Excerpts from some recent reviews of crime-fiction books:
Glenn at International Noir Fiction reviews Mari Jungstedt’s "Unspoken". Writes Glenn: "There’s plenty of dark stuff in the book, in an unspectacular way–no serial killers, nobody returning from the dead, nobody plotting to kill the Prime Minister–but that, I think is one of the strengths of the majority of new crime novels coming from Scandinavia. The authors seem to find plenty of threat and drama in ordinary life."
Crime Fic Reader (It’s a Crime!) reviews Die with Me by Elena Forbes. "This is a page turner of a novel, densely plotted, with an abundance of welcome and deep characterisation. I could not find a unique selling point (USP), as, in a nutshell, it’s a police procedural, set in London; but that defies the list I started with at the top, all of which mark out Forbes as taking a new and very contemporary view of what is happening in British society today."
Crime Fiction Dossier/David Montgomery (among others) celebrates Dave White’s first novel When One Man Dies. "When One Man Dies introduces New Jersey private eye Jackson Donne, a decent detective who wants nothing more than to get out of the business. Unfortunately, things keep happening that make it impossible for him to quit. (I won’t spoil the plot for you – read the book yourself.) White has accomplished quite a feat, writing a PI novel that is both traditional and fresh. He’s one of the best new talents to join this much-beleaguered area of the genre in some time."
Material Witness on Arnaldur Indridason’s Silence of the Grave:…"Indridason paints the harsh landscape with its dark winters and endless summer sunlight in the context of the struggle of its people to understand it and survive it, and makes it a living, breathing entity, influencing the story as much as any other factor. Iceland and the Icelanders seemed utterly inseparable in a way that is not common in much crime fiction where it would not be difficult to imagine lifting a plot and all of its characters entirely free from one locale and dumping them into another without the story losing a beat."
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