Aline Templeton

Evil for Evil

Detedtive: Matjorie Fleming
Setting       Galloway
Time          Present
Genre        Police Procedural

The crime that triggers the story is the discovery of a relatively recent skeleton in a cave on an island just off the Galloway coast.  In the local village there is resentment shown to the "incomer" who has inherited a local farm and the island.  The opening of the novel is a bit confused as a cast of characters is introduced including a woman from Mancheste, with something in her past who cladestinely leaves her husband and takes up residence in a holiday chalet nearby.

Once the characters are established hoever the plot builds nicely and as Fleming and her team investigate various options open up and the novel is well crafted although when the villain is revealed I'm not too sure of the credibility of the rationale.

In the backstory the rivalries amongst Fleming's team continues and her personal life is complicated by her daughter's first disastrous experience of university and the pressures her demanding job place on her family in general

Rating A

Aline Templeton's website

Previously read
Cold in the Earth
The Darkness and the Deep
Lying Dead
Lamb to the Slaughter

Liza Marklund

Last Will


Investgative Journalist: Annika Bengtzon
Location:                     Stockholm, Sweden
Time:                          Present
Genre:                         Scandi Noir

This is the sixth of Marklund's Annika Bengtzon Novels which have followed her career from fist being appointed as a reporter. This plot begins with a murder of a member of a Nobel Prize selection committee by a hired assassin at the annual awards ceremony in front of Bengtzon

As the plot develops there is a questioning of the relationship between the integrity of the Nobel Prizes and the commercial pressures on medical research. A sub plot is developed as a terrorist cell takes credit for the murder and the Swedish Government is too happy top collude with the CIA to allow the rendition of suspect to Jordan.

Although the hired assassin returns to cover her mistakes, this is incidental to the main concern of the plot and the way Bengtzon becomes the target of the killer happens very rapidly at the end as an almost afterthought and is the least satisfactory aspect of an otherwise impressive thriller.

The underlying story ARCs concern 
a) Bengzon's professional development and the integrity of tabloid journalism competing with emerging electronic media 
b) Benggzon's personal life with the stresses on her marriage as she copes with her job, two small children and a husband with his own developing career as a Government adviser working on anti-terrorist legislation and which at one stage leaves hi trying to justify the rendition.

Rating A++ (I read it non stop in a day)

Liza Marklund's web site

Previously read, 
(in chronological but not published order)


Prime Time
The Bomber
Red Wolf

Arni Thorarinsson

Season of the Witch

Investigative Journalist: Einar
Location:                     Akureyi, Iceland
Time :                         Present
Genre:                         Scandi-noir

The protaganist, Einar (no other name given) has been transferred from Reykjavik to the northern town of Akureyi as part of a bid to increase regional sales of his paper covering local issues. The early stages seem as much concerned with his settling in as the development of what will be the main plot.  The story doesn't seem to get going until at least a third of the way in.

It concerns the apparent accidental death of a local businessman's wife and the murder of a student. Eventually the cases converge. Set against the background of an imminent General Election and Iceland's economic problems, there is also underlying concern about the impact of immigrant labour.

This appears to be the only Thorarinson novel traslated into English so far.although there are oher novels translated into other European languages

Rating B

Karin Fossum

The Caller

Detective: Konrad Sejer
Location:  Norway
Time:        Present
Genre;      Scandi-Noir

There's something quite different about Fossum's novel, her eighth featuring Konrad Sejer. This is not about a murder and its solution. It's about a maladjusted and negelected young man who vents his discontent on the world through seemingly harmless but still malicious practical jokes such as covering a sleeping baby with animal blood,  posting  a premature death notice for an old lady or sending a mother rushing to a hospital following a false call that her daughter had had a traffic accident. Fossum explores the impact of the hoaxes on the lives of the victims, particularly the parents of the blood covered child.

There is no intentional murder but the hoaxes seem to culminate in the horrific death of a child which may or may not have been the fault of the hoaxer followed quite quickly by the accidental death of the young man's much loved grandfather, as far as the police know at the hands of the hoaxer's drunkard mother. But the reader knows better. 

Eventually the hoaxer meets his fate and only the little girl who has been one of his victims knows the truth.

Rating A

Web site about Karen Fossum

Other Inspector Sejer Books read previously

Don't Look Back (1)
When the Devil Holds (3)

Louise Penny

A Trick of the Light

Detective: Armand Gamache
Time: Present
Setting: Three Pines, Quebec
Genre: Police Procedural

This is the seventh of Penny's Gamache Novels which, like some of the previous ones, is set in the imagined idyllic village of Three Pines (so small it's not even on the map) not far from Montreal.

The main plot involves the murder of a bitchy art critic in the garden of the home of an artist and her long time former friend during a party packed with artists after the artist's successful show preview.The investigation explores jealous rivalries in the art world an delves the victim's past relationship with a number of characters.

Much of the underlying story ARC harks back to the trauma that Gamache and his 2iC endured during a violent incident in an earlier novel but also devlops the charcters of many of the Three Pines' residents introduced in previous novels

Rating B+

Louise Penny's Website

Previously Read Novels in the Series : Still Life (Gamache 1)

Mons Kallentoft

Autumn Killing

Detective: Malin Fors

Time:        Present 

Setting      Linkoping, Sweden

Genre       Scandi-Noir

This is the third in the Malin Fors series. Ostensibly its about solving the murder of a wealthy lawyer but as much as anything it is about Fors' descent  into alcoholism and the increasingly strained relationship with her teenage daughter and her daughter's father.

Kallentoft plaits together three narratives in working towards his conclusion. Besides the straight plot of the criminal investigation, As in the earlier novels he uses a device of the murder victim observing Fors and her colleagues at work and also employs a sequence of flashbacks, primarily into the perpetrators history  but mixing it with that of the original victim. Throughout the novel Kallentoft also explores the reflections on events past and present of a number of characters.

The underlying ARC about Fors' problems is paralleled by an exploration of the difficulties many of her colleagues face in their personal lives.

Rating A+

Mons Kallentoft's website 

Previously read novels in the series

Midwinter Sacrifice

Summertime Death

J Papachristou


The Halcyon Murder (1)
Murder in the Chapel (2)

Detective      Aliki Notis

Setting          Kalini, A fictional Greek Island

Time             Present
Genre           Mediterranean Noir

Possibly the start of a longer sequence of novels set on a fictional Greek island part way between Greece and Turkey.

Both novels involve Aliki Notis, a young female detective (in the first one with a partner) sent from Athens to investigate a homicide on the island. The island itself is coming to terms with the impact of tourism and the exploration of the cultural tensions between an essentially conservative and traditional lifestyle of the islanders and the liberalism that does or could come with the tourism is key to the novels. The cultural tensions between the islanders and their Albanian immigrant population are also apparent with gossip casting an Albanian as a likely perpetrator.

Notis herself is sympathetic to the sensitivities. She is a modern Greek pursuing a career in the police against her father's traditional view of a woman's role.

Rating A

Peter James

Not Dead Yet

Detective Roy Grace

Setting     Brighton

Time        Present
Genre      English Noir

This is the eighth in the Roy Grace novels set in Brighton, so far all including "Dead" in the title.

The plot centres around a Madonna-like mega-star who is in Brighton to film a historical and romantic epic to be filmed in the Brighton Pavilion and whose life is under threat.

There's also a sub plot involving a dismembered corpse found in chicken droppings on a poultry farm. Apparently a separate story from the main plot, James brings them together effectively as the novel comes to its climax

As with most sequences of novels involving the same characters there is a developing story ARC.

Grace's partner, Cleo nears the end of her pregnancy while Grace seeks to have his long missing wife, Sandy, declared dead to enable his marriage to Cleo. The novel starts to reveal more about Sandy's disappearance and her impending threat to Grace's security.

Professionally Grace solves the issue of the embarrassing leaks from his investigations to the local crime reporter Spinelli, This is possibly solved too easily and the uncovering of the guilty party concludes within two chapters with minimum effort to throw suspicion on one of Grace's team.

Rating   A

Peter James' web site

Novels in the sequence read previously
Dead Simple
Looking Good dead
Not Dead Enough
Dead Man's Footsteps
Dead Tomorrow
Dead Like You
Dead Man's Grip