Category: Reading Challenges

Blog Tour/Book Review: Motive X by Stefan Ahnhem

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Motive X Blog Tour Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Motive X by Stefan Ahnhem. Thanks to Vicky at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

Praise for Stefan Ahnhem

‘Stefan Ahnhem is more gripping than Jo Nesbo, blacker than Stieg Larsson and more bleakly human than Henning Mankell’ Tony Parsons

Motive XAbout the Book

He strikes at random. His motive unknown. No one is safe…

Helsingborg police must solve the unsolveable. A wave of apparently random homicides is sweeping through their idyllic seaside town. The murders have no pattern, no order, no reason. The perpetrator is immune to psychological profiling; forensically untraceable; utterly invulnerable to modern police techniques.

The body count is growing. But lead investigator Fabian Risk is distracted by his mission to expose a corrupt colleague, and his boss Astrid is spiralling back into addiction. As the hunt for the solution becoming ever more desperate, their tight-knit team begins to unravel…

Motive X is both an explosive, multi-layered thriller and a fearless exploration of the darkest side of human nature. To enter Stefan Ahnhem’s world, with its interwoven plotlines and sprawling cast of characters, is to put yourself in the hands of a master storyteller.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (552 pp.)    Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2nd May 2019    Genre: Thriller, Crime

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Motive X  on Goodreads

My Review

I don’t read a lot of crime thrillers, especially those involving serial killers and gruesome murders (unless they’re set in a historical time period). However,  you don’t need to be an expert in the genre to recognise an author who’s a master in the art of creating a gripping and skilfully plotted story. Such is the case with Motive X by Stefan Ahnhem, translated by Agnes Broome.

Motive X is the fourth in the series (if you count the prequel, The Ninth Grave) featuring Swedish police detective, Fabian Risk. I haven’t read any of the previous books in the series and, while Motive X can be read as a standalone, it appears to pick up almost seamlessly from the end of the previous book, Eighteen Below. (More on that subject later.) In addition, there are frequent references to events in that book and its predecessor, Victim Without A Face, so for those inclined to read the whole series, I’d say it’s essential to  start from the beginning otherwise you’re likely to feel as if you’ve come into the cinema part way through a movie.

In Motive X, private and professional lives overlap and collide as the investigations being conducted by Risk and his colleagues tip over into personal missions to expose wrongdoing. Of course, with that comes danger, possibly from unexpected directions. After all, investigating crime is a risky business. (Sorry, couldn’t resist that pun.)

The book weaves together multiple story lines and the short chapters create a feeling of pace throughout. The author is also adept at crafting a compelling last sentence of a chapter before switching the focus to a different story line, leaving the reader in a state of suspense. Throw in a serial killer whose next move may literally depend on nothing more than chance and you have a book that kept this reader turning the pages right to the end. Ah, the end. Well, you know what I said earlier about the book picking up seamlessly from its predecessor? So don’t expect everything to be neatly wrapped up at the end of this one.

Motive X sheds a light on an unexpectedly dark side of Swedish society: racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, far right extremism, Islamophobia and paedophilia.  At just under 560 pages, Motive X is a book to get your teeth into but which will more than repay the time investment. It’s a dark, enjoyably complex and gripping read.

Motive X is book 8 of my 20 Books of Summer. I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Head of Zeus.

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In three words: Fast-moving, complex, compelling

Try something similar…Killed by Thomas Enger or Faithless by Kjell Ola Dahl (click on titles to read my review)

StefanAhnhemAbout the Author

STEFAN AHNHEM is the internationally bestselling author of the Fabian Risk thrillers. He has worked as a screenwriter on Mankell’s Kurt Wallender series and serves on the board of the Swedish Writers Guild. He lives in Copenhagen.

Connect with Stefan

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Buchan of the Month/Book Review: The Runagates Club by John Buchan

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buchan of the month 2019 poster

20190708_133755About the Book

These twelve stories are told by the old soldiers of the Runagates Club as they reminisce.

Richard Hannay, hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, reappears recounting a trek into the bush in ‘The Green Wildebeest’. In ‘Dr Lartius’, John Palliser-Yeates describes an ingenious Secret Service operation during the First World War and a German code is finally broken in ‘The Loathly Opposite’.

My Review

The Runagates Club is the seventh book in my John Buchan reading project, Buchan of the Month 2019. You can find out more about the project and my reading list for 2019 here and read my (spoiler-free) introduction to The Runagates Club here.  It’s also an excuse to show off my two copies of the book: a Hodder & Stoughton edition from July 1929 and an undated Nelson edition (pictured above).

The Runagates Club, a collection of stories told around the dining table by members of the fictional private club of the title, was the last short story collection to be published in John Buchan’s lifetime. The stories can be roughly divided into groups:

  • Those with a supernatural theme: ‘The Green Wildebeeste’, ‘Skule Skerry’, ‘Fullcircle’ or ‘The Wind in the Portico’ (the latter reminiscent of one of the ghost stories of M.R. James)
  • Stories of ‘sheer romance’ (‘strangeness flowering from the commonplace’ as Buchan defines it), involving adventure in unexpected places, chance meetings, disguises and cases of mistaken identity: ‘The Frying Pan and the Fire’, ‘Divus Johnston’ and ‘Sing A Song of Sixpence’ (the latter set in London and featuring Sir Edward Leithen in scenes reminiscent of Buchan’s novel The Power-House)
  • Tales exploring moral or psychological themes that will be familiar to readers of Buchan, such as courage, fortitude, duty or finding one’s cause or ‘creed’: ‘Ship to Tarshish’ and ‘Tendebant Manus’
  • Buchan also has a bit of fun at the expense of the press in ‘The Last Crusade’ in which a small article in a provincial newspaper takes on a life of its own. It has to be said though the story is spoilt somewhat by the presence of what would be regarded today as unsavoury conspiracy theories and tropes
  • Finally, my two favourite (and I think the two best) stories in the collection – ‘Dr. Lartius’ and ‘ The Loathly Opposite’  – which reflect Buchan’s role in propaganda and intelligence during the First World War, as recounted in Ursula Buchan’s recent biography of her grandfather, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan.

All the stories in The Runagates Club are told in Buchan’s customary flowing, seemingly effortless and concise prose with a real sense of place evident in many of them. ‘Skule Skerry’ and ‘Fullcircle’ are good examples. The only jarring note is some distasteful racial stereotyping and use of terms that will be unacceptable to modern readers in a couple of the stories, for example ‘The Green Wildebeeste’.

Next month’s Buchan of the Month is The Courts of the Morning.

Find The Runagates Club on Goodreads

John BuchanAbout the Author

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) was an author, poet, lawyer, publisher, journalist, war correspondent, Member of Parliament, University Chancellor, keen angler and family man.  He was ennobled and, as Lord Tweedsmuir, became Governor-General of Canada.  In this role, he signed Canada’s entry into the Second World War.   Nowadays he is probably best known – maybe only known – as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  However, in his lifetime he published over 100 books: fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies, memoirs and history.

You can find out more about John Buchan, his life and literary output by visiting The John Buchan Society website.

buchan of the month 2019