Karin Fossum

Bad Intentions

Detective: Konrad Sejer

Setting:     Norway

Time:        Current

Genre:      Scandi Noir

Once again, a different tone in a Karin Fossum novel. There is no gruesome killing. There is no race to find the killer before there are too many bodies. For a detective story, one might actually say it was gentle.

A young man staying with two friends by a lake on a weekend's outing from the hospital where he was being treated for depression, falls out of a rowing boat they are all in at night and disappears into the muddy waters. No attempt is made to save him. His friends choose to invent a fiction that he has disappeared from the cabin overnight and may have committed suicide and this is what they report to the police. There are allusions to some nefarious deed the three of them have been involved in.

When the body is fond, the story of the possible suicide does not ring true to Konrad Sejer, but he has no proof otherwise.

Later another body is found in another lake, that of a young man missing for some months. Is this death accidental. How are the three friends connected to it?

The story is well written and the plot unfurls nicely.

Rating A

Web site referring to Karin Fossum  although this book is not listed

Previously Read

Dont Look Back

What the Devil Holds

The Caller

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

Someone To Watch Over Me

Lawyer: Thora Gudmundsdottir

Setting:  Reyjkavik, Iceland

Time:     2010

Genre:   Scandi Noir  

This is the fifth of Sigurdardottir's stories with lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir as the investigating character. As with many Icelandic novels, the consequences of the 2010 recession seep into the plot.

She is asked by a serial killer in a secure hospital to investigate the case against a fellow inmate, Jakob,  who has Down's Syndrome and who has possibly been wrongly placed in the unit  following a fire at the residential home where he lived and which killed five people.

As she investigates, it becomes apparent that both the case pursued against Jakob was not as thorough as it might have been and that other people may well have had motive to raze the residential home, particularly following the discovery that someone had managed to get a comatose patient pregnant.

The plot is tightly controlled and moves to a logical but unpredictable climax.

And of course the serial killer has his own motive for promoting the investigation.

Rating A

Previously Read

Last Rituals

My Soul to Take

Ashes to Dust

The Day is dark

Web reference

Kjell Erikson

The Demon of Dakar

Detective:  Ann Lindell
Setting :     Upsala, Sweden
Time:         Current
Genre:       Scandi Noir

This s a detective story with some interesting aspects. There is a murder of a person related to drug trafficking which leads Lindell and her colleagues into pursuing links to his partner, the owner of a restaurant, the Dakar of the title. However the killer is in many ways the part of a parallel  but related plot which Lindell does not realise until late in the novel.

It was in fact a revenge killing by a Mexican,whose two brothers had been inveigled, out of financial necessity to carry drugs from Mexico to Sweden. One is dead. The other is in a Swedish jail.  The brothers' third word plight is portrayed sympathetically and when the imprisoned brother makes a fortuitous escape that they should both manage to return safely to Mexico seems only right.

The more important thing for Sweden and Upsala is that the owner of the Dakar is caught for his drug activities but not without some covert help from a rival drug baron who is muscling in n the area.

There is currently no website for Kjell Eriksson 

Previously read
The Hand that Trembles
The Princess of Burundi

Aline Templeton

Cradle to Grave

Detective: Marjorie Fleming

Setting      Galloway

Time        Current

Genre       Police Procedural

This is the seventh of the Templeton Marjorie Fleming series with a complex, intriguing and well structured plot. 

 Events centre on a wealthy man's intention to allow the peninsula/headland where he lives to be the venue for an open air pop concert. In torrential weather the bridge to the peninsula collapses, the phone line goes down  (and it's a dead spot for mobiles) and a coastal landslip destroys a ow of cotages on the beach. Fleming and her Sergeant, McNee, are  trapped on the headland as the bridge collapses under their car.

Amongst the people on the headland there is a young woman from the cottages  who has had the good fortune to avoid the landslip. There is something strange about her and something she is apprehensive about. there's the wealthy man of course and his drug dependent daughter and her husband, still in anger mode about the death of their baby daughter, and their spoiltt and obnoxious son. One of his guests is a well known pop star who embarrassingly features in Fleming's past. 

Eventually the bodies start piling up and there's some serious criminal activity surrounding the wealthy man and word s that a hit man has been despatched but to get rid of who?

To add to the complications, Fleming and McNee, normally close colleagues are estranged. McNee develops a bad working relationship with a new fenmale detective who is keeping her personal life quiet. At the same ime McNee is arring his own personal problem.

It all unravels rather nicely.

A

Aline Templeton's Website

Previously read novels 

Cold in the Earth

The Darkness and the Deep

Lying Dead

Lamb to the Slaughter

Evil for Evil

Michele Giuttari

The Black Rose of Florence

Detective: Michele Ferrara

Setting     Florence

Time        Current

Genre      Police Procedual

This is the fifth of Guittari's novels featuring Michele Frrrara, the head of the Florentine Flying Squad. As this was a position that Guitarri had himself held, the first books, dealing with the Mafia and other crime syndicates seemed based on Guittari's own career. It's not so certasin abot this one. Instead of dealing with a Mafia type organisation, Ferrara is up against a masonic/black magic cult and he very nearly steps into Dan Brown territory.

The opening murder which gives the book it's title involves the death of a wealthy businessman's daughter whose body has been left carefully arranges with a black rose between her legs although there has been a previous incident where a woman's body has been disfiogured while she lies in the morgue and soon after there's a riutual murder in a decnsecrated church. various clues at the crimes and a warning note left at his home lead Ferrar to believe he is being sent a message from the killer, or killers.

The novel ends with more than a hint that there will be sequels until the Back Magic group is brought to book.

Previously Read

The Death of a Mafia Don

A Florentine Death

Death in Clabria

A Florentine Deatrh

 Michele Guitari's website

Mons Kallentoft

Savage Spring

Detective: Malin Fors
Setting:      Linkoping, Sweden
Time:         2010
Genre:       Scandi Noir

This is the fourth of the Malin Fors sequence. As with the previous three, the novel is as much about Malin Fors coping with her personal issues, her recovery from alcohilism, her relationship with her daughter and father and coping with her mother's death.  The crime to be solved is a bombing in the middle of Linkoping resulting in the death of two children. Fors and her colleagues pursue investigations into the possibility of terrorist activity, including a brief consideration of an Islamist threat, before the reasons for the explosion take a darker tuirn.

As in the earlier books Kallentoft uses the device of the murder victims  observing  Malin Fors as she pursues her enquiries: a strange perspective but an eerily effective one.

Rating A

Mons Kallentoft's website

Previous novels
Midwinter Sacrifice
Summertime Death
Autumn Killing

R C Bridgestock

Deadly Focus

Detective Jack Dylan
Setting     Urban England, possibly Yorkshire
Time         Current
Genre       English Police Procedural

This is the first of Bridgestock's Jack Dylan novels. I suspect it will be the last I read. The prose is over fulsome and immature and filled with trivial decriptions.

The plot itself is reasonable, concerning the apparently unrelated murder of two school children. Eventually a connection is made between the two crimes which ultimately leads to the arrest of the murderer. This happens relatively early and much of the later half concerns the interview to get a confession. Tackled at length it has some intersst.

Dylan's relationship with his partner is explored in too much detail.

Web referece to author