Tag: advance review copy

#BookReview Winterkill (Dark Iceland #6) by Ragnar Jónasson, trans. by David Warriner @OrendaBooks

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Winterkill by Ragnar Jónasson, the sixth – and sadly, final – book in his bestselling ‘Dark Iceland’ series, featuring Inspector Ari Thór Arason. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Orenda Books for my digital proof copy. Winterkill was published as an ebook and in hardcover on 10th December 2020 and will be available in paperback on 21st January 2021.

WinterkillAbout the Book

Easter weekend is approaching, and snow is gently falling in Siglufjörður, the northernmost town in Iceland, as crowds of tourists arrive to visit the majestic ski slopes.

Ari Thór Arason is now a police inspector, but he’s separated from his girlfriend, who lives in Sweden with their three-year-old son. A family reunion is planned for the holiday, but a violent blizzard is threatening and there is an unsettling chill in the air.

Three days before Easter, a nineteen-year-old local girl falls to her death from the balcony of a house on the main street. A perplexing entry in her diary suggests that this may not be an accident, and when an old man in a local nursing home writes ‘She was murdered’ again and again on the wall of his room, there is every suggestion that something more sinister lies at the heart of her death…

As the extreme weather closes in, cutting the power and access to Siglufjörður, Ari Thór must piece together the puzzle to reveal a horrible truth …one that will leave no one unscathed.

Format: Hardback (240 pages)                Publisher: Orenda Books
Publication date: 10th December 2020 Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Find Winterkill (Dark Iceland #6) on Goodreads

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My Review

Winterkill is only the second book I’ve read in Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series (the other was the previous book in the series, Whiteout) but I’m sure even those who haven’t read any of the previous books will be able to enjoy this skillfully crafted crime thriller. And I can pretty much guarantee you’ll then want to go back and read the series from the beginning.

The book sees Inspector Ari Thór called to investigate the unexplained death of a young girl. Unfortunately, it coincides with the arrival for the Easter holiday of his ex-girlfriend Kristin and his young son, Stefnir. His attempts to balance the demands of the investigation with spending quality time with his son illustrate just one of the reasons for the breakdown of his and Kristin’s relationship.

Away from concerns about his private life, Ari Thór is feeling the pressure of his new rank and the absence of a sounding board in the shape of his former boss, Tomas. Ari Thór is also struggling to replicate that close working relationship with his new junior officer, Ögmundur. One of the many things that make Ari Thór such an engaging character is his strong sense of justice, meaning he feels an acute responsibility to the dead girl’s heartbroken mother to discover how and why she died.

As the investigation progresses, Ari Thór interviews a number of witnesses who knew the dead girl but none seem to fit the bill as suspects although, as he reflects, ‘appearances could be deceptive and nothing was ever completely black or white’.  Most significantly, the motive for her death – whether murder or suicide –  continues to elude him, this in a community where everyone knows everyone else or is related.

As well as constructing intriguing mysteries, the author is adept at creating an atmosphere of unease. Even amidst the beauty of the landscape and the tourists enjoying themselves on the ski slopes or indulging in hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls (mmm!) in one of the town’s cafes, there exists the threat a snowstorm could cut off the town from the outside world at any moment.

The snowstorm, when it arrives, coincides with Ari Thór getting closer to discovering the truth about the girl’s death.  Although the snow may have turned the streets of Siglufjörður white, there are black deeds to be uncovered beneath its snow-covered roofs. It all makes for a tense and dramatic climax to Ari Thór’s investigation.

Naturally, fans of the series will be sad to bid farewell to Ari Thór. However, they do say it’s good to go out on a high and Winterkill certainly delivers in that respect.

In three words: Gripping, dark, atmospheric

Try something similar: The Coral Bride by Roxanne Bouchard

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Ragnar JonassonAbout the Author

Icelandic crime writer Ragnar Jónasson was born in Reykjavík, and currently works as a lawyer, while teaching copyright law at the Reykjavík University Law School. In the past, he’s worked in TV and radio, including as a news reporter for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. Before embarking on a writing career, Ragnar translated fourteen Agatha Christie novels into Icelandic, and has had several short stories published in German, English and Icelandic literary magazines.

Ragnar set up the first overseas chapter of the CWA (Crime Writers’ Association) in Reykjavík, and is co-founder of the International crime-writing festival Iceland Noir. Ragnar’s debut thriller, Snowblind became an almost instant bestseller when it was published in June 2015 with Nightblind (winner of the Dead Good Reads Most Captivating Crime in Translation Award) and then Blackout and Rupture following soon after. To date, Ragnar Jónasson has written five novels in the Dark Iceland series, which has been optioned for TV by On the Corner. He lives in Reykjavík with his wife and two daughters.

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About the Translator

David Warriner translates from French and nurtures a healthy passion for Franco, Nordic and British crime fiction. Growing up in deepest Yorkshire, he developed incurable Francophilia at an early age. Emerging from Oxford with a modern languages degree, he narrowly escaped the graduate rat race by hopping on a plane to Canada – and never looked back. More than a decade into a high-powered commercial translation career, he listened to his heart and turned his hand again to the delicate art of literary translation. David has lived in France and Quebec, and now calls beautiful British Columbia home.

Winterkill BT 4

#BookReview The Diabolical Bones (The Bronte Mysteries #2) by Bella Ellis @HodderBooks

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The Diabolical BonesAbout the Book

It’s Christmas 1845 and Haworth is in the grip of a freezing winter. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are rather losing interest in detecting until they hear of a shocking discovery: the bones of a child have been found interred within the walls of a local house, Top Withens Hall, home to the scandalous and brutish Bradshaw family.

When the sisters set off to find out more, they are confronted with an increasingly complex and sinister case, which leads them into the dark world of orphanages, and onto the trail of other lost, and likely murdered children. After another local boy goes missing, Charlotte, Emily and Anne vow to find him before it’s too late.

But in order to do so, they must face their most despicable and wicked adversary yet – one that would not hesitate to cause them the gravest of harm…

Format: Hardcover (352 pages)              Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 5th November 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Mystery

Find The Diabolical Bones on Goodreads

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My Review

As with the first book in the series The Vanished Bride, the prologue to The Diabolical Bones sees Charlotte, now the last surviving member of the Brontë family, looking back on her and her sisters’ lives before they became famous authors.  It underlines how tragically short those lives were, Emily having died in 1848 and Anne in 1849.  Charlotte herself was to die in 1855.

The book reprises the inventive premise of its predecessor, namely that the Brontë sisters were enterprising ‘detectors’ before they were novelists – with the assistance, from time to time of their brother, Branwell. The Diabolical Bones represents their second case, undertaken in 1846, (before the publication of Wuthering Heights in 1847, the relevance of which will become apparent).

The narrative alternates between the point of view of the three sisters, allowing the reader to appreciate their different strengths when it comes to the art of ‘detecting’. Together they make a formidable team. As Anne observes: “Charlotte, you have a gift for reading people and drawing them out of themselves. Emily, you see connections and clues that a mind inferior to yours would simply not be able to fathom… As for myself, I keep our minds focused on the reasons behind it all: the human reasons… Branwell allows us access into rooms where lone women might not otherwise go, and sometimes provides a fairly adequate distraction. When we are together, we are stronger and we are safer.”

They may be stronger together but are they safer? It soon becomes evident they are hunting an individual so convinced of their own superiority they are prepared to engage the sisters in ‘a battle of wits’, even leaving clues for them to find. Throughout the story there’s a sense of the Gothic from the ‘dense and sorrowful atmosphere’ of the Bradshaw house to local talk of evil stalking the neighbourhood when the moon is dark. The sisters’ investigation even includes a visit to a witch, although this does involve crossing the border from their beloved Yorkshire into Lancashire. “Oh well,” Emily said. “Needs must.”

The battle of wits eventually becomes a battle of a more deadly kind requiring the Brontës to draw on all their courage and ingenuity as they pit themselves against a formidable foe, whilst all the time the clock is ticking until the monster strikes again.

Admirers of the Brontës will enjoy the references to events in their lives and have fun spotting places said to have inspired locations in their novels. Indeed, returning from a visit to the house where the bones were discovered, Emily enthuses, “I had a vision of a story, and I wanted to write it all down before I forgot it. It is a marvellous, ferocious storm of a story. I shall set it at Top Withens…” The author also gives some of the secondary characters names reminiscent of those in the Brontë sisters’ novels. I spotted Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall but there may be more.

Readers who enjoyed the first Brontë mystery will be delighted to see the sisters return for a second foray into ‘detecting’. But you don’t need to be a fan of the Brontës to enjoy this skillfully crafted historical mystery. As Bella Ellis notes in her Acknowledgements, ‘We all need a good story in our lives now, more than ever.’ Amen to that.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley.

In three words: Engaging, suspenseful, atmospheric

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Rowan ColemanAbout the Author

Bella Ellis is the Brontë-esque pseudonym of Rowan Coleman, an acclaimed author of numerous novels for adults and children. She first visited the former home of the Brontë sisters when she was ten years old. From the moment she stepped over the threshold she was hooked, and embarked on a lifelong love affair with Charlotte, Emily, and Anne; their life; their literature; and their remarkable legacy. (Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

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