run you down (2015) by Julia Dahl

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Preview — Run You Down by Julia Dahl

Aviva Kagan was a just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida-and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from is a NYC tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn't sure she wants her mother back in her life.

But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclaveAviva Kagan was a just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida-and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from is a NYC tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn't sure she wants her mother back in her life.

But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville, N.Y. contacts Rebekah about his young wife's mysterious death, she is drawn back into Aviva's world. Pessie Goldin's body was found in her bathtub, and while her parents want to believe it was an accident, her husband is certain she was murdered.

Once she starts poking around, Rebekah encounters a whole society of people who have wandered "off the path" of ultra-Orthodox Judaism-just like her mother. But some went with dark secrets, and rage at the insular community they left behind.

In the sequel to her Edgar Award finalist Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created a taut mystery that is both a window into a secretive culture and an exploration of the demons we inherit.

Description take from the publisher's web site.

Don't look back (2002) by Karin Fossum

 

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Preview — Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum

  

Don't Look Back heralds the arrival of an exotic new crime series featuring Inspector Sejer, a smart and enigmatic hero, tough but fair. The setting is a small, idyllic village at the foot of Norway's Kollen Mountain, where neighbors know neighbors and children play happily in the streets. But when the body of a teenage girl is found by the lake at the mountaintop, the tow Don't Look Back heralds the arrival of an exotic new crime series featuring Inspector Sejer, a smart and enigmatic hero, tough but fair. The setting is a small, idyllic village at the foot of Norway's Kollen Mountain, where neighbors know neighbors and children play happily in the streets. But when the body of a teenage girl is found by the lake at the mountaintop, the town's tranquility is shattered forever. Annie was strong, intelligent, and loved by everyone. What went so terribly wrong? Doggedly, yet subtly, Inspector Sejer uncovers layer upon layer of distrust and lies beneath the town's seemingly perfect facade.

Critically acclaimed across Europe, Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer novels are masterfully constructed, psychologically convincing, and compulsively readable, and are now available in the United States for the first time.

 

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Ghostcrime (2015) by Christian Dewolf

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Preview — Ghostcrime by Christian DeWolf

  

Welcome to Magnetifax, Nova Scotia's newest futuristic municipality. With a serial killer on the loose and someone abducting Metal People (robots -- but don't call them that to their faces), it seems like Detective Stebbins' day can't get any worse. But the clues to a grisly murder spell out 'Ghost', and Stebbins realizes he's going to have to watch his back -- unless he's Welcome to Magnetifax, Nova Scotia's newest futuristic municipality. With a serial killer on the loose and someone abducting Metal People (robots -- but don't call them that to their faces), it seems like Detective Stebbins' day can't get any worse. But the clues to a grisly murder spell out 'Ghost', and Stebbins realizes he's going to have to watch his back -- unless he's just losing his grip on sanity.

In this spine-chilling crime-thriller-comedy, follow the investigation of the Magnetifax Police Department as they square off against costumed murderers, ghost experts, obstinate technology and adorable raccoons, on the way to uncovering a mystery that goes all the way to the top. But it's not just any crime they're out to stop -- it's GHOSTCRIME.

 

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\the caller (2011) by Krin Fossum

 

THE CALLER is the tenth in the Inspector Sejer series and is a bit of a throwback in subject matter to her earlier books in the series and is much longer than the previous one, Bad Intentions.
The first in a series of what are later called "pranks" occurs to happy family Lily and Karsten and their baby daughter Margrete. Margrete is sleeping in a pram in the back garden but when the parents go out to her she is covered in blood. Horrified they rush her to the hospital where she is found to be perfectly fine. The police are called in and so enter Konrad Sejer and his sidekick Jacob Skarre. Later that day Sejer receives a postcard under his door stating that "hell begins now".
The reader is swiftly made aware of who is behind this incident and the story is told from his point of view, as well as the families he terrorises and of course Sejer and Skarre. The incidents range from silly to serious, at face value, but the impact on the families is far-ranging from illness, to family breakups and death.
Like the aftermath of a car-crash at the side of the road you cannot tear yourself away to see how it's all going to end. The culprit is a clever but young individual who has been neglected and who could and should have gone a different path and indeed does show kindness to some, but nonetheless is determined to make his mark in a notorious way.
There's no getting away from it, THE CALLER is a cold book, there's not much hope in it. It's cleverly plotted and has one of those endings which are a bit of a Fossum trademark ie of an unfinished and ambiguous nature. As the focus is on the perpetrator and victims you never get to find out how much investigation is going on in the background. The police know early on that a moped is involved and are they trawling the DMV (equivalent) records to get a list of suspects? Personally I find the lack of actual detecting a bit frustrating but I appreciate that that is not the raison d'etre of these books.
That said, Sejer and Skarre do appear a little more than of late; we even get inside Skarre's flat and Sejer's grandson plays an small but important role with something he points out to Sejer. Sejer is ageing and possibly unwell. Will we discover what, if anything, is wrong with him? Will Skarre, attractive and friendly and now in his late 30s ever settle down? These sort of questions are probably not likely to be answered by Fossum but you never know. Roll on the next book to find out

 July 2011
Karen Meeks blogs at Euro Crime.
 

Bad intentions (2010) by Karin Fossum

     

Thanks to WordPress, posted on August 11, 2011 by Beth      

In the seventh book in the Inspector Sejer series, Inspector Sejer is missing as is his right-hand man Jakob Scarre.  They make token appearances at various points in the book but this is less a police procedural than it is a psychological analysis of amorality, manipulation, arrogance, and ambition.  And that is just one of the characters.  BAD INTENTIONS is a compulsive reading experience.
Jon Moreno is a man haunted by one night in his life.  He went to a party with his two best friends, Axel and Reilly, and changed his life with one bad decision.  Jon has locked himself into a moment in his life and he is a resident of a treatment center for the mentally ill.  Best friends Axel and Reilly come to the center to take Jon away for a weekend of quietly hanging out and enjoying each others company.  Jon is hesitant; he isn’t comfortable with Axel and Reilly.  It is as if he fears them but everyone, his mother and the people at the center,  believe it will be the helpful to Jon to be out in the world for awhile.  But it is Jon who is correct in his discomfort.  When the three young men are in a small boat in the middle of the lake, Jon steps off the boat and sinks into the freezing water.
Axel and Reilly present themselves to the world as devastated, shocked that Jon had done such a thing.  Axel does most of the pretending.  He is a consummate actor, able to present himself to each person in the manner that is most like to appeal to his audience.  Reilly realizes that he can’t trust Axel, that Jon’s death leaves him as the only other person who knows what happened that changed their worlds.
Jon’s mother finds his diary. “Every one of us harbors guilt, every one of us has sinned….We have all hated someone and felt envy surge through our bodies.  We have all been greedy, we have all taken something that was not rightfully ours.  We have all wanted to lash out or scream, we have all felt that rage inside us and perhaps thought the sensation felt good.  Yet some people dance their way through life.  And those who ought to feel shame, haven’t got the sense to feel it.”
INTENTION – purpose, goal, aim, end.  In this case, did the end justifiy the means?.  In the sense of intention as  end, the end that needs to be protected is Axel’s perfect life as a son of wealth and privilege.  Reilly knows that Axel is happy that Jon is gone, Jon, who Axel perceived as the weak link in the chain that bound the three of them to the story about that night in December.  The intention is to avoid paying the price for a criminal action.  It was Axel’s doing but Jon and Reilly went along with it because they were weak.  It was easier than facing Axel’s wrath.
Shame and guilt are necessary in order that people can live in a community.  Shame is about dishonor, unworthiness,  and disgrace.  Jon dies because he has brought dishonor to his family, he has disgraced himself, losing his sense of self-respect because he has been party to something beyond the boundaries of decency. Jon can’t live with what he has become.  It is Axel who has truly stepped over the line but he has no moral center.
Fossum has written a simple story about choices that should be simple.  It is about choices between truth and lies, between decency and guilt.  “A man was in a German prison camp during the war.  He was subjected to so many awful things – abuse, torture, starvation and exposure. There were thirty men crammed into a freezing barrack, and the snow blew in under the door.  Nevertheless he survived, and when the war ended he returned home.  Though he now had plenty of food and warmth, he died shortly afterward.  He was haunted by a terrible memory.  One night he had stolen a crust of bread from a sleeping man.  It was this incident which killed him.  He could not bear to eat.” This man gave in to the most elemental human need, the need to survive.  Three teenagers did something very wrong, something against basic human decency.  One could not live with it.  One spends his life getting high.  One justifies it.  Inspector Sejer is present in the book but he is not the central character.  Fossum looks at the things people do that require men like Inspector Sejer to come forward and act for the good of all.

The second deadly sin (2012) by Asa Larsson

 

 

Kiruna prosecutor, Rebecka Martinsson takes leave when her boss offers a murder case to another prosecute, who is vain and incompetent.  A boy's grandmother is murdered, as is his father and grandfather.  A greedy cousin is looking to inherit shares from an early 1900's iron ore mine.  The origins of these crimes go back decades.  Police officer Erikson helps the 7 year old boy through nurturing and dog therapy.

A perfect crime (1998) by Peter Abrahams

         A simple case of adultery leads to more fatalities than the Gulf War in Abrahams’s tense, formulaic domestic thriller. Since Beacon Hill art consultant Francie Cullingwood’s old friend Brenda, Countess Vasari, doesn’t leave Rome from year to year for the chillier comforts of her cottage on its own New Hampshire island, it’s only natural that she give Francie the keys so that she can check up on the cottage from time to time—and just as natural for Francie to use it to entertain her friend Dr. Ned Demarco, the bronzed phone-in radio guru of Intimately Yours. All goes well with their weekly trysts until (1) Francie’s husband Roger, fired from his executive-level job despite the stratospheric IQ, catches on to his wife’s dalliance, and (2) Francie realizes that Anne Franklin, the warmly appealing tennis partner with whom she’s making a run at the club championship, is Ned’s wife. Lovable Anne doesn’t suspect a thing, of course, but Roger, with all those unemployed IQ points idling on high, wastes no time in plotting —murder most antiseptic.— Taking the first of several leaves from Dial M for Murder, he decides that the least suspicious way to get rid of Francie is to hire a cat’s paw he can kill himself moments after his unwitting accomplice pulls the trigger. And there’s a perfect candidate waiting in the wings: Whitey Truax, now on parole in Florida after raping and murdering Sue Savard, the wife of the police chief who’ll be investigating the case. Better-read fans than Roger will know, of course, that the choice of Whitey (whose determined stupidity, a savagely comic echo of Roger’s shallow arrogance, is Abrahams’s most original touch) is the last thing that will go right with Roger’s foolproof, but not geniusproof, scheme. One other surefire prediction: With Hard Rain (1987) and The Fan (1995) already turned into Hollywood movies, this property, suitably pruned and tightened, can’t be far behind. (First printing of 100,000)

A Kirkus Review

Buried angels (2011) by Camilla Lackberg

 

 

Easter 1974 a family vanishes.  Only one year old Ebba is left behind.  She is adopted and now aw an adult she and her husband, Tobias, decide to renovate the old boarding school in which her family had lived.  As Patrick Hedstrom and his wife, crime writer, Erica Falck work the cold case of the missing family, thy meet tragedies from the past.  As it happened, the teenage son killed his tyrannical father.  A group of students kill the son.  The mother disappear with Leon, a student.  Bodies are buried in an old bomb shelter.  Ebba's husband becomes mentally disturbed and tries to kill Ebba and Anne, Erika's sister.

The drowning (2012) by Camilla Lackberg

         

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Preview — The Drowning by Camilla Läckberg

  

In the  past an adopted boy attempts to drown his baby sister who grows up to love him unconditionally.  Three bullies from school rape his sister while he does nothing to defend her.  She is simple due to the lack of oxygen she received as a baby during the drowning. The brother grows up to author a bestselling novel called 'The Mermaid.  Anonymous threats are received by the bullies, now adults. Surprising conclusion. Good story.     

 

How to be a good wife (1985) by Emma Chapman

 
 

Marta and Hector have been married for a long time. Through the good and bad; through raising a son and sending him off to life after university. So long, in fact, that Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife—as advised by a dog-eared manual given to her by Hector’s aloof mother on their wedding day.

But now, something is changing. Small things seem off. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can’t recall. Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see. Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her. As Marta’s visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it’s unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself. The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something.

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At the conclusion of the novel, the reader has to acknowledge that she is psychotic.



The lost boy (2009-2013) by Camilla Lackberg

 

 

Enjoyed the sections of the book from the 1800's and how they wove into the present. The story came together in a rather sophisticated was as the police worked to solve the murder of a gentle, good-guy who was liked by all.  He was tied to Natalie who sought refuge on Ghost Island. Always the question is where is her son? 

Lifetime (2007 Eng. trans 2013) by Liza Marklund

 

 

A newspaper reporter's house burns down as her husband is leaving her.  She and her two children must start over. somehow.  She solves the case of a beloved, but somewhat crooked police officer who has been shot dead.  His wife is accused and even her cop girlfriend believes in her guilt.  Add to this drama, her four year old son goes missing.  A peculiar cast of characters are analyzed and flush our who is really guilty - maybe.

Daning on her grave (2015) by Diana Montane and Carolina Sarassa

From the co-author of I Would Find a Girl Walking and an award-winning true-crime television reporter comes the shocking story of Debbie Flores, a Las Vegas showgirl whose dreams of a dazzling career ended in a nightmare…

Vivacious Debbie Flores was a college educated Washington Redskins cheerleader when she headed for “Sin City.” It was a smart move for the aspiring showgi  
Vivacious Debbie Flores was a college educated Washington Redskins cheerleader when she headed for “Sin City.” It was a smart move for the aspiring showgirl who’d soon be making her star-making solo debut at the legendary Luxor. But after the morning rehearsals of December 12, 2010, no one saw Debbie alive again.

A cryptic text message she left for her mother led authorities to Debbie’s charismatic boyfriend, Jason “Blu” Griffith. A fellow Vegas dancer, Blu was hiding a terrible secret. It involved a rental van, bags of cement, two plastic tubs, and a handsaw.

When the details of the crime unfolded, everyone asked: how could a girl with such passion and promise come to an end so violent and unexpected? In time, the truth would reveal a life more tumultuous than believed—and what exactly transpired on Debbie’s tragic final day would stun the nation.

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 I wonder what rook a well-educated woman to the sleaze of Las Vegas.  A badly written book.

Marie Kondo

 

 

The life changing art of decluttering and organizing. The author writes of how items should "spark" you.  These are the ones you keep. She advocates putting you house into categories, rather than organizing room by room.  This is a concept I do not get.  It obviously will take more than this book to get me into a minimalist lifestyle. Not sure how she manages to turn this style of decorating into a full time job. Good for her.

If loving you is wrong (1999) by Gregg Olsen

 

An unbiased account of Mary Kay Letoureau and her sentencing for child abuse and rape of a 13 year old student. Mary Kay already had 4 children with her husband, Steve.  She was a beloved teacher and mother.  By all reports she was scatter brained, messy, creative, beautiful, and always late.

 

However, after seven years in prison she married her lover, now 20, with whom she had several children.  Mental illness or love?

Hypothermia (2009 Tran.from Icelandic 2009) by Arnaldur Indridason



 

 

A murder disguised as a suicide.  A doctor, having an affair and set to inherit his wife's millions, becomes a suspect.  However, there is not enough hard evidence to arrest him.  Detective Erlendur takes on the case in an unofficial capacity.  He learns that the wife was obsessed with the 'after-life", having kept a secret for 40 years - her mother had murdered her father, and had sworn Mari to secrecy.  Was Maria seeing ghosts or was she delusional? Erlendur also began to wonder about his won brother's death in a snow storm. It does seem that the doctor got away with murder.