative name “The Festival of Recovery,” a summer tradition in which people make wishes and float paper lantern boats down a river. In Asakusa, this takes place at Sumida Park, where lanterns are released from Shinsui Terrace, near Azumabashi Bridge, to commemorate those lost to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. The reader encounters the first hint of foreboding when our attention is drawn to a dead body floating down river amongst the tiny lantern boats.

I loved the history of 1951 Tokyo that Morris-Suzuki vividly paints for us in the pages of the book. I also enjoyed learning about so much that was all new to me, the meaning of the lantern boats and the political climate of those past times in Japan. The book is a gripping, entertaining read that is part murder mystery and part a story of intrigue, love, and betrayal. The author has richly drawn the characters in the book, especially the two major characters, Kamiya Jun, a teenage war orphan, and Elly Ruskin, a half-Japanese and half-Scottish woman Australian authorities deported back to Japan after the war.

While The Lantern Boats is a beautifully written and enchanting story, there is, however, also a sense of frustration and injustice that the bittersweet ending brings. I recommend the book to readers who enjoy historical fiction, especially that covers the period at the end of World War II.

I purchased a copy of the book used for this review.

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Review: The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jónasson

The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jónasson—face-paced suspense and quality writing from one of today’s top crime fiction authors.

The Girl Who Died

by Ragnar Jónasson

Publisher: Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Company

Publication Date: May 4, 2021

ISBN-13: 978-1-250-79373-7

336 pages

Print, electronic, and audiobook versions.

Una wants nothing more than to teach, but she has been unable to secure steady employment in Reykjavík. Her savings are depleted, her love life is nonexistent, and she cannot face another winter staring at the four walls of her shabby apartment. Celebrating Christmas and ringing in 1986 in the remote fishing hamlet of Skálar seems like a small price to pay for a chance to earn some teaching credentials and get her life back on track.

But Skálar isn’t just one of Iceland’s most isolated villages, it is home to just ten people. Una’s only students are two girls aged seven and nine. Teaching them only occupies so many hours in a day and the few adults she interacts with are civil but distant. She only seems to connect with Thór, a man she shares an attraction with but who is determined to keep her at arm’s length.

As darkness descends throughout the bleak winter, Una finds herself more often than not in her rented attic space—the site of a local legendary haunting—drinking her loneliness away. She is plagued by nightmares of a little girl in a white dress singing a lullaby. And when a sudden tragedy echoes an event long buried in Skálar’s past, the villagers become even more guarded, leaving a suspicious Una seeking to uncover a shocking truth that’s been kept secret for generations.

“Teacher Wanted At the Edge of the World.”

Ragnar Jónasson, the author of the bestselling Dark Iceland series, set in and around Siglufjörður, and featuring Detective Ari Thór, returns with a standalone thriller that has an attention-grabbing concept behind it. Una, a young woman just short of thirty, has never come to grips with her father’s premature death. After showing promise as a medical student, Una decided she didn’t want to be a doctor after all and instead became a teacher. But she cannot secure employment offering more than a pay slip to pay slip existence, and she cannot face another winter staring at the four walls of her shabby Reykjavík apartment.

When Una’s closest friend, Sara, shows her an advertisement in the local paper for a teaching position in the tiny, isolated fishing village of Skálar, Una thinks the position might offer a chance for her to make a fresh start and get her life back on track. She applies for the job and gets hired almost immediately. Sure, she reasons, Skálar is a remote hamlet with a population of only ten souls, far from Reykjavík and almost at the end of the world on the Langanes Peninsula. But the teaching contract is only for the winter. If things don’t turn out to her liking, she can always return home. What could possibly go wrong?

Feeling hopeful, Una embarks on the long drive to Skálar. But the closer she gets to the village, the more remote it seems. When she finally arrives, feeling a sense of foreboding and with her old car seemingly on its last legs, Una doubts the wisdom of her decision. Still, Salka, the woman who hired her seems welcoming. She is the mother of one of Una’s new students, a class comprising only two girls. Salka provides Una’s accommodations, an attic flat in her home, which seems adequate.

It doesn’t take long before Una realizes the other inhabitants of Skálar aren’t nearly as welcoming as Salka. She finds the hamlet a close knit community that seems distrustful of outsiders. Strange occurrences begin in the attic of the house. A sudden tragedy echoes an incident from the village’s distant past. The villagers become even more guarded and less accepting of Una. Eventually, she discovers why. The people of Skálar share some awful secrets.

From the start, The Girl Who Died seems almost cinematic. So, it didn’t surprise me when the book brought to mind an old 1955 American crime thriller film, Bad Day at Black Rock, directed by John Sturges and starring Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan. The premises of the film and Jónasson’s novel are similar. A stranger comes to a tiny town that possesses a terrible past the inhabitants want to keep secret, by any means necessary. The Girl Who Died also has something of a Stephen King feel to it.

I’ve been a fan of Ragnar Jónasson since reading Snowblind, the first book in the Dark Iceland series. The Girl Who Died showcases the same brilliant writing style as found in the Ari Thór novels. In this book, Jónasson introduces us to most of the characters on a first name only basis, which curiously seems to make our interactions with them even more intimate than if we knew their surnames. I particularly liked that aspect.

Jónasson also gives us a bit of added insight by putting us into the heads of two additional narrators.

“He had never killed a man before. Had never come close, despite his sinister reputation.”

Early on, we get two quick glimpses from the perspective of an unidentified male character hired by a criminal gang to murder two gang associates who have fallen out of favor, and later, a recurring look from the view of a nameless woman who the police arrest and the court eventually convicts of the murders committed by the anonymous male even though she was innocent of the crimes. Near the end of the book, we learn the identity of the unnamed male murderer, but the identity of the wrongfully convicted woman remains a mystery.

The sparing use of the nameless murderer’s perspective early in the book makes sense as it gives us additional insight into the overall story when we learn the man’s identity and his role in the plot near the book’s conclusion. But I found the recurring appearance of the anonymous female narrator less interesting.

The anonymous woman’s perspectives didn’t seem closely related to the plot or overall story beyond informing us of her wrongful conviction for murders she didn’t commit. After her first two appearances, everything about her jail confinement experiences and angst over spending time in prison for crimes she hadn’t committed could be removed with no impact on the plot or general story. Perhaps I just missed something, but I never understood why the author gave that character the recurring emphasis he did.

The plot is far from predicable. Expect nice twists, nail-biting suspense, and a touch of the paranormal that helps move the plot forward but doesn’t overpower. The verdict—don’t miss this one if you enjoy face-paced suspense and quality writing from one of today’s top crime fiction authors.

The Girl Who Died is due out May 4, 2021. It is available now for preorder from your favorite bookseller.

I received an advance copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley for the purposes of this review.

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Review: The Darkest Hours by Margaret Murphy

The Darkest Hours by Margaret Murphy—a psychological thriller that grips from start to finish.

review-the-darkest-hours-by-margaret-murphy
The Darkest Hours

by Margaret Murphy

Publisher: Joffe Books

Published: Mar. 14, 2021

Genre: Thrillers / Psychological

ISBN-13: 978-1789317442

Pages: 308

Available in print and electronic versions.

In the darkest hours, he will come for you.

Two women are missing already.

Snatched by a prowler in the night.

Brilliant psychologist Christine Radcliffe fears she may be next. Or at least that is what she tells Detective Alan Jameson.

But Jameson already has the prime suspect in his sights.

And it’s someone much closer to Christine than she wants to admit.

Who is she protecting?

When two women go missing, the authorities learn that there is a connection. Both are social workers who were both once associated with a children’s home where there was a scandal. That leads the police to investigate the women’s past clients, including parents and children sent to the home who are now, ten years later, adults. The police zero in on one possible suspect in the abductions, Philip Greer, a parolee who in his youth was one of the troubled children the missing social workers worked with.

When detectives attempt to interview him at home, Greer, still emotionally disturbed as an adult, has a melt-down. He assaults them and does a runner. That’s when his foster sister, educational psychologist Dr. Chris Radcliffe, gets involved. Knowing Greer perhaps better than anyone and fearing Greer might hurt someone or get hurt in a confrontation with the police, she searches for Philip herself, hoping to find him before the police do. Once Radcliffe comes to the attention of DCI Alan Jameson, he discovers she was also associated with the same children’s home at the same time as the missing women and fears she may become the abductor’s next victim.

Once they meet, Radcliffe aids DCI Jameson in the investigation to a degree, but still pursues her own separate unorthodox investigation to clear Philip Greer as a suspect. As she grows closer to exposing the villain’s identity, she faces threats to her life, and events that expose her own troubled childhood when she was abused by her father. The stakes escalate to the breaking point once Chris confronts potential suspects, all young men who were troubled youths connected to the children’s home at the time of the scandal.

The Darkest Hours is a psychological thriller that pits both the police and a psychologist as an amateur sleuth against an extremely dangerous serial killer. It’s truly difficult to summarize the book in only a couple of paragraphs since there is so much going on in this tense, suspense-filled thriller. Not only do we have the police’s desperate struggle to identify the suspect and find the missing social workers before it’s too late, we have Chris Radcliffe putting herself in harm’s way by confronting suspects alone while she is also dealing with her demons from the past.

I was disappointed initially once I felt I’d worked out who the villain was about three-quarters into the book (and I had) because it seemed too obvious. Though that part felt predictable, I kept reading, assuming there would be a twist. But in the end, there was no twist, which made the conclusion less than satisfying. Still, the rapid-fire pacing and edge-of-suspense makes the book a solid thriller that pushes the reader to keep turning the pages. Had I not started reading the novel so late during an afternoon, I would have felt compelled to finish it in a single sitting. The authentic perspective of an educational psychologist—one which Murphy weaves in comfortably and knowledgeably—makes this an authentic feeling read.

The characters themselves are all believable, with lots of detail about things going on in their personal lives that make them feel real. The investigation by both the police and Radcliffe aren’t dependent on any super-sleuth skills. It’s all fairly straightforward logic and an investigation that seems sensible. The very human characters make the story much more real, which is particularly important given some of the difficult moral and emotional topics that this novel tackles.

The Darkest Hours is a solidly plotted, page-turner of a thriller. Murphy does an excellent job of keeping it tightly paced without it feeling forced or contrived, or like the characters are in unreasonable amounts of danger. The peril and tension fit well with the story and the circumstances, and make this novel very easy to immerse yourself in. It’s definitely a book that you should pick up if you are a psychological thriller fan.

I purchased a copy of the book used for this review.

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Review: Murder in an Irish Churchyard by Carlene O’Conner

Murder in an Irish Churchyard by Carlene O’Conner—Dedicated fans of light, small town murder mysteries with an Irish flavor may enjoy following O’Conner’s sassy heroine, Siobhán O’Sullivan as she negotiates the change from amateur sleuth to official police investigator.

Murder in an Irish Churchyard

by Carlene O’Conner

Publisher: Kensington Books

Publication Date: Feb. 27, 2018

Genre: Mystery & Detective / Cozy Mystery

ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-853-1

Available in print, electronic, and audiobook versions.

After joining the police force of her small Irish village, a local woman must investigate the murder of a stranger in this cozy mystery novel.
 
After solving two murders in the County Cork village of Kilbane, Siobhán O’Sullivan has accepted her calling and decided to join the Garda Síochána. The O’Sullivan clan couldn’t be prouder, but there’s no time to celebrate as she’s already on another case, summoned by the local priest who just found a dead man in the St. Mary’s graveyard—aboveground. 
 
He’s a stranger, but the priest has heard talk of an American tourist in town, searching for his Irish ancestor. As Siobhán begins to dig for a motive among the gnarled roots of the victim’s family tree, she will need to stay two steps ahead of the killer or end up with more than one foot in the grave.

Murder in an Irish Churchyard, set in Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, is the third of seven novels (the first I’ve read) in Carlene O’Conner’s Irish Village Mystery series. Siobhán O’Sullivan has been running the family bistro while taking care of her five siblings since their parents died. Formerly, an amateur sleuth, in this installment, Siobhán has just graduated from Templemore Garda College and is anxiously anticipating her first day of work as a guard at the Kilbane Gardai Station. The Gardai or “The Guards” is the national police service of the Republic of Ireland.

At the beginning of the book, the village priest, Father Kearney, summons Siobhán O’Sullivan to St. Mary’s Churchyard in the middle of the night, where the body of a man lies in the snow. Someone fatally shot the victim, later identified as American Peter Mallon, the patriarch of the wealthy Mallon family. The Mallon family is in Ireland to explore Peter Mallon’s Irish roots for a documentary. Clues are scarce, but there are plenty of suspects with fingers pointed at everyone involved in filming the documentary. It dismays Siobhán to discover that she must report directly to her ex-boyfriend, Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery, temporarily called up from Dublin to help investigate the murder, but pleased Flannery permits her to take part given her status as a rookie. The pair forge an uneasy alliance as they question suspects and uncover a tangled web of family betrayal and unresolved heartbreak.

Now Garda O’Sullivan, Siobhán meets up with her ex-boyfriend, Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery, a good-natured detective sergeant detective, and becomes a member of his investigative team. Together, they work to connect the pieces of the intricate mystery behind Peter Mallon’s murder. It makes the case even more complicated because of Siobhán’s partnership with her former flame, who she has never quite gotten over.

O’Conner takes her time unraveling the strands of the mystery, keeping the reader on edge all the while. Through transportive details of Kilbane and County Cork and charming Irish culture, she fashions an immersive setting for the narrative, which moves nimbly through the murder investigation while providing glimpses of O’Sullivan’s past relationship with Flannery.

Featuring a memorable cast that includes the Mallon family, a cheeky documentary filmmaker, suspects galore, and Siobhán’s endearing siblings, Murder in an Irish Churchyard, makes for interesting reading. Siobhán is a first-class protagonist—a dogged crime investigator and appealing every woman with plenty of smarts and heart.

Dedicated fans of light, small town murder mysteries with an Irish flavor may enjoy following O’Conner’s sassy heroine, Siobhán O’Sullivan as she negotiates the change from amateur sleuth to official police investigator.

I purchased the copy of this book used for this review.

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Review: Tell No Lies by Allison Brennan

Tell No Lies by Allison Brennan, a sizzling thriller guaranteed to please readers who enjoy a complex crime tale.

Tell No Lies

by Allison Brennan

Published by Harlequin

Published: Mar. 30, 2021

Genre: Mystery / Thriller

ISBN-13: 9780778331469

Pages: 432

Available in print, electronic, and audiobook versions.

Allison Brennan’s newest thriller features the edgy young detective Kara Quinn and the ambitious special agent Matt Costa as part of a mobile FBI team brought in to investigate the unsolved murder of a college activist and its possible ties to high-stakes crime in the desert Southwest.

Something mysterious is killing the wildlife in the desert hills just south of Tucson. When a college intern turned activist sets out to collect her own evidence, she, too, ends up dead. Local law enforcement is slow to get involved. That’s when the mobile FBI unit goes undercover to infiltrate the town and its copper refinery in search of possible leads.

Quinn and Cos find themselves scouring the desolate landscape, which keeps revealing clues to something much darker—greed, child trafficking and more murder. As the body count adds up, it’s clear they have stumbled on much more than they bargained for. Now they must figure out who is at the heart of this mayhem and stop them before more innocent lives are lost.

I’ve read some great things about Allison Brennan’s Quinn and Costa Thrillers and was keen to read the second novel in the series, Tell No Lies – a book about family secrets, desperation, and greed. The book almost reads like a story ripped from the headlines given the Biden administration’s new, open border policy that has created an unprecedented surge of migrants flowing across the southern border – circumstances that are further enriching the Mexican drug cartels who control the Mexican side of the border and also engage in the human trafficking of impoverished women and children.

While I haven’t read the first book in the series, Brennan provides plenty of background on the key characters to help the reader get acquainted, which makes Tell No Lies more than a capable standalone novel. In a manner reminiscent of the way Michael Connelly’s makes Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard co-protagonists in his latest Harry Bosch novels, Brennan does the same here putting us alternately into the heads of LAPD detective Kara Quinn and FBI special agent Matt Costa so that we benefit from both character’s perspectives as the story unfolds.

Quinn, temporarily assigned to an FBI task force headed by Costa, is working in an undercover role in a small town in southeastern Arizona as part of an FBI investigation into the murder of a college intern and environmental activist. The team believes someone killed the young woman because she was searching for evidence to link a local copper refinery with illegal dumping of toxic materials that was leaching into the water supplies and killing wildlife. But as the investigation goes forward, the FBI team uncovers clues that show something much darker is going on and the investigation grows increasingly complex.

Brennan does a fabulous job holding the reader’s attention with a tight, well-thought plot, a host of interesting, realistic characters, and the rapid-fire pacing and breathtaking action thriller fans expect.

Tell No Lies by Allison Brennan, is a sizzling thriller guaranteed to please readers who enjoy a complex crime tale with plenty of action that keeps the pages turning.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for the purposes of this review.

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Review: The Hiding Place by Paula Munier

The Hiding Place by Paula Munier—Must Love Dogs

the-hiding-plkace-by-paula-munier
The Hiding Place

by Paula Munier

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (Minotaur Books)

Published: Mar. 30, 2021

Genre: Traditional Mystery / Detective

Pages: 336

Available in print, electronic, and audiobook versions

When the man who killed her grandfather breaks out of prison and comes after her grandmother, Mercy must unearth the long-buried scandals that threaten to tear her family apart. And she may have to do it without her beloved canine partner Elvis, if his former handler has his way….

Some people take their secrets with them to the grave. Others leave them behind on their deathbeds, riddles for the survivors to solve.

When her late grandfather’s dying deputy calls Mercy to his side, she and Elvis inherit the cold case that haunted him―and may have killed him. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It’s a Pandora’s box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most dear.

The timing couldn’t be worse when the man who murdered her grandfather escapes from prison and a fellow Army vet turns up claiming that Elvis is his dog, not hers. With her grandmother Patience gone missing, and Elvis’s future uncertain, Mercy faces the prospect of losing her most treasured allies, the only ones she believes truly love and understand her.

She needs help, and that means forgiving Vermont Game Warden Troy Warner long enough to enlist his aid. With time running out for Patience, Mercy and Elvis must team up with Troy and his search-and-rescue dog Susie Bear to unravel the secrets of the past and save her grandmother―before it’s too late.

The Hiding Place by Paula Munier is the third installment in the Mercy Carr Mystery series. I haven’t read the first two books in the series, but when I started seeing this novel popping up on the crime fiction websites I visit regularly, the buzz intrigued me, so I requested a copy to discover for myself what all the excitement was about.

The granddaughter of a former sheriff, Mercy Carr, pays a visit to her late grandfather’s dying deputy, August Pitts, at his request. Pitts asks Mercy to investigate the case of a missing girl that neither he nor her grandfather had solved. Mercy is determined to work the cold case once she learns the details surrounding it from her grandmother, Patience. Eventually, her sidekick, Troy Warner, a Vermont game warden helps her with the investigation. Mercy has developed a reputation for solving mysteries that have baffled local law enforcement.

Mercy is an interesting character, a former U.S. Army MP who saw action in Afganistan who is still struggling to come to terms with the death of her fiance, another soldier and a dog handler killed there. Honoring his last request, Mercy adopted her late fiance’s work dog, a Belgian shepherd named Elvis, who figures prominently in the book. The novel predominantly unfolds from Mercy’s point of view. She’s still living in her childhood hometown in Vermont. After reading the synopsis, I assumed Mercy was a private investigator, but after reading the book discovered she is more a Jessica Fletcher like amateur detective.

Mercy’s personal life is a bit of a mess. She is struggling not only with her fiance’s death, but with the fallout from her experiences in Afghanistan as a soldier. Both her parents are lawyers, and her somewhat over bearing mother had expected Mercy to follow her parents into law, but Mercy had no interest in becoming an attorney and intends to blaze her own trail. This is also a source of friction. Her relationship with Troy Warner which had previously leaned more toward romance than only friendship is strained. But a part of her wants to forgive him for a lie of omission, and to further explore the possibilities.

What began as an inquiry into the cold case becomes more complicated when the man who killed Mercy’s grandfather escapes from prison and then someone leaves a bomb on her grandmother’s doorstep that explodes and injures both Mercy and her her grandmother, the local veterinarian. A fresh murder occurs and a decades old murder is uncovered and for Mercy and Troy, the present and past intersect in ways they could not have imagined.

Munier puts us occasionally in the heads of other characters–usually significant ones to give us some hints or clues to help us work out the whodunit.

There are a few undercurrents simmering in this book, including themes around grief, loss, love, and trust.

I enjoyed this novel even though I hadn’t read the first two books in the series. Munier has given us some interesting and likeable characters in Mercy, as well as her sidekick Troy, her grandmother Patience, her mother Grace and a host of dogs including Elvis.

The Hiding Place is a traditional mystery with a well-crafted plot, a very conservative story featuring a comfortable social structure (a small town in Vermont), which is shockingly disrupted by a crime. An amateur attempts to solve the mystery through traditional investigative techniques. Like all traditional mysteries, even given today’s rather permissive society, the novel contains no offensive language, dramatic violence, perversion, or sex.

This book is perfect for traditional mystery fans who enjoy a touch of romance and prefer books that don’t contain swear words or other offensive language. And dogs—we mustn’t forget the dogs. You must love dogs.

St. Martin’s Press published the Hiding Place by Paula Munier under the Minotaur Books imprint, and the book is available from March 30, 2021.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.

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