Reader's Feast - Crime Fiction

Next of Kin
Price: AUD 29.99 Author: Elsebeth Egholm

Originally published in Danish in 2006, Elsebeth Egholm's novel has been translated into English to great acclaim. Set in Denmark at a time when the threat of terrorism looms, an anonymous package is delivered to Dicte Svendsen, an investigative journalist. The package is actual video footage of a beheading. Amidst the wave of anti-Muslim hysteria, Svendsen joins forces with her old friend, Inpector John Wagner, to investigate the case.

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The Devotion of Suspect X
Price: AUD 29.99 Author: Keigo Higashino

When an abusive husband is murdered, his estranged wife's neighbour, a mathematics teacher, becomes involved in attempts to conceal the body and cover-up the crime. A battle of wits ensues between the teacher and an advisor to the police with whom he is acquainted.

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Second Son
Price: AUD 32.99 Author: Jonathan Rabb

Set in Spain in the 1930s, this is a mixture of hardboiled crime fiction, historical political fiction and love story. The main character, Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner, has lost his job in Berlin and has travelled to Spain in search of his lost son. Although he becomes aware of his son's involvement with spies, gunrunners and fascists, Hoffner nonetheless believes in him and wants simply to find him and make him safe.

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The Dead of Summer
Price: AUD 32.95 Author: Mari Jungstedt

Quiet island life on Gotland is once again interrupted by death, when the body of a jogger is found with several bullet holes in it from a Russian pistol. Detective Anders Knutas and reporter Johan Berg are equally interested in what is behind this brutal murder, and the one that follows it.

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The Hypnotist
Price: AUD 29.99 Author: Lars Kepler

Three people from the same family are murdered. Older brother Josef, is the only witness to their slaying, but, he is in a coma. Detective Joona Linna decides to have Josef hypnotised on the off-chance he can remember something. This sets off a chain of events more terrifying than the slaughter of the family. There are a couple of red herrings in this book that add to the frightening tension. This is the first in a series, which I look forward to reading. - Reviewed by Sheila

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The Devil's Edge
Price: AUD 32.99 Author: Stephen Booth

The Peak District in Yorkshire provides an atmospheric setting for Booth's novels featuring police characters, Ben Cooper and Diane Fry. In this latest, Cooper is recently promoted when a series of home invasions takes place. The ensuing investigation will before long, take on a dreadfully personal aspect for Cooper.

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An Uncertain Place
Price: AUD 32.95 Author: Fred Vargas

Commissaire Adamsberg is one of my favourite fictional detectives. He is urbane, quirky, and 'very French'! Adamsberg is in London at a conference when the appearance of a pair of shoes outside a cemetery, with the severed feet still incased in them, begins a series of events that take him to Serbia. I find Vargas' books thoroughly entertaining. - Reviewed by Mary D

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The Wreckage
Price: AUD 32.99 Author: Michael Robotham

Concurrent storylines come to a tense and unexpected intersection in this latest novel from Michael Robotham. In Baghdad a journalist is investigating a series of bank robberies that put him in enormous and life-threatening danger. Meanwhile, ex-policeman Vincent Ruiz is at a bar in London when he goes to the aid of a woman, only to have her rob him.

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Carte Blanche
Price: AUD 32.99 Author: Jeffery Deaver

Ian Fleming's estate and publishing company approached Jeffrey Deaver with an offer he simply could not refuse - to write the next James Bond novel. Carte Blanche is that novel. Set in contemporary times, the notion of anyone, even a spy, having carte blanche, seems unlikely in the face of concerns of global security and information accessibility.

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Mercy
Price: AUD 29.95 Author: Jussi Alder-Olsen

Carl Morck has been relegated to creating a 'new' department after a disastrous last case in the Homicide Division which saw colleagues killed and another left permanently disabled. Morck's first case (which no-one expects him to solve) is one of missing person, Merete Lynggaard, who was last seen five years earlier. She was a government minister about whom little was known beyond her public persona. The reader realises very early in the novel that Merete is in fact still alive but imprisoned. Carl has no sense of this, assuming he is on the hunt for a body and an explanation for murder. This is a thoroughly original novel that so captivates the reader as to make him/her feel unease through the chapters depicting Merete's imprisonment and how she is responding to what has befallen her. Morck's fall from grace, his demons over what happened to his colleagues, and his refusal to allow his bosses to sideline him are wonderfully represented. - Reviewed by Mary D

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The Troubled Man
Price: AUD 32.95 Author: Henning Mankell

Haken von Enke is grandfather to Linda Wallender's child. When von Enke, a retired naval commander, goes missing, Kurt Wallender begins the search for the man and the secrets in his past.

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The Leopard
Price: AUD 32.95 Author: Jo Nesbo

I never respond to publishers' stickers on books broadcasting messages such as "the next Stieg Larsson" as appears on the jacket of The Leopard; I always feel I am being 'sold' a line. In this particular case, it is especially inappropriate as I, like many prolific crime fiction readers, have been reading and enjoying Jo Nesbo's books long before we had ever heard of Stieg. Harry Hole, Nesbo's main character, is both your quintessential world-weary detective and a highly original creation. Set in Oslo, we actually first meet Harry in this book as he is spiralling deeper into the world of opium dependency amidst the very worst of Hong Kong's underground criminal society. He is desperately needed at home to track down a particularly brutal killer of young women. Coerced into returning to Oslo on the pretext of his father's imminent death, Harry soon realises he can neither escape his past nor control the future.

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The Gallows Bird
Price: AUD 32.99 Author: Camilla Lackberg

Patrik Hedstrom is trying to understand how two apparent car accidents are in fact two murders cleverly disguised as mere accidents. He also has to contend with a reality television show being filmed in town. When one of the 'house mates' from the show is found dead, Patrik cannot discount the possibility that the deaths are connected. A convert to Camilla Lackberg's novels, I find the character of Patrik to be refreshing in that he is young, happily married, and modest. In other words, a significant departure from the classic crime detective persona.

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Drawing Conclusions
Price: AUD 29.95 Author: Donna Leon

Commissario Brunetti uncovers a link between a nursing home and an organisation that helps women at risk when he is called to investigate the death of an elderly woman, even though it is ostensibly a simple case of death from heart failure.

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1222
Price: AUD 29.99 Author: Anne Holt

Originally published in Norway in 2007, Anne Holt's 1222 has as its setting a violent snowstorm in Oslo. A train derails high in the mountains and the passengers are forced to move to a hotel. Thinking themselves safe, they are unprepared when one of them is brutally murdered.

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