I’m delighted to be today’s stop on the blog tour for Faithless by Kjell Ola Dahl. You can read my review of this dark, brooding Nordic Noir thriller below.
About the Book
When the body of a woman turns up in a dumpster, scalded and wrapped in plastic, Inspector Frank Frølich is shocked to discover that he knows her—and their recent meetings may hold the clue to her murder. As he begins to look deeper into the tragic events surrounding her death, Frølich’s colleague Gunnarstranda finds another body, and things take a more sinister turn. With a cold case involving the murder of a young girl in northern Norway casting a shadow, and an unsettling number of coincidences clouding the plot, Frølich is forced to look into his own past to find the answers – and the killer – before he strikes again. Dark, brooding and utterly chilling, atmospheric page-turner marks the return of an internationally renowned and award-winning series, from one of the fathers of Nordic Noir.
To purchase Faithless from Amazon.co.uk, click here (link provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme)
My Review (4 out of 5)
I really enjoyed this book and I particularly liked the different characters making up the police team. It took me a while to figure out their professional relationships – who was the boss of who, and so on – and I guess I missed knowing more of their back story that must have been played out in earlier books in the series. Frølich is an interesting character who comes across as rather solitary, lonely even with no current relationship. In that respect, he reminded me of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse. In this case, Frølich feels conflicted and compromised by an old friend’s connection with the victim, particularly since it reawakens troubling memories from his childhood.
I liked the way that various attitudes to modern day policing were covered. There is Gunnarstranda, suspicious of the “new ways” – data analysis, sifting through CCTV footage, etc – instead clinging to a belief in the value of face-to-face conversations to get to the truth. He also has a strong “sixth sense” when danger lurks. Lena is more into action, whatever it takes to nail a suspect, with sometimes a seemingly casual regard for her own safety. And there is the boss, Rindal, focused on the need to use resources effectively.
The author deftly manages a number of different plot strands – a missing Nigerian woman, a spate of burglaries and the discovery of a dead body that has chilling echoes of an earlier murder. Dahl constantly plays with the reader’s expectations of how these different strands might come together and introduces a number of plausible suspects to keep one guessing right up to the end. I was certainly led up a few garden paths to some red herrings!
I really enjoyed reading Faithless and I will certainly look out for other titles by the author.
I received an advance reader copy courtesy of publishers, Orenda Books, in return for an honest review.
In three words: Dark, suspenseful, page-turner
About the Author
One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Kjell Ola Dahl was born in 1958 in Gjøvik. He made his debut in 1993, and has since published eleven novels, the most prominent of which is a series of police procedurals cum psychological thrillers featuring investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix and he won both the prestigious Brage and Riverton Prizes for The Courier in 2015. His work has been published in 14 countries, and he lives in Oslo.
Secrets and lies abound in this mystery set in small-town America
About the Author
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