The first of Indridasons books featuring Inspector Erlandur (since surnames are patronymic or matronymic, Icelanders call everyone regardless of rank by their first names) translated into English, this story chilled me to the core and I am looking forward to spending more time in Reykjavik as the series progresses. Upon discovering the murder of a man named Holberg, Erlandur and his partners Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli must work to determine if this is the usual clumsy Icelandic crime or something more. As the book progresses […]
Payback is a bitch
When Sonny isn’t on the nod, alone in his prison cell at Staten, he is The Confessor. Inmates of all persuasions come to him for absolution, for healing. Others, like a fallen minister and a crooked lawyer, get him to do the confessing for others. It’s been like this for 10 years, until lifer Johannes Halden comes to unburden himself to The Son. Then the story really takes off. From the writer who created detective Harry Hole (10 books so far), comes a stand alone […]
Life is not a paragraph and death is no parenthesis
Now this is more like it. This thriller was indeed that and more. Just because I raced through this in one feverish afternoon and early evening does not mean that I skimmed the thing. Many times I had to go back and re-read a passage, not because it was unclear or convoluted, but because the writing was so damned dazzling. Rachel is a drunk. Her husband left her for another woman. Divorced, a friend has taken her in. She lost her job months ago when […]
I’d sell my blood to buy her chocolate donuts
Knute, a single mother and her young daughter move from Winnipeg back home to Algren to help her mother and father in the aftermath of his heart attack. So we are put on a journey with the eccentric inhabitants of this town over the course of a few months. Among others, there’s Knute, her young daughter Summer Feelin’, Knutes parents, Dory and Tom, Combine Jo, the local drunk uber eccentric and Hosea Funk, the towns mayor. His goal is to keep the towns distinction of […]
I have felt that odd whirr of wings in the head
This book scared the pants off me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have chosen this to read when my latest bout of insomnia hit, but it certainly held me in its thrall until the very end. Susannah Cahalan was a bright young reporter for the New York Post, when she awoke one morning to find a mysterious bug bite on her arm. As it was during the height of the bed bug scare, she tore her place apart, cleaning and looking for signs of an infestation. She […]
Lifetime movie fodder
For quite a while now this book came up on my recommendations on Amazon and Goodreads. Reviewers on #cbr7 were enthusiastic. A friend breathlessly insisted I add it to the stack of books for the year. When the kindle price came down, I pounced. In an Australian seaside town, children and parents alike converge upon a primary school for the introductory day of kindergarten. A chance meeting brings together three mothers, the “glittery girl” Madeline, the beautiful and wealthy Celeste and newcomer and single mother […]