New Reviews: Blake, Camilleri, Colfer, Judd, Lewis, Orsi, Quinn, Robertson, Tegenfalk

The range of reviews covers country-house, spy, police-procedural, historical, thriller and the settings include England, Germany, Burma, Argentina, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the USA.

Here are the new 9 reviews:

We continue our reviews of the reissue of four of Nicholas Blake's titles with Susan White reviewing Thou Shell of Death, a country-house mystery set at Christmas;

Rich Westwood reviews International Dagger winner Andrea Camilleri's The Track of Sand, tr. Stephen Sartarelli now out in paperback;

Lynn Harvey reviews Eoin Colfer's Plugged also out in paperback;

Terry Halligan reviews Alan Judd's Uncommon Enemy which has just been longlisted for the CWA's Steel Dagger;

Maxine Clarke reviews Simon Lewis's Border Run blurbed as "Lord of the Flies meets The Beach";

Amanda Gillies travels to Argentina for Holy City by Guillermo Orsi, tr. Nick Caistor calling it an "absolute belter";

Susan also reviews Susanna Quinn's Glass Geishas set in Japan;

Terry continues to be impressed by Imogen Robertson's historical series with the fourth, Circle of Shadows recently published

and I recently reviewed on the blog Stefan Tegenfalk's Anger Mode, tr. David Evans the first part in a Swedish trilogy.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

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

Review: Anger Mode by Stefan Tegenfalk

Anger Mode by Stefan Tegenfalk translated by David Evans, August 2011, 430 pages, Nordic Noir Books, ISBN: 1908233001

Anger Mode is the first book in a trilogy from Swedish author Stefan Tegenfalk.

The book opens with a section from 2004 in which a horrible car accident kills two adults and a ten-year-old girl. The timeline then switches to and remains in 2009. A series of murders takes place in which the killer (a different person each time) in an inexplicable fit of anger murders someone close to them both physically and often emotionally. The killer then has no memory of the incident. These unusual cases reach the desk of experienced and maverick Stockholm County Detective Inspector Walter Grohn. Called in to assist him from a new special investigations unit, RSU, is Jonna de Brugge a young analyst who has been through the police academy.

They make some progress on the case but then several things happen. Walter is rushed into hospital and subsequently suspended from his job and the Swedish Security Service SAPO take over the case. SAPO's investigations take a different tack altogether and leads them to a group of so-called Muslim extremists.

The book then switches between SAPO investigator Martin Borg and his illegal attempts to show the world what the Muslims are up to (in his eyes) and Walter and Jonna and their attempts to find the common link between the deaths. Both narrative streams are linked (and eventually collide) by the actions and presence of amoral journalist Jorgen Blad who's been blackmailing a source in the police department.

Though the underlying whodunnit and why can be quite easily deduced by the police they are hamstrung by legality and have to resort to underhand methods to get the information they need to make the deduction. The inclusion of the SAPO storyline lengthens the book and I presume is necessary for the continuing bigger story, which is more than just a police investigation.

I enjoyed the book and in particular the parts involving Walter and Jonna who make a great team despite their differences. Jonna is a strong and intelligent character who stands up for herself and Walter is a loveable rogue who breaks all the rules, but is of course a damn fine cop and can play the political system when he needs to. There is humour to be found in Anger Mode particularly from Walter but also other characters. For example, this from the less than bright villain Tor:

"At first glance, the man did not seem to present much of a threat. Even so, Tor was on his guard when he bent over him to see how hard he had taken the blow. He had read the Lisbeth Salander novels and knew not to judge a book by his cover. If a thin anorexic could floor a blond giant, then this little fatso could take Tor, despite the fact that he was over two metres tall and had been a hardened criminal for thirty-five years."

In conclusion Anger Mode is very readable, though perhaps slightly too long and I personally could have lived without the SAPO storyline but I'll be able to judge that storyline better when I've read the remaining two books. The second part, Project Nirvana, is published 12 July 2012.

If you have a Kindle (UK) then snap this one up for 85p (at the moment).

New Scandinavian Crime Fiction in August

Here are some new to me authors in translation which will be published next month. I've listed the translator where known. Blurbs are from amazon or the author's website.

I shall be posting my 2012 International Dagger Speculation list shortly.

Anger Mode by Stefan Tegenfalk (1 August, Nordic Noir)
Two cars collide head-to-head on a country road with little traffic. The collision is violent. Ten year old Cecilia is catapulted through the windscreen and killed. Five years later, criminal detective Walter Grohn gets a perplexing case on his desk - one dead taxi driver and his killer who has no idea why he committed the crime. The first murder is followed by others, all equally as brutal and inexplicable. Together with his talented assistant, Jonna de Brugge, he untangles threads that lead back to the very core of the Swedish justice/judicial system.

(Stefan Tegenfalk, born 1965 in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is currently living, makes his debut with the book Anger Mode which is the first book of a trilogy about the cynical criminal detective Walter Gröhn with the Stockholm police, and Jonna de Brugge from the Special Investigations Unit, RSU.)

The Glitter Scene by Monika Fagerholm (9 August, Other Press (US edition))
Teenage Johanna lives with her aunt Solveig in a small house bordering the forest on the outskirts of a remote coastal town in Finland. She leads a lonely existence that is punctuated by visits to her privileged classmate, Ulla Bäckström, who lives in the nearby luxury gated community. It isn’t until Ulla tells her the local lore about the American girl and the tragedy that took place more than thirty years before that Johanna begins to question how her parents fit into the story. She sets out to unravel her family history, the identity of her mother, and the dark secrets long buried with her father. In the process of opening closed doors, others in the community reflect back on the town’s history, on their youth, and on the dreams that play in their minds. Soon a new story emerges, that stirs up Johanna’s greatest fears, but ultimately leads to the answers she is searching for. The Glitter Scene is a riveting mystery that explores the roles of truth and myth, reality and fiction, and the repercussions of family secrets.


Dregs by Jørn Lier Horst, tr Anne Bruce (12 August, Sandstone Press Ltd)
The small town of Stavern around midsummer: an amputated left foot in a trainer is washed ashore. And then another one. And another one. All in all four left feet in a week. The four amputated feet form the core of an unfathomable mystery.

“Dregs” by Jørn Lier Horst is the sixth instalment of the Wisting crime series set in southern Norway, and it is an outstanding addition to the ongoing saga of Police Inspector William Wisting, his journalist daughter Line, and the team of criminal investigators at Larvik police station.

The author, who has himself several years’ experience as a Norwegian policeman, brings his knowledge to bear on the descriptions of police procedures and methodical detection work, while using his linguistic dexterity and impressive authorial technique to build up tension, delineate character and make excellent use of dialogue to bring the twists and turns of this narrative to life, engaging the empathy of the reader and ensuring that the novel is a memorable, taut and realistic thriller.

(Jørn Lier Horst was born in 1970, in Bamble, Telemark, Norway. He has worked as a policeman in Larvik since 1995. His debut novel in 2004, Key Witness, was based on a true murder story. The William Wisting novel series – Key Witness (2004), Goodbye, Felicia (2005), When the Sea Calms (2006), The Only One (2007), and The Night Man (2009) – has been extremely successful in his native Norway as well as Germany and the Netherlands. Dregs is his first book published in English.)