Tag: thriller

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.

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Blog Tour/Book Review: The Body Lies by Jo Baker

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The Body Lies BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Body Lies by Jo Baker.  Thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to participate in the tour and to Doubleday for my review copy.

The Body LiesAbout the Book

When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote countryside, it’s meant to be a fresh start, away from the big city and the scene of a violent assault she’s desperate to forget. But when one of her students starts sending in chapters from his novel that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognises herself as the main character in his book – and he has written her a horrific fate.

Will she be able to stop life imitating art before it’s too late?

At once a breathless battle-of-wits and a disarming exploration of sexual politics, The Body Lies is an essential book for our times.

Format: Hardcover, ebook (288 pp.)    Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 13th June 2019  Genre: Thriller

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

Find The Body Lies on Goodreads

My Review

When I reviewed Jo Baker’s book A Country Road, A Tree (shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017), I described it as ‘clever, literary and powerful’. I feel the same adjectives can be applied to The Body Lies, the author’s foray into the psychological thriller genre but a book which still retains a distinctly literary feel.

Perhaps it’s brave (or maybe a sign of confidence in one’s ability) to write a novel in which the main character is leading a creative writing MA course and lecturing on the craft of writing. Our narrator, a debut novelist, certainly wonders about her qualification for the task. ‘I’d been appointed to teach students how to write novels. It felt rather like asking someone who’d once crash-landed a light aircraft to train people as commercial pilots.’ However, I reckon the author must have had fun creating the extracts from the work the students submit for critique as part of their course, ranging in genre as they do from hard-boiled crime to fantasy, short stories and something altogether more disturbing.

The Body Lies starts with a description of the body of a young woman so I gave a little chuckle when the critique the students give on the crime novel one of them, Steven, is writing focuses on that same aspect. “First thought is,” Nick said, one thumbnail still scraping at the other, “does it have to start with a dead woman?” “Well, that’s how these stories work,” Steven said. “That’s the story engine that powers the novel, so yeah, it does really.” Steven is criticised for using the dead girl merely as a device. Interestingly, the reader never learns the name of the protagonist of The Body Lies as if that aspect of her identity is not important. (The main character in A Country Road, A Tree was also unnamed, although in that book was easily identifiable as Samuel Beckett.)

The depiction of women in fiction is just one of the aspects of the position of women explored in The Body Lies. From practical issues, such as the pressure of balancing childcare and work, to, as the narrator sees it, men’s ‘sense of entitlement to a woman’s attention, and her body’, the latter powerfully played out in the opening chapter. And along the way, the book also explores topics such as the need for trigger warnings, safeguarding, student mental health and the pressure of workloads and course retention targets on staff in academic institutions.

It’s not all serious though and I really enjoyed the playful humour I detected. For example, at one point, in response to the narrator’s concern about the work submitted by one of her students, her colleague, Mina, replies, “He’s probably playing some tricksy postmodern game.” Expressing her concern the student might drop out, Patrick, another colleague, asks her, “He’s the real deal then?” She replies, “Yeah, I think he probably is.” Patrick responds, “Well, then he’ll write it anyway, won’t he, MA or no MA.” (I can imagine Will Self nodding in agreement at that point.)

Fans of the genre can rest assured The Body Lies incorporates many of the familiar characteristics of a psychological thriller. There’s a creepy and possibly unbalanced individual with an unhealthy obsession. The narrator and her young son find themselves renting a house in a remote, isolated location which also happens to be in a mobile phone black spot. Initially, she’s not worried and reflects ‘I rather liked being unreachable.’ That’s probably going to change, I’m sure you’re thinking. Too right. There are scenes in the book that will definitely make you want to check you’ve locked your doors. The observant reader may note a passing reference to an event the significance of which will only become apparent towards the end of the book. (No doubt the sort of advice about plot construction you’d expect a creative writing group to give.)

If this review is making you wonder if The Body Lies is just too clever and whether it actually works as a psychological thriller, I can reassure you it definitely does. There is tension, drama and sense of jeopardy aplenty as the book reaches it eventful conclusion. As everything slots into place, I can’t do better than echo the words of our unnamed narrator: ‘That’s how stories work: there’s something instinctively satisfying about circularity.’ This reader was definitely satisfied and can’t wait to see what Jo Baker writes next.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Doubleday, and NetGalley.

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In three words: Intriguing, clever, literary

Try something similar…Exquisite by Sarah Stovell (read my review here)

JoBakerAbout the Author

Jo Baker is the author of the acclaimed and bestselling Longbourn and A Country Road, A Tree. Her new novel, The Body Lies, is a thrilling contemporary novel that explores violence against women in fiction but is also a disarming story of sexual politics.

Jo Baker lives with her family in Lancashire.

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