Review Roundup: Adler-Olsen, Anderson, Cahoon, Costantini, Cross, Daly, Hiekkapelto, Hjorth & Rosenfeldt, Johnstone, Mina, Sundstol

Here are eleven reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, all have appeared on the blog since last time*.

*I am trialling a new approach at the moment in that all reviews will appear on the Euro Crime blog rather than being separate files as part of the Euro Crime website. I feel this will give the reviews more exposure and make them more findable in a search engine. The reviews will appear daily ie Monday to Friday, with roundups on Sundays. The website will continue with bibliographies etc, the only change is that the reviews will be on the blog.

I'd be interested in any comments about this new approach.

You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page and follow on Twitter, @eurocrime.

New Reviews

Michelle Peckham reviews Jussi Adler-Olsen's Buried tr. Martin Aitken, the fifth in the Carl Morck and Assad series set in Copenhagen;

Amanda Gillies reviews Lin Anderson's The Special Dead, the eleventh in the Rhona Macleod series (check back on Tuesday for a Q & A with Lin);

Not Euro Crime, but as part of an occasional special feature, I review Lynn Cahoon's Guidebook to Murder, the first in a series set in a coastal Californian town;


Lynn Harvey reviews Roberto Costantini's The Root of all Evil tr. N S Thompson, the middle part of a projected trilogy;




Also set in America is Scottish author Mason Cross's The Samaritan, reviewed by Terry Halligan;

Terry also reviews Bill Daly's Double Mortice the second in the DCI Charlie Anderson series set in Glasgow;

Ewa Sherman reviews Kati Hiekkapelto's The Hummingbird tr. David Hackston which introduces Finland's Detective Anna Fekete;


Geoff Jones reviews Hjorth & Rosenfeldt's The Man Who Watched Women tr. Marlaine Delargy, the second in the Sebastian Bergman series;

Amanda also reviews The Jump by Doug Johnstone, and concludes "I am lost for superlatives to describe this book";

Michelle also reviews Denise Mina's Blood Salt Water, the fifth in the DS Alex Morrow series

and Laura Root reviews Vidar Sundstol's The Ravens tr. Tiina Nunnally, the conclusion to his Minnesota Trilogy.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, along with releases by year.

US Cozy Review: Guidebook to Murder by Lynn Cahoon

Regular readers might know that I enjoy an occasional US cozy to break up my Euro Crime reads and my wandering mouse has meant that I've downloaded several US cozies from Netgalley. I thought, therefore, I would introduce a new but infrequent slot for US Cozy reviews.

Guidebook to Murder by Lynn Cahoon, April 2014, Kensington

GUIDEBOOK TO MURDER is the first in the 'Tourist Trap' mystery series, with the fifth out this month (August 2015).

Five years ago, Jill Gardner, a family lawyer, moved from the big city to the small coastal Californian town of South Cove to own and runs the coffee/book-shop, Coffee, Books, and More. One of Jill's friends, the elderly Miss Emily, owns a rundown house which the Council feels is an eyesore and are continually on her to mow the lawn, fix the fence etc. It seems the council has had enough and have hired an outside lawyer firm to serve Miss Emily with a condemnation order.

When Jill goes to visit, she is horrified to find Miss Emily, dead in her bed. Convinced that this is not a natural death she swears to find the murderer. The police, in the shape of hunky Detective Greg King are not so sure that the death is suspicious.

When Jill is named heir, things get even more complicated. Jill moves into her friend’s house and has thirty days to get it up to code. She hadn't bargained on death threats, vandalism, lost heirs and disappearances to slow her down. The only positive note is that Det. Greg is spending a lot of time with her, though she knows he is off limits as one of her building contractors said he was the best man at Greg's wedding…

Though Jill says she will investigate, she doesn't actually do that much. The pace of GUIDEBOOK TO MURDER is leisurely with much time devoted to painting and refurbishing of her new home. There are several side-plots involving stolen paintings, gold coins and her ageing aunt who comes to help out/take-over the shop but it never feels that urgent and disappointingly (to me) very little of the book is set in the book-shop. On the plus side is the time afforded to the reader to get to know Jill and also her will-they won't-they romance with Greg. As this is the first book, I feel that the scene has been set and its players introduced and I'm hoping that in the next book there will be a tighter mystery and less time spent in the equivalents to Home Depot.

Karen Meek, August 2015