As Christmas comes to the west cost of Iceland, a corpse is found in a fish farming pond. Detective Hildur Rúnarsdóttir and trainee Jakob Johanson barely have time to start their investigation before another body is discovered. And soon a third.
While investigating the case, Hildur’s lost sister weighs heavy on her mind. Meanwhile, Jakob travels to Finland for the hearing of his fraught custody battle, that leaves him facing dire consequences. As the number of deaths continues to grow, Hildur and Jakob are desperate to catch the killer before they strike again.
If I said to you ‘horse vampire crime spree’ you’d probably think I’d gone bonkers, but that’s just a small part of what might be going on in this Icelandic thriller from Satu Rämö. When a body is found suspended by hooks in an Icelandic fish farm in the run up to Christmas, Detective Hildur is put in charge of the investigation, by her objectionable boss Jonas. Hildur’s partner Jakob’s mind isn’t on the job but on his custody battles, so she’s working alone a lot of the time and we’re in it with her, party to her thoughts and theories. So when a second victim has her hair burned off with a candle, a strange idea starts to form. Could the attacker be basing their methods on the Icelandic tradition of the Yule Lads? I’m an avid QI fan and without it I would have known nothing about this particular tradition of thirteen mischievous troll-like creatures who come down from the hillsides and play tricks on people. The translations of their names include Spoon Licker, Pot Scraper and Sausage Swiper, something I have never forgotten since. The case is interesting psychologically, but there’s a lot more going on here and I found myself sidetracked by the lives of the detectives. I did find it a bit slow to get going and I think it was when these family stories developed that I became gripped.
Jakob is rather fascinating – a taciturn character who has the unlikely hobby of knitting. In fact he’s so compelled to knit, that he’s able to do it in the car while Hildur is driving and in waiting rooms. It’s clearly displacement activity and we learn that Jakob has a son with his estranged partner Regina who has taken him out of the country to Finland. Although Jakob is fighting this, he’s now at the mercy of a foreign legal system and is having to fly over to attend court which affects his job and leaves Hildur coping alone. In the midst of her investigation Jakob calls Hildur to give her some shocking news, he has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Regina and the new man in her life have been shot dead in their vehicle while in a car park. Worse than this, a witness has described someone who looks remarkably like Jakob as being in the vicinity before the shooting. He has access to a gun and is in a contentious court battle with the deceased, he knows his chances aren’t good and asks for Hildur. Surely, if she had even the smallest suspicion of Jakob being guilty, Hildur wouldn’t fly to his aid without question?
Underneath everything, this is a novel about family. The estrangement between Hildur and her sisters is so painfully believable and we can see the effects of generational trauma in the family. Their mother was an alcoholic, leading to neglect and one sister being very badly burned. We’re reminded of those small traditions families have that make celebrations personal and bind us together. Yet the story is also full of secrets people are keeping from each other and things they can’t talk about, until the right person comes along to unlock that emotion.
“She knew from experience that she had a hard time forming attachments with anyone who hadn’t known grief.”
This was such an eloquent description of how grief feels, almost like living on a different plane of existence to others. I felt this deeply when in the depths of grief and ever since I’ve been unable to do small talk and my tolerance levels for certain people and activities have lowered significantly. Some doors can only be opened with experience. What kept me reading was Jakob’s situation and the incredibly difficult opening flashback of three boys playing by a lake, a quietly devastating scene with ripples that must have spread through the community for years. The haunting and secretive nature of that event sets the tone for the rest of this novel, a perfect reading choice for those who like their Christmas nostalgic and a little bleak.
Translated by Kristian London
Meet the Author
Hæ hæ! My name is Satu Rämö, I’m a Finnish-Icelandic author of bestselling nordic blue crime series called HILDUR. International rights are sold to 20+ countries and d during the first 2,5 years HILDUR books have sold over one million copies worldwide.
I was born in Finland in 1980 and moved to Iceland twenty years ago as an economics exchange student. Instead of macroeconomics I ended up studying Icelandic culture, literature and mythology.
Living in Iceland, I have written extensively about Nordic culture and life in the North Atlantic, blending my firsthand experiences into my novels.
I live with my family in the small town of Ísafjörður in northwest Iceland. I love ice cream, rye bread and sparkling wines. I drink my coffee with cream as often as possible.
My crime fiction debut Hildur (2022) changed the game for me as an author, totally. HILDUR-series is Icelandic-Finnish nordic blue crime fiction that takes place in a small village in the Westfjords of Iceland. Nordic blue is similar to nordic noir but more human. The stories are from the darker sides of the Nordic society but they also follow how people are dealing with each other in life in general.
Finnish Take Two Studios will shoot the HILDUR series in Iceland with an Icelandic co-production.
Turku City Theather stages HILDUR on their Main Stage in autumn 2024–2025.
I just love writing!
You can chat me your thoughts in Instagram at @satu_ramo I hope to hear from you 🙂
ONE TRIAL. FIVE TRUTHS. BUT ARE THEY READY FOR HERS?
When a waitress is charged with murdering four men at an exclusive private club, her personal life and upbringing are thrust into the spotlight. During the trial, people closest to Katie start to question what they know about her.
Her father remembers the sweet schoolgirl.
Her childhood friend misses her kindness and protection.
Her lover regrets ever falling for her.
Her lawyer believes she is hiding something.
A journalist is convinced she is a cold-blooded killer.
To each of them she’s someone different. But is she guilty?
This thriller grabbed me straight away and never let go! The pace was fast, with short punchy chapters containing the narratives of five men each linked in some way to a woman called Katie. Each man has his own name for this woman and their narratives tell us her story as they see it. John is her father, Gabe is her childhood friend, Conrad is her lover, Tarun is a lawyer and Max is a journalist. Each one thinks they know her, each one presents a different face. But who is she and which is her real identity? Is she a combination of all five or nothing like this at all. It’s a timely, compelling and addictive story that you’ll want to finish in one go.
The murder that has taken place at March House has killed four very important men at once. Lucian is a businessman and owner of March House, a private members club for the richest and most influential men in the UK and their guests. His guests that night were Harris Lowe, Lucian’s new right hand man, Dominic Ainsworth MP and Russian millionaire Aleksander Popov. They appear to have been poisoned with an incredibly expensive bottle of brandy laced with poison. Only one person has been serving the party all evening and that is waitress Katie. She is soon under arrest, but what possible motive could she have had to kill these men? Yet when police apprehend her not long after she’s left work for the evening she is reported as saying ‘they got what they deserved’. Is this an admission of guilt or an acknowledgment that whoever killed them, did the world a favour?
It’s hard to get to know Katie because she is simultaneously a wildcat, a conspiracy theorist, a squatter, a farmhand, a waitress or the accused. These are just some of the descriptive words used to label her by the men in her life, but we have to remember that they are viewing her through their own lens. How much can we trust their impressions of her and do we accept that they’re telling the truth? She’s clearly beautiful, even without the ‘right’ clothes she has something that men desire. Conrad feels this when she’s helping out with the pigs on her uncle’s farm but then is shocked when she turns up at his club and his boss Lucien clearly desires her too. Both of them see a sex object rather than the young, troubled woman in front of them. John still sees his little girl, unable to equate the terrible crime she’s accused of with his daughter. However, we learn that she’s always been sympathetic and perhaps a little soft where his daughter is concerned whereas her mother sees her as a naughty child who grew up still getting into trouble. If anyone sees a more rounded Katie it’s her childhood friend Gabe, even if he is in love with her. She pulls him into her internet wormhole of conspiracy theories and he follows her down to London, ready for direct action to change everything that’s wrong with society. Yet when he gets there, Katie is living in a squat and has moved on in her belief system. Gabe has fallen under the spell of the elusive Mr E who appears in the comments under YouTube videos, disparaging the rich and the corruption within the system. He’s saddened to find her working at March House, the centre of online rumours about secret cabals and the ‘real’ people who run the world. He sees the Katie who had these beliefs as the real Katie and now she doesn’t believe or belong to him anymore. Similarly, Conrad sees her as this beautiful, innocent farmhand:
“You’d taken on a hazy, pure quality, a perfume ad of a person. In the cafe you looked ordinary.”
Every so often a book comes along that captures a moment and this definitely does. It isn’t the first book I’ve read where online radicalisation is part of the story and how dangerous it can be to become drawn in by conspiracy theorists. We tend to use the word grooming when it refers to children, but young adults and people with learning disabilities are also vulnerable and political or conspiracy theories seem to be changing the way people view the world without them even leaving the house and experiencing it for themselves. The echo chambers created when we look at certain subjects means people can be left thinking they have the majority viewpoint, no matter how crazy or extreme the ideas. Conspiracy theories are popular because it gives explanations for events that are incredibly complex and totally outside of our control. The realisation that a small group of individuals could hijack a few planes and attack the most powerful cities in the USA is almost too scary. People didn’t want to feel that their country was that vulnerable and open to attack, so they created stories that their own government must have been involved. Mr E directs his followers to March House as the real seat of power and their list of members could easily feed into that narrative. There is no doubt that some dodgy deals and introductions go on there, but the difficulties facing the country are international and much more complex than a few smoking men in a private room, but for some, life being random chaos is a scary prospect.
At the centre of all this is Katie, a lost young woman unsure of who she is and what she wants from life. With no plan or purpose, she lurches from one crisis to the next never feeling safe or grounded. The novel made me angry, especially with Conrad and Max who want to use and exploit Katie. Conrad has the audacity to suggest his connection to her was flimsy at best:
“I could barely even remember your real name. You had come onto me so hard, when I looked back, that in a way it was embarrassing. I was embarrassed for you”.
I was furious and desperately wanted him pulled apart in court by her barrister Tarun. It reminded me of how women who are seen as controversial, such as Caroline Flack or the Duchess of Sussex, are presented and packaged by the media. There’s misogyny at the root of this and it’s the same with the male characters in the book who package Katie into roles and personalities that absolves them for the harm they cause and assuages their guilt. This is brilliantly done by the author who doesn’t put a foot wrong in her characterisation and the pace of this novel. It’s fast moving and she doesn’t waste a single word, keeping you gripped by what might happen next. We’re never sure on what has happened or who is responsible and the courtroom scenes are brilliant meaning it was impossible to put down – there was one late night where I completely wrote off the following day for anything useful. This is powerful and will make you angry, but you won’t be able to stop those pages turning.
Meet the Author
Nicci Cloke is an author and editor based in Cambridgeshire. Her novels have been published in twelve languages, and she has previously worked as a nanny, a cocktail waitress and a Christmas Elf. Before being published, she was a permissions manager, looking after literary estates including those of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and T. S. Eliot, and was also communications manager at the Faber Academy.
As the clock ticks towards the millennium – and the threat of a potentially new apocalyptic reality – Jonny Murphy is sent to investigate the discovery of a child’s body on a deserted swamp island, fifty miles from London. What he finds is more than just a tragedy, it’s a warning. Something big is coming … Can Jonny stop it? Should he?
London, Christmas 1999. The world is on edge. With the new millennium just days away, fears of the Millennium Bug are spiralling – warnings of computer failures, market crashes, even global catastrophe. But fifty miles east, on the frozen Blackwater Island, a different kind of mystery unfolds. A child’s body is discovered on the bracken, untouched by footprints, with no sign of how he died. And no one has come forward to claim him.
At the International Tribune, reporter Jonny Murphy senses something is off. Police are appealing for relatives, not suspects. An anonymous call led officers to the scene, but no one knows who made it. While the world fixates on a digital apocalypse, Jonny sees the real disaster unfolding closer to home. With just twenty-hour hours before the century turns, he heads to Blackwater – driven by curiosity, desperation, and the sting of rejection from his colleague Paloma.
But Blackwater has secrets buried deep in the frozen ground. More victims – some dead, others still paying for past sins. And when Paloma catches up to him, they stumble onto something far bigger than either of them imagined. Something that could change everything. The millennium is coming. The clock is ticking. Can Jonny stop it? Should he?
I went into this novel quite late, so I was incredibly pleased to find that this is definitely a gripping, read in one sitting type of thriller. This is Sarah Sultoon’s third novel featuring investigative journalist Jonny Murphy, but could very easily be read as a standalone. For people like me, old enough to be an adult at the time of the possible ‘millennium bug’, I remember the panic and the predictions that planes would fall out of the sky, banking systems would collapse and the apocalypse would begin. I remember the money spent trying to mitigate its potential effects but like the British seem to do, we gathered with friends and family anyway and set off fireworks in the freezing cold and precisely nothing happened. It feels like an innocent time now, when we think that 9/11 came only 18 months later, followed by going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and then years of austerity followed by a pandemic. It’s certainly been turbulent ever since. My dad was convinced that the bug was a made up bogeyman, allowing technology companies and their shareholders to clean up by proposing to ‘fix’ something that didn’t exist. Maybe he was right. We don’t call him Fox Mulder for nothing.
Here Sarah Sultoon has created a fast paced thriller that plays out in the days before Millennium Eve. The timing gives us a countdown, but believe me this story creates its own tension. The setting of Blackwater Island is familiar but alien at the same time. Situated in an inlet only 50 miles from London and with a direct route by boat into the Channel and the Thames this place is hiding in plain site. Beyond the last village, the terrain feels like the eerie marshlands at the beginning of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. The mist is so thick someone could be standing next to you and the black, viscous mud has the feel of quicksand. It sucks all explorers into its depths and is enough to put anyone off reaching the island itself. As if that wasn’t enough, the author brings elements of folk horror to the narrative as Jonny is warned off by very unfriendly and odd locals. The only place to stay is an old inn in the village, but the landlady isn’t very welcoming. She warns him that the only resident of Blackwater is Inka who is depicted in a framed picture behind the bar and on graffiti near the island:
“it’s apparently a picture of a ghost that’s been haunting Blackwater since the Dark Ages. Our landlady told me some mad story about a mythical Icelandic warrior named Inka with a diamond-tipped spear and a mermaid’s tail.”
Jonny is canny enough to know when he’s being warned away from something and it only sets his investigative skills tingling. On the other hand, actual protection for the crime scene is very thin on the ground. He meets the only police officer in the area and she feels like she’s been dumped in the backwaters of Essex with no support or back up. The facts are that the body of a boy was found on the island with no visible cause of death, but the weirdest part is that he was dressed like an extra from Oliver! His Victorian urchin clothing is so incongruous, but could mean anything from local amateur dramatics to time travel. It’s once Jonny manages to get on the island that answers start to come and it was nothing I’d considered.
Jonny is a rather fascinating character. He’s absolutely determined to track down his story and has defensive walls a mile high where friendship and romance are concerned. Yet he does have empathy and tries to take the honourable route where possible. He clearly has feelings for photographer Paloma, but has been determined not to pursue them, not wanting to inflict himself on someone else. What does he know about himself that makes him hesitate? Will the story always come first? The scariest part of the whole story is that it’s believable and the afterword really does show that sometimes, what feels far fetched, is only the beginning. Taking in biological experimentation and weaponry, black ops, government conspiracies and the price paid by the locals caught up in it, it’s the writing and the very real atmosphere at the time that makes this a believable story. Jonny’s mission becomes unbearably tense as he has to make it to the centre of London with the city’s ’River of Fire’ fireworks display under threat. Thousands are gathered to hear Big Ben strike midnight and the start of a new century. Jonny fears they may be the target, but there’s also the press area where Paloma is hoping to catch the display on camera, no matter his reservations he’s determined to save her. Events and emotions build and I was half expecting a huge explosion, but Sarah Sultoon is more subtle than that and the fear here is insidious. It warns us not to trust those in authority, to question and investigate everything – an instinct that in real life seems to have been lost since the pandemic. Jonny is a brilliant hero because he has that instinct still and a moral compass that guides his work, something that’s a rare combination. This is incredibly tense, gripping and packed full of action with the added nostalgia of millennium memories.
Out now from Orenda Books
Meet the Author
Sarah Sultoon is a novelist and journalist, whose prior work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. As passionate about fiction as nonfiction, she recently completed a Masters of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, adding to an undergraduate degree in languages, chosen mainly so she could spend time itinerantly travelling the world. She likes running, Indian food, cocktails, playing sport with her children and throwing a ball for her dog, order dependent on when the cocktails are consumed.
Ten years ago, the Harper family disappeared. Their deserted cottage was left with the water running, the television playing cartoons, the oven ready for baking. The doors were locked from the inside. Overnight, the sleepy village of Nighbrook became notorious as the scene of the unsolved mystery of the decade, an epicentre for ghoulish media speculation.
For crime journalist Naomi, solving the case has turned into an obsession. So now, with Ivy Cottage finally listed for sale, it’s her chance to mount an investigation like no other. And her husband and stepdaughter don’t really need to know what happened in their new home… do they? But Nighbrook isn’t quite the village she expected. No one wants to talk to her. No one will answer her questions. And as she becomes increasingly uneasy, it’s clear that the villagers are hiding something—that there is something very dark at the heart of this rural idyll. And the deeper she digs, the more it seems her investigation could be more dangerous than she ever imagined… In raking up the secrets of the past, has she made her own family the next target?
I came to this novel on the recommendation of another blogger and it’s certainly a page turner. Ivy Cottage isn’t the average house. It’s isolated from the village, tucked away in a forest clearing and inside it’s the archetypal haunted house – dated and untouched, full of cobwebs and creaking sounds. It feels like a house whose history is imprinted on the atmosphere. We also don’t know who can be trusted in this village. At first people are all smiles and welcome, so much so that Naomi takes cakes to the local cafe and the family gets to know local police officer Lloyd, who calls in to introduce himself. The tension is created by intervening chapters that delve into the past and cast doubt on characters that have seemed friendly in the present. They open up questions: why is a girl called Grace slipping out of the cottage in the dead of night and playing in the woods? Why is Lloyd watching? Is he trying to keep her safe or does he have more sinister motives for watching his ‘moonlight girl’. The author also creates disquiet in the reader with odd incidents that have no explanation. We don’t know who is responsible for locking Naomi in the attic one morning. Is her new stepdaughter Morgan resentful or actively dangerous? Who is the teenager talking to online? I found myself full of questions.
I did have a lot of sympathy for Morgan who doesn’t seem to be such a bad kid, considering her circumstances. I found myself cross with her father Ed and Naomi for destabilising her, especially when she’s already estranged from her mother. Naomi and Ed have married in a whirlwind, then have taken Morgan from everything she knows into the middle of nowhere. They’re barely in Ivy Cottage when Ed announces he’s travelling to Scotland to track down Morgan’s mother who we’re told is an addict and has a life full of drama. It’s not hard to work out that Morgan must feel abandoned by both parents and is now stuck in this creepy house with a woman she barely knows. I felt quite angry with Naomi already, but when we realise she’s dragged her new family into her scheme to investigate the previous owners it seems positively reckless. Not even Ed knows the house’s past so Naomi has started a marriage by lying to everyone. To put a vulnerable teenager into this dangerous environment is at best selfish and at worst callous. Morgan is sullen and angry, which is understandable. When Naomi’s sister turns up she encounters Morgan wandering in the night and decides to give her a few ‘home truths’ which I found particularly spiteful. It’s no surprise that Morgan has started talking to strangers on the internet and wanders outside at night to meet new friends like Dawn, not knowing that she’s putting herself in danger. Can she trust anyone in this village?
More tension is created by intervening chapters that delve into the past and the unusual life of a young teenage girl called Grace, part of the family who disappeared from this house. She has a very restricted life, plagued by unusual symptoms and even allergic to light. This level of control has led to her sneaking out at night and wandering through the forest, but out there she isn’t alone. Someone watches Grace and we’re not sure whether they’re benign or a danger. I’d worked out what was going on within the Harper family early on, but that’s only a small part of the mystery around Ivy Cottage and their disappearance. When Dawn asks Morgan to sneak out at night they play with an ouija board in the old church and Grace seems to speak to them. It unnerves Morgan but she’s not sure whether it’s a spectral Grace or Dawn she should be wary of. What we do realise is that there are still people lurking in the woods so Morgan and Naomi feel like sitting ducks. There are several twists and turns from here, with a double showdown coming – one for Naomi and Morgan and one in the past – it was nail-bitingly tense. I was also curious about the future of this whirlwind family if they came out of this alive. Would Ed forgive Naomi for lying to him and putting his daughter in unnecessary danger? Could they carry on living at Ivy Cottage? As the night of the Harper disappearance also unfolds I was on tenterhooks. The house was left with half-eaten food on the table as if they were spirited away with no warning. If Grace and her family came out of their ordeal alive, where are they and why did they leave the village? If they’re dead, then who is to blame? With mind games being played and a scene that may just have put me off cake, I’d have been packing my bags very quickly. I did feel there was a twist or two I didn’t need, but the author paints a brilliantly spooky atmosphere around the cottage and it’s hidden past. I didn’t know who to trust out of the villagers and my judgement was completely wrong! This was gripping and is one of those thrillers you’ll devour in a weekend.
Thomas and Mercer Jan 2022
Meet the Author
New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post and International #1 Bestselling Author. Shortlisted by the International Thriller Awards for best ebook 2017, the Killer Nashville Best Police Procedural 2018 and the Audie awards 2022. Over 1.8 million books sold.
Caroline originates from Ireland and now lives in a woodland village outside the city of Lincoln. A former police detective, she has worked in CID and specialised in roles dealing with vulnerable victims, high-risk victims of domestic abuse, and serious sexual offences. She now writes full time.
Caroline writes psychological and crime thrillers. Her stand alone thriller Silent Victim reached No.1 in the Amazon charts in the UK, USA and Australia and was the winner of the Reader’s Favourite Awards in the psychological thriller category. It has been described as ‘brilliantly gripping and deliciously creepy’.
The first in her Amy Winter series, Truth And Lies, is a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for TV.
As autumn deepens into darkness in Lidingö, on the Stockholm archipelago, the island is plunged into chaos: in the space of a week, two teenagers, the son of the island’s mayor and that of a powerful businessman, are brutally murdered. Their bodies are left deep in the forest, dressed in white tunics with crowns of candles atop their heads, like offerings to Saint Lucia. Maïa Rehn has fled Paris for Lidingö, where her husband grew up, trying to come to terms with the death of their only child in a car accident. But when the murders shake the island community, the former police commissioner is drawn into the heart of the investigation, joining Commissioner Aleksander Storm to unravel a mystery as chilling as the Nordic winter. As they dig deeper, it becomes clear that a wind of vengeance is blowing through the archipelago, unearthing secrets that are as scandalous as they are inhuman. But what if the victims weren’t who they seemed? What if those long silenced had finally found a way to strike back? How far would they go to make their tormentors pay? And you – how far would you go?
I loved the timing of this novel from Johanna Gustawsson, her second set on the island of Lidingö in the cold, dark run up to Christmas. Here she bases her murder mystery around the feast of St Lucia and it begins when a body is found in the traditional dress of the festival. The victim is wearing a white tunic that’s been slit up the back, with a red sash and a crown of candles representing the festival of light. It reminded me of the locally held Christingle services, where small children in white hold a symbolic orange with a lighted candle in it and a red ribbon meant to symbolise Christ’s blood and his role as the Light of the World. It was something I’d never encountered before, being Catholic it wasn’t part of our tradition, but it fits into the many festivals that bring light to the winter months such as Hanukkah and Diwali. The festival and the victim’s clothing make the scene of the crime even more dramatic and hard to forget. It also throws up immediate questions about whether the date or the costume is a message from the killer. Visiting French detective Maia Rehn offers her help to local commissioner Aleksander Storm and they begin to investigate together. It soon becomes clear that the killer isn’t finished with the island community and the pair must work very fast, prizing secrets from people who are reluctant to talk and digging up long buried events that will devastate and destroy lives.
One of the things I love most about this series is the atmosphere that the author builds. This is not the average crime novel, it definitely has a more Gothic feel that I would normally associate with folk horror.
“It was hardly an ocean this mere strip of sea. A moat more like – cutting Lidingo off from the life of the Stockholm mainland. A ghost infested moat, surrounding a poisoned island”.
This killing takes the community back several years to the murder and rape of a young woman dressed in her St Lucia costume. The victim is Jennifer, a well known and liked teenager in the community whose white dress and crown gives the impression of a angel in the snow. Jennifer was the daughter of Sophie Ackerman who bonds with Maia at a party, when they realise that both of them have lost a child. The pain and confusion of these unexpected and sudden losses have no descriptive word in the Swedish language, only the Sanskrit word ‘vilomah’ comes close, meaning ‘against the natural order.’ Motherhood and who we become when we lose a child is a theme of the novel and drives home that violent deaths affect a whole community. In fact, following the death of Jennifer Ackerman suspicions fell on her friend Gustav who found her body. The way the community treated Gustav, as well as the grief, caused him to commit suicide. It’s such an important theme that the novel’s opening takes us to a classroom on the island where Gustav’s mother holds everyone at gunpoint, blaming them for the death of her grief stricken son. These events and the darkening winter days hang heavy over the tiny island. Maia describes the loss of her son with such beautiful and haunting words that let us know he is still so present in her thoughts she almost expects him to materialise:
‘He’s everywhere around me, so I’m always waiting for […] a word, a sound, the slightest caress from him. I find myself sniffing the air for the scent of him’.
Sophie talks about her daughter Jennifer in the words of Cyrano de Bergerac, showing that she is still ever present for her too. It’s such a beautiful way of describing grief that comes in waves, some days it seems far away and other days it feels as if the loss was yesterday. I identified with this so much, knowing that even ten or twenty years on there are days when the grief feels painfully fresh. How much worse it must be with violent deaths where there are feelings of anger, guilt, resentment and so many questions left unanswered.
‘Her name is in my heart like a bell. Every time I think of her it’s like I can hear that bell ringing and ringing and the memories and feelings resurface every time’.
As the investigation unfolds it is clear that Maĩan and Aleks work quite differently, but complement each other. He is more of a facts person, whereas she picks up on emotion and her own feelings, heightened by tragedy, seem to have honed this skill. As an outsider she also seems more effective at getting people to talk, something that can be a struggle when a detective lives in the community they’re investigating. Their discoveries are both haunting and horrifying – especially a ‘trophy’ find that absolutely turned my stomach. Some of the themes were very timely, aside from the normal teenage themes of peer pressure, relationship angst and experimentation, there are also more up to date themes of incels, grooming and consent. I found it fascinating that Swedish law reform in 2018 placed the emphasis on positive consent so that rape was no longer defined by saying no, but the absence of actively saying yes. It recognises that when backed into a corner, freezing and becoming unresponsive are normal survival instincts and not consent, so threat and physical force don’t have to be present for an incident to be defined as rape. When we are finally taken to the night Jennifer Ackerman died it is hard to read, but that’s how it should be. This first incident is like a veil of darkness triumphing over light. It’s as if the island loses its innocence. I loved that the answers don’t come easily and the tendrils of the aftermath are everywhere. This is a vivid, symbolic and haunting crime story and the truth is devastating – a gradually revealed horror that has echoed down the generations of this isolated community.
Out now from Orenda Books
Meet the Author
Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawssonhas worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press and Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, has won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in nineteen countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France and is the first in a new series. Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.
October brought many several wonderful things, as birthday months so often do. As always we went away, this time for two weeks in Dumfries and Galloway for book shopping at Wigtown and fishing for my other half. We knew we were onto a winner as we turned off the single track road onto a farm track that was a mile long! I’ve never stayed somewhere so quiet and because it was a Dark Skies area we got to stargaze too, with a meteor shower being a high point of the fortnight. I finally got to check out The Bookshop, run by author Shaun Bythell. The daily occurrences in the shop are depicted in his three books and I grabbed the latest one along with some second hand purchases too. As well as all the shops in Wigtown we stumbled across a little gem called Gallovidia Books in Kircudbright. This was a treasure trove of new fiction, poetry and children’s books as well as a good collection of biographies. The owner was very knowledgeable, definitely a real book lover and he recommended one of my choices above as his wife was reading it and was torn between savouring and devouring it. We alternate on holiday, when it’s a fishing day I stayed on the farm and had a fabulous view to enjoy while reading and getting some of my own writing done. After a couple of months without a kitchen it was a joy to come home to everything finished so I now have a functional kitchen again.
Bought on recommendation from the owner of Gallovedia Books I couldn’t wait to read this atmospheric book so dived straight in, This felt like the perfect autumn read – a sinister mystery filled with atmosphere and a slowly building sense of menace. Evelyn Dolman embarks on his honeymoon with his new wife Laura and it proves to be anything but the honeymoon he expected. With Laura settling in early for the night at Palazzo Dioscuri he decides to go for a walk and perhaps a drink somewhere close by and she suggests Florian, a cafe that first opened in 1720 and still serves Venetian visitors today. A chance meeting is followed by a night of drinking and one unforgivable act. So when he wakes in the morning, sluggish and nauseous and finds his wife isn’t next to him in bed, he imagines she has taken herself to another room. However, as the morning progresses it becomes clear that Laura has simply disappeared.
There are clues to what is transpiring here but they are subtle. The writer has incredible sleight of hand and they seem inconsequential or at list explicable. Some completely passed me by. As I opened the book again for writing this review it made me think of The Sixth Sense and how no one saw the clues on their first watch of the film but when they watched for a second time they couldn’t believe they’d missed them. Each character is slippery and elusive with an unpredictable quality that felt dangerous. I lived this uncanny feeling the author created which grows organically from the city. This is a sparking jewel of a city that’s risen from the mud and brackish waters of the lagoon. Evelyn mentions the fin de siécle, that time of decadence towards the end of the 19th Century and that timing certainly informs some of the events in the book, particularly the fluid social order and sexual licentiousness. We’re told constantly that Venice is decaying and sinking. One day it may be completely under water, but the decay isn’t what you see when you first visit. Venice bewitches you with its golden domes, Morrison arches, coloured glass and the way sparkling light from the surface of the water bathes everything in a soft light. Then suddenly, only a street away you notice a tree growing out of someone’s house and at night most residences seem in darkness now that families can no longer live in the water logged lower floors. Banville captures this ‘double’ city utterly, describing the timeless romance of a gondolier serenading his passengers but also the jarring sound of the vaporetto. We see the sparkling water but also smell the mud as the passing boats churn it up. He links this duality with human nature, our surface selves and the real us, even the parts we avoid and keep locked away. Everything about this novel is a conjuring trick and I fell head over heels in love with it.
I can barely contain my happiness at being back in the world of Jimmy Perez, this time in the Orkney islands where he grew up. Jimmy is living with partner Willow Reeves, who’s both his boss and heavily pregnant with his child. It’s Christmas and the couple are looking forward to the celebrations. Jimmy’s stepdaughter Cassie is spending the holidays with her father Duncan and his family on Shetland, so it just the two of them and son James. For the police, Christmas isn’t a holiday and as a huge storm passes across the islands, terrible discoveries are made. Everywhere there’s storm damage, but when a body is found at an ancient archaeological site Jimmy is devastated to find out it’s his childhood friend Archie Stout. Archie is a well known ‘larger than life’ character who’s the centre of every gathering and runs the family farm with a wife and two teenage sons. Jimmy finds that Archie has suffered a blow to the head and the murder weapon is a Neolithic stone covered in ancient runes and Viking graffiti, one of a pair taken from the heritage centre. Now Willow and Jimmy must investigate their friends and neighbours to solve the murder in the run up to Christmas, where events will traditionally bring the whole island together. The uncomfortable truth is that the murderer is likely to be someone they know and that means nobody is safe.
I really loved Willow and the atmosphere she creates at home, particularly around Christmas. Just as dedicated to her work as Jimmy she takes an active role in the investigation, her pregnancy not holding her back at all. She knows it’s a delicate situation, working together and being in a relationship, especially when she’s the boss. Somehow they manage to keep the personal and the work life separate and she seems to know which responsibilities she must let Jimmy bear and those she’s happy to share. As Christmas Eve approaches fast she’s not running around like a headless chicken trying to make sure they have all the right things, they have food and she points out something I say every year – the shops are only closed for one day. It’s the traditions and being together that are the most important thing. She’s a great interviewer though, brilliant at picking up what people are not saying. She reads their body language and their tone, plus knowing each islander’s history helps too. What she picks up on are the unexpected or secret alliances, such as Archie’s investment in the hotel or his in-law’s apparent friendship with a regularly visiting academic. The case is fascinating, covering potential adultery, family tensions, environmental disagreements and historical conflicts, as well as academic jealousy. As everyone gathers on Christmas Day for The Ba and someone goes missing, my nerves were like violin strings! It’s this gradually rising tension alongside the beautifully drawn relationships that make Anne Cleeves’s novels. Jimmy has always had incredible empathy for others, feeling his own loss alongside theirs and understanding behaviour that might at first glance seem inexplicable. This is a hugely welcome return for Jimmy, both in a different landscape and place in life. Hopefully it’s the first of many.
The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…
And a final reckoning…
With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved. To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money laundering case that her friend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything…
I’ve been hooked on the story of Áróra and the case of her missing sister Ísafold for a few years now and the tension has slowly gripped the reader ever tighter with each novel as each one has brought it’s revelations. With this being the reason Àrora is in Iceland, it’s always been the over-arching narrative, but other cases run alongside. The combination of Áróra’s skills as a financial investigator plus the skills and powers of Daniel and Helena who are detectives, complex cases are profiled and attacked from different directions, making them a formidable team. We meet everyone after the discovery of Ísafold’s body in a suitcase deep within a fissure in a lava field. They were directed to it by an unusual little girl who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ísafold, something that was difficult for Daniel to accept. There’s so much more to understand and we get the narrative through different viewpoints, aside from Áróra, Daniel and his colleague Helena. Felix has fallen into working for a local dealer and we see his fear as the bag he has been sent to collect has disppeared from the car while he was getting some food. There are also flashbacks to the last few months Ìsafold was alive and we finally hear her story in her own voice, which I loved.
We’ve always had suspicions but have never known who killed Ísafold. The novel is gripping and of course we want this mystery resolved, but I didn’t feel any of that racing tension or triumph that I often get from thrillers when the killer’s revealed, especially when I’m right. This was just so desperately sad. I found myself taking a moment for this under confident woman who was so far out of her depth. A woman whose emotions dictated her life decisions. I was harrified and had that strange empty feeling of loss. A loss I knew Áróra would feel. The question is, if she does get all the answers she needs, what will Áróra do next? Unlike her sister Áróra has a clear sense of what she wants and needs to be happy and fulfilled. She makes decisions based on self-knowledge and it remains to be seen whether Daniel is a part of that eventual happiness.
It’s delightful to be back in the hands of a consummate storyteller like Val McDermid. She takes us straight into the story and I always feel like these characters are real, going about their lives and then we drop into their world from time to time. Here the Historic Cases Unit are working two cases: the death of a high-end hotel manager and a body found after a landslip in heavy rain on the M73. Tom Jamieson’s death is flagged up by his brother in New Zealand. Thought to be an accidental death, Tom’s brother has footage that shows someone was behind Tom as he left the hotel after his shift and in the staircase where he met his death. If this man entered the steps after Tom and can be seen exiting then he must at least have seen Tom’s fall, or is there a more sinister explanation? The body in the M73 has to have been placed there deliberately. It turns out to be the body of investigative journalist Sam Nimmo, thought to have killed his pregnant girlfriend Rachel before going on the run about eleven years ago. The discovery opens up her murder case as well as Sam’s. I was hooked by the evidence that leads to a secretive book club of successful men who meet once a month in Edinburgh. They’re named the Justified Sinners, alluding to a James Hogg book that is based on the Calvinist principle that once a person is ‘saved’ they can commit any sin, even murder, and still enter the kingdom of heaven. Is this a joke between literary friends or something more sinister? Have they stumbled upon an unofficial Freemasons’ club where the members share business tips and inside knowledge? The team start to wonder about the potential benefits of becoming one of the twelve members and whether those benefits are worth subterfuge or even criminal acts.
The book is rooted in the now with cancel culture, the MeToo movement, Covid and the corruption around it and the cost of living crisis all pertinent to these cases. I think the team are feeling overwhelmed, even without the quagmire surrounding the Justified Sinners and Sam’s quest for the truth. I thought that some characters did behave unpredictably, just like they do in life. The outcome isn’t straightforward and there were people to blame that I genuinely didn’t expect. This is an enthralling read from a writer at the very top of her game. Someone who knows exactly how to pitch a story and keep the reader engrossed until the final pages. She knows that the joy of a book is in the journey and that sometimes we don’t get the answers we expect.
It’s getting quieter as we move into the last months of the year but here’s my expected reading for November:
The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…
And a final reckoning…
With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved. To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money-laundering case that her friend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything…
I’ve been hooked on the story of Áróra and the case of her missing sister Ísafold for a few years now and the tension has slowly gripped me ever tighter as each novel has brought its revelations. With her disappearance being the reason Àrora is in Iceland, it’s always been the over-arching narrative, with other cases running alongside. The combination of Áróra’s skills as a financial investigator plus the skills and powers of Daniel and Helena who are detectives, means complex cases are profiled and attacked from different directions, making them a formidable team. We’re back with everyone after the discovery of Ísafold’s body in a suitcase deep within a fissure in a lava field. They were directed to it by an unusual little girl who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ísafold, something that was difficult for Daniel to accept. As Áróra’s boyfriend, his hackles were raised particularly with her parents who he suspected of feeding ideas and information to their daughter with the aim of deceiving them. But what possible motive could they have? As we meet our characters again, Áróra occasionally has the urge to go back and visit the family, but there’s been nothing new from her reincarnated sister for some time as if the thread that bound them has broken or the little girl’s age means the channel that was open between this life and the next has now closed. With Bjorn found in the same fissure as Ísafold many new questions are thrown up. Not least the one aspect of Ísafold’s death has remained a secret up till now. Daniel doesn’t know how to tell Áróra that her sister’s body was found without a heart.
There’s so much to understand here and we get the narrative through different viewpoints, not just from Áróra, Daniel and his colleague Helena. One narrator named Felix has fallen into working for a local dealer and we see his fear as the bag he was sent to collect disappears from the car while he’s getting some food. This theft draws his ties to this man ever closer, with no real chance of escape. There are also flashbacks to the last few months Ìsafold was alive and we finally hear the story in her own voice, which I loved. There’s a lot of crossover between these two narratives in terms of control and manipulation. The means used to tie Felix to the drugs gang are diabolical, making sure he ‘owes’ the boss and keeping him firmly onside. On one hand the boss demands total loyalty from its operatives but on the other he uses treachery to keep everyone in their place. Bjorn’s treatment of Ísafold feels even worse, because this is someone is supposed to love her. We have always known that Ísafold’s partner was violent, in fact Áróra’s guilt about her sister is based around their last phone call when for the first time Áróra decided not to run to her sister’s aid. The downstairs neighbour Grimur had also testified to the violence his neighbour suffered, but hearing it from the victim adds another layer to the narrative. We can feel how vulnerable Ísafold is and the tenderness Bjorn treats her with from time to time, that glimmer of a meaningful connection he drip feeds to her guarantees her forgiveness again and again. Almost more than the violence I hated that he took away her only bit of independence by making her leave the job she loved, to work with elderly people. At first it’s a suggestion, then he flatters her by saying how good she would be in a caring role, but the truth is he wants to coerce her into stealing their drugs. There’s a realisation that Bjorn is a low level dealer, just doing enough to get by but slowly coming to the attention of the bigger players who feel their territory has been encroached upon. Could this be the beginning of the end for the couple?
The tense and twisty parts narrative also follows Daniel’s investigation into a local coffee chain, where every barista seems to tell customers that their other sites are busier. What he finds is a company with a large turnover but no real evidence of where that money is coming from. None of their shops are in tourist areas and they seem to take a large amount in cash, an unusual thing these days. He also finds a couple of complaints from the director’s home of criminal damage, that they later chose not to pursue. This seems like a case where Áróra’s financial skills could be utilised and she throws herself into it, with dangerous consequences. This is where the couple work so well together, although there’s a recklessness to Áróra that Daniel finds difficult. He would never get in her way, she’s tough and quite capable of looking after herself physically but it’s in his nature to worry about those he cares for. He knows that her weight training and work are her ways of sublimating her frustration that she still doesn’t have all the answers about her sister. With Helena currently working the case he has a choice to make, if answers come does he let Helena break the truth to her, or does he choose to do that himself? Although he could have the chance to comfort and support her as he’s wanted, will she let him? Or will he always be the man who told her the harshest and most painful truth she will ever hear?
We’ve always had suspicions but have never known who killed Ísafold. The novel is gripping and of course we want this mystery resolved, but I didn’t feel any of that racing tension or triumph that I often get from thrillers when the killer’s revealed. This was just so desperately sad. I found myself taking a moment for this under confident woman who was so far out of her depth. A woman whose emotions dictated her life decisions. I was horrified and had that strange empty feeling of loss. A loss I knew Áróra would feel. The question is, if she does get all the answers she needs, what will Áróra do next? Unlike her sister Áróra has a clear sense of what she wants and needs in order to be happy and fulfilled. She makes decisions based on self-knowledge and it remains to be seen whether Daniel is a part of that eventual happiness. This has been an incredible series from the author, combining a good mystery with real intelligence and depth of emotion played out on a bleak and forbidding landscape.
Out now from Orenda Books
Meet the Author
Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written eleven crime novels, including Snare, Trap and Cage, making up the Reykjavík Noir trilogy, and her standalone thriller Betrayal, all of which have hit bestseller lists worldwide. Snare was longlisted for the CWA International Dagger, Cage won Best Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year and was a Guardian Book of the Year, and Betrayal was shortlisted for the prestigious Glass Key Award and won Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year. The film rights for the Reykjavík Noir trilogy have been bought by Glassriver. Cold as Hell, the first book in the An Áróra Investigation series, was published in the UK in 2021 and was followed by Red as Blood, White as Snow and Dark as Night. TV rights to theseries have been bought by Studio Zentral in Germany. Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner and a brood of chickens.
Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan.
Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.
Having seen this billed as a Victorian horror comedy and having a taste for the macabre I thought this would be my perfect read and it definitely was. If you ever wondered whether the governess was the psychopath in The Turn of the Screw, then this is the book for you. Here our young governess Winifred arrives at Ensor House to take charge of Drusilla and Andrew Pound, however she isn’t just teaching them French, instilling a Christian faith and charitable nature, along with their etiquette. Winifred has instead set herself a very different and unexpected agenda.
“It is early fall, the cold is beginning to descend, and in three months everyone in this house will be dead.”
So, alongside her everyday duties to the children she slinks around the house unnoticed by the rest of the family – cutting the eyes out of the ancestral portraits, stealing the children and bloodthirstily stalking the servants. Miss Natty is the perfect killer because of her position. I love reading about governesses in fiction because of their liminal position in a household, not as elevated as the family of the house and certainly not in the ranks of the servants. Too educated to fit in downstairs but as someone who earns a living, she’s definitely below the family. In one sense this could make her lonely at Ensor, but it also gives her an incredible amount of freedom. Governesses have bedrooms near the children, but the nanny will be on night duty. She’s free to roam with impunity, carrying out her horrible deeds. By day she’s teaching good manners and Christian values but by night she’s free to follow her darkest obsessions.
“It fascinates me, the fact that humans have the capacity to mortally wound one another at will, but for the most part, choose not to.”
Disturbingly I found this character rather amusing, there’s a certain quirkiness about her that’s appealing and in places I found myself laughing. She is our narrator so we have her inner monologue as well as the havoc she creates. Miss Natty notices everything in the house with the skill of a psychotherapist: observing the servants, the family and their visitors closely to decide who will be murdered next. She’s weighing up their behaviour and those who are unkind and treat others badly will be in the firing line first. As she becomes increasingly murderous, with plenty of gore flying around, she is most definitely enjoying herself and so are we. What has turned this young woman into a potential psychopath? The author has written this book with the staid politeness of a Victorian novel, contrasting sharply with the mayhem being described. It added to the humour and my enjoyment. Of course there’s a feminist slant to this, the men in the house know it all, explaining away any anger and displeasure from their wives as hysteria. Meanwhile their particular shortcomings go unacknowledged. I think we’re still told a lot about how to behave as women and books like these with a female protagonist who commits terrible acts with total abandon and enjoyment is like a release valve. Her tongue can be as sharp as her scalpel, bringing them rapidly down to size. She is breaking every convention, particularly that of the Victorian ‘angel in the house.’ I felt like the author had taken the two Mrs Rochesters from Thornfield Hall and put them in one woman; the quiet and unassuming governess and the murderous madwoman in the attic. She is so incredibly clever and likes her revenge to come, not cold, but sharply, precisely and decorated with liberal amounts of blood.
Out now from Fourth Estate Books
Meet the Author
A native of Spain, Virginia Feito was raised in Madrid and Paris, and studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London. She lives in Madrid, where she writes her fiction in English. Victorian Psycho is being adapted for a feature film.
September has been a month of crime fiction, with even my one historical read has a mystery at its heart. I’ve honestly been struggling to read and review this month because we are still living without a kitchen. We decided on a new one but it wasn’t as easy as popping in a new one – emptying the bath and having the water cascade through the kitchen ceiling is something I don’t recommend. So we have a new levelled ceiling and a new floor too. The kitchen is in and it’s now just tiling, painting and putting all the contents from the kitchen back! So my round up of September is a little late and a bit sparse!
I’m quite the Prime Suspect fan so I was beyond pleased to receive a proof copy of the first in Lynda La Plante’s new series featuring CSI Jessica Russell. I’m fascinated with the psychology of profiling suspects and in awe of how every tiny bit of evidence has to be catalogued and checked. There has to be so much trust between a team of CSIs and the team of detectives they work alongside. Jessica Russell is another strong character for the author, although outwardly she feels a little softer than La Plante’s other heroines. However, she has great confidence in her abilities and intellect as a forensic psychologist and head of the Met’s new MSCAN team. Jess, Diane and Taff have a lot of experience in working together and are hired to create this fast-track forensic team reserved for the most serious of the MET’s cases and they have to hit the ground running. Johan de Clerk is a young South African man who has settled in London after marrying his wife Michelle and started a branch of his family’s wine company that supples their products direct to restaurants across the capital. An intruder disturbed him while sleeping and there was a fight. The intruder fled, leaving Johan with serious stab wounds and a head injury. His sixty-thousand pound Rolex watch was taken along with money from a safe. While Johan fights for his life in hospital, Jess and her team make a start forensically examining the scene. I think what the author has done is very clever in terms of setting up a new series. We’ve spent a lot of time with the central character and there was a fascinating case to get lost in, but there are also clear hints where this might go next. There were whispers of a course with the FBI in Quantico for Jess, some hints of potential romance and I was sure there was a lot more to Guy who’s had a fascinating working life before MSCAN. There were also interesting aspects of her personal life I’d love to explore more such as Jess and her brother’s family background. Her brother is also diagnosed with a life limiting disease that will affect them all. We also don’t get much in terms of Taff and Diane’s lives. All of which shows there is definitely room to grow here, which isn’t surprising given the author’s track record at plotting a series. I can see this being an addictive reading experience and I look forward to seeing where this series goes next.
This was a totally new series to me, despite this being the seventh in the Ben Kitto novels. I absolutely loved it! Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated remains of a young woman. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer has made sure that no one will find her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He knows they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost. This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive and the daily difficulty of living on an island that’s at the mercy of the weather, cut off in the Atlantic. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place, but it does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place. To have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose, involving people he knows, has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him.
Nina and her daughter Ash live in the bougie seaside town of Whitstable in Kent. They are grieving for husband and father Paddy, who was killed when a man having a mental health crisis pushed him into an oncoming train. Ash has been living at home since her own mental health deteriorated. She was living in a house in London with two other girls but she developed a crush on her boss, that turned into an obsession. She claimed to have letters from him, but it turned out she’d written them herself and she was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She had come home to recover when Paddy, her dad, was killed. When her mum receives a parcel in the post Ash is intrigued. It’s beautifully wrapped, with a note inside from a man who has heard about Paddy’s death. He used to work with him in the 1990s when he Paddy was just starting out. The gift wrapped box contains a Zippo lighter he borrowed from Paddy but never returned. Since then Paddy has built a restaurant empire, with his flagship restaurant in Whitstable and two others down the coast. There is of course a number, should Nina wish to thank him for his thoughtfulness. Over the next few months Nick and Nina start to WhatsApp each other and then go out for a drink. Ash is glad to see her mum with a glow, but there’s something about Nick that’s just ‘off’. She can’t be sure and maybe she’s viewing this situation through her own grief or her personality disorder, but something isn’t right. She needs to find out more about him before he becomes a permanent fixture.
I galloped through this book as we went backwards and forwards in time, learning a little more in each chapter and inching towards the truth. I loved the fragile Ash who is at that stage of recovery where she doesn’t fully trust her own mind. Is she making too much of this? Is she just paranoid? Worst of all, if she finds something questionable, will her Mum even believe her? She’s so lonely at this point, she doesn’t have many friends to talk to and feels bad she’s had to bounce back home at her age. Her mum deserves to be happy and she might ruin it all. Just when you think you have all the answers, the author takes it to the next level! There were twists here that I wasn’t expecting and I felt very relieved that I once got away from a similar situation relatively easily, if not unscathed. This book is like a twisted knot in a necklace. It takes a long time to loosen it, but then the whole thing suddenly unravels before your eyes. This is masterful thriller writing from an author who gets better and better.
According to our narrator, a ‘bride stone’ is a precious stone given to the groom’s family as a dowry, although they were sometimes shown a beautifully made fake stone that they could only have checked when it was too late. It’s an apt title for a book where the women are traded in many different ways. It is set just after the French Revolution when many aristocrats left France for British shores and were welcomed in society. Edmée has somehow made her way to Britain, despite seemingly being an ordinary citizen. Yet she is being offered at a ‘wives’ sale’ by her husband’s brother, this chapter can’t be worse than the last. For Duval Harlington it’s something he would never usually countenance, but his circumstances are uniquely desperate. Having been captured by the French while treating wounded soldiers, on his return he is met by one of the family servants who bears bad news. Duval has become Lord Harlington as his father has recently died. Although he has the title, his right to the ancestral home of Muchmore and his father’s wealth is rather more complex. Duval had a tough relationship with his father who didn’t see the point of him training as a doctor. Once he departed for France, Duval’s father installed a distant relative, Mr Carson and his wife, to manage the day to day running of the estate. So his will has an interesting stipulation, in order to claim his inheritance Duval must be married and now he has only two days to achieve this. Otherwise the estate is Mr Carson’s. When his servant points out the wife sale it seems like a means to an end. Duval notices a young woman being led around the room by a scarf round her neck. Her hair looks like it’s been shorn away and she has a veil covering her face, but the buyers call out for it to be removed and he’s shocked to see that one side of her face is swollen and covered in bruises. Someone has recently beaten her very badly. On impulse he puts up his hand and bids for her, his intention being to marry her quickly and claim his inheritance. Then he could seek an annulment. However he does find Edmée fascinating and with the Mr and Mrs Carson ready for a fight this might not be as easy as he thinks.
This isn’t just a love story, it’s a thriller. Just as Duval starts to settle in to being home, the unthinkable happens. The couple are talked into holding a ball to introduce the new Lady Harlington to society. Their guests come from the local area, but also from London and some are French emigrés including a Marquis. Mr and Mrs Carson are even invited and unbelievably accept. Edmée is a great success as the host in her new role as mistress of Muchmore, but the next morning she has simply vanished. Did she leave of her own accord – perhaps spooked by someone she saw the previous night. Or has something more sinister happened? It could be the work of someone closer to home though – a disgruntled lover of Duval’s or someone determined that their marriage won’t succeed. I was drawn so deeply into the story of these unlikely partners. Duval and Edmée have both had difficult starts in life. It’s a hard read when it comes to the ways women are mistreated but I was hoping for Edmée to have a happy ending. It was clear that this might not be the case, which made for a tense read in those final chapters. The book has a mix of hardship, adventure and mystery interlaced with the romantic possibility of an unlikely match being perfect, if only he can find his unlikely wife.
That’s all for this week but here’s my potential tbr for October.
Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated and ruined remains of a young girl. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer made sure that no one found her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He’s worried they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost.
When this blog tour request came through, I was intrigued by the blurb and the feel of the Scilly Isles as a backdrop for a murder investigation. Then I realised it was the eighth book in the Ben Kitto series, although the first in its new home at Orenda Books and it’s a perfect match. I was worried about whether I would be lost without all that back story. Thankfully I wasn’t lost at all. I was drawn in immediately by the opening chapter as Ben took Father Michael to St Helen’s, an uninhabited island that’s always been seen as the spiritual centre of the Scilly Isles. Father Michael uses one of my favourite phrases for places that feel holy and haunted at the same time:
‘Christians call these places “thin”. The gap between us and the spiritual world is narrower here than any shrine I know, even Lourdes. It was hallowed ground for centuries.’ ‘It still feels haunted.’ The sky overhead is boiling with clouds.’
I love the idea of thin places, that ghosts are not necessarily trying to haunt you, they’re just going about their business. In fact you’re probably as much of a fright for them as they are for you. It’s just that the veil between us and them has worn so thin we’ve become visible to each other. The author keeps this metaphor throughout the story and it soon becomes clear that the actual world also has its veils. We meet Mai, a girl trapped somewhere, unseen by those gardening only a small pane of glass away because they’re not looking down. There’s the gap between what the teenagers and the adults see; the rumour in school that there’s a network of well known adults trafficking children is dismissed as a conspiracy theory early on. But these young people lead a different lifestyle to the adults, they’re around in the dead of night travelling by boat to the uninhabited islands either to party or be where they can’t be seen. There are signs of a camp fire and drinks cans just inches from the body Ben and Father Michael discover, only a small layer of earth between the living and the dead. This mystical feel does extend to the body of the child, wrapped in what looks like a prayer shawl with jade charms left inside. There’s a sense of contradiction here, between the care taken to bury the body and the huge hole where the skull has been smashed. The atmosphere created by the author along with the description of the body make it one of the most horrifying I’ve read, emphasising that this is a human being clearly emaciated and treated with extreme violence. There’s also a loneliness to her final resting place, cut off from those living on the islands but also buried in a soil that isn’t her own.
‘I crouch down to study the victim’s face more closely. There’s nothing inside the eye sockets except blackened hollows, but her exposed jaw catches my attention. Most of her teeth are intact, but several are blackened by decay. It’s unusual these days, when most kids obsess over their teeth, bleaching them to a perfect white.’
These are established characters but I felt that I knew them very quickly. Ben comes across as a gentle giant, huge in stature but easily affected by the cases he investigates. He comments that his wife Nina who works as a counsellor, has a way of detaching from the terrible things she hears at work while he doesn’t. Becoming a father hasn’t helped, especially when cases involve children like this one. When a baby is then left on the steps of the police station Ben is horrified. Their pathologist thinks the dead girl has Vietnamese heritage, if the baby is the same they have a monster on their hands and he has to face the fact that it is one of his neighbours. Until they know he has to make sure that there are no teenage girls who could have been concealing a pregnancy. It’s particularly distressing for Ben’s lifelong friend Zoe who has tried everything to become a mum, but I loved his sensitivity with her and the way he talked to the teenage girls he has to question. I loved how Nina’s violin playing allows him a meditation, sifting through the images of the day in his head and finding enough solace to sleep.
“I can still feel the girl’s cold weight in my hands, when we lifted her from the sand, and see her blue-white skin. I have to find the monster who put her there, or she’ll be in my head forever. When I open my eyes again, Nina is returning her violin to its case, and it’s time we slept, before Noah wakes us again at dawn.”
We know someone is being kept prisoner because there are short narratives between Ben’s chapters told by a young girl called Mai. She lives in one room with constant fear of the door opening and her captor coming in. These are distressing scenes and really add to the urgency of finding this man. My nerves were shredded by one of Mai’s narratives where she’s been trying to break the rotten frame of a tiny window, high up in the room. It doesn’t give her much light because all she can see are the weeds and grasses of an unkempt garden, but one day as she’s working away on loosening the frame she sees the feet of someone cutting a lawn and she desperately wants them to notice her. The knowledge that she’s so close to this stranger but living in an entirely different world really got my heart racing. I was simply begging them to look down. The more we get to know her, the more Ben’s desperate search feels. There are potential suspects, particularly a musician who lives in an isolated position on the coast with a house that looks out to St Mary’s and a telescope trained on the horizon. He definitely has an odd manner but Ben needs much more than that to go on. The author pitched this quiet start to the investigation beautifully, it’s definitely not cozy but there’s a sense of waiting, the calm before the storm. It then kicks up a notch as the forensic examiner, Gannick, finds red carpet fibres and results on the baby’s DNA point to a young Vietnamese girl who’s fostered by a family on Bryher. Suddenly Ben has something to go on and he can’t move quickly enough. He sets the uniformed officers out to check households for red carpet and he sets out to the school to talk to the girl who is related to the abandoned baby. Now he’s sure that his suspect is an island resident, it’s just a race against time to find someone with a red carpet but also a cellar or storage area where someone could be kept and never seen.
One of my favourite characters was Gannick, the grumpy and brusque forensics specialist. Ben is privileged to have her company at home, where Nina seems to melt the icy facade in just a few minutes. There are some lovely moments where Ben just observes and appreciates her careful work and how she does everything to ensure she gets the evidence needed to lock this murderer away for a long time. He tells us she has severe and chronic back pain and he describes her using her crutches to swing across the terrain of St. Mary’s missing nothing. He knows she’s in considerable pain and as a woman with a similar disability I loved having a disabled character who isn’t instantly likeable or some sort of superhero. She’s just quietly getting on with her job the best way she can. There’s no redemptive character arc here and I loved that her disability and her grumpy attitude remain. Yet Ben does confide in her that he’s worried, that the closer they come to the offender the more danger his victim is in. Gannick acknowledges that ‘this one’s a psycho’ but they will definitely get him. As we come closer to the truth, the weather mirrors Ben’s turmoil:
“The outside world is comfortless, though. When I pull back the curtain, breakers are lashing the shore. Seabirds are returning to Bryher in flocks, scattered by the breeze. It feels like we’re at the mercy of some savage force that’s trying to tear these islands apart.”
This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging both the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive, but also the wildness and daily difficulty of living on these islands in the Atlantic. When a storm blows in people are cut off, there’s no way to travel between the islands and everything has to stop. Nina worries that as he’s older Noah won’t know what it’s like to be able to meet friends in town and to visit a cinema together. On the other hand he’ll have experiences other teenagers won’t like making a fire and cooking on the beach, camping on uninhabited islands and learning to drive a speedboat. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place and while there are many experiences he’ll only have rarely, there are others that some people don’t have in a lifetime. Yet the case does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place, to have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him.
Meet the Author
Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet, selected for Val McDermid’s New Blood panel at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for her debut, Crossbones Yard. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious CWA Dagger in the Library award, and is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for the critically acclaimed Isles of Scilly Mysteries series.
The Lotus Readers 