Tex Fox reviews the latest crime and thriller books.
THE CROW GIRL
Erik Axl Sund
Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House
The Crow Girl is a raw, dark psychological thriller that's as long and tenebrous as a Scandinavian midwinter's night. Long, as in 750 pages, the novel was reworked for the English language market from a trilogy.
At the centre of this Nordic noir are Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg and psychotherapist Sofia Zetterlund. Increasingly drawn to each other, they encounter torture, paedophilia, child abuse and child trafficking. Zetterlund herself harbours dark secrets including multiple personalities.
Collectively known under the pen name Erik Axl Sund, the authors are Jerker Eriksson and Hakan Axlander Sundquist. Their trilogy received the 2012 Special Award from the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers. The academy highlighted the trilogy's ‘‘hypnotically captivating psychoanalysis in crime fiction form''.
A complex, absorbing, disturbing tale.
MISSING PRESUMED
Susie Steiner
The Borough Press/Harper Collins
Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw, single, cynical and approaching 40, is lulled to sleep by the low voices from her bedside police radio. Of her online dating profile, she muses, a more truthful version should read, ‘‘Misanthrope, staring down the barrel of childlessness. Yawning ability to find fault. Can give off WoD (Whiff of Desperation)''.
Another day, another bad date, but this time the radio alerts her to a case deserving of her attention. A high risk ‘‘misper'', Edith Hind. Her boyfriend has arrived at their flat to find the front door open, the coats in the hall in disarray and blood on the kitchen floor. Edith, Cambridge postgrad student, classy and privileged, is gone without a trace.
The first 72 hours are critical and the pressure is on, as the story is told from the different perspectives of the individual characters. Fast-paced, gritty and funny, with warts and all Manon to the fore as the hardened British female detective with a heart of gold.
Extensively researched, (major crime, pathologists, vernacular, criminal law and criminology), it's a great story.
ALL THAT IS LOST BETWEEN US
Sara Foster
Simon & Schuster
This is a psychological thriller about secrets, a disintegrating family and set in the beautiful, ever-changing landscape of England's Lake District. On the surface, the family, Anya, Callum, Georgia and Zac, are a basic family unit, but it's a unit with widening gaps, between husband and wife, mother and daughter, daughter and friends.
Georgia, 17, has a secret and she doesn't know why her cousin Sophia is ignoring her. Husband Callum is cheating on his wife Anya, who in turn is struggling with a family drifting away from her. Zac is coping with hormonal feelings for his step-cousin, Maddie and an improbable truth he's discovered about his sister, Georgia.
Before anything can start to be resolved, Georgia, Sophia and a third teenager, a male friend, are struck by a hit-and-run driver, leaving Sophia in an induced coma. At first it appears to be just an accident on a badly lit, narrow, winding road with Georgia as a witness. However, questions are soon raised about whether it was in fact an accident.
The story is told from the points of view of teenager Georgia, mother Anya, Georgia's school counsellor, and Georgia's younger brother Zac. The only crime is the hit and run, the rest is a compelling story of a family whose early years have descended into the wearisome routines of parenting, juggling active lives and of personal secrets.
Gordon Ell
The Bush Press
Gordon Ell is the writer of The Ice Shroud and owner of The Bush Press in Takapuna. A non-fiction writer, this is his first foray into fiction. The book starts in the confines of a gorge and an unnamed Queenstown river in winter, where a female corpse is wedged in the boulders and ice of the fast-flowing waters. It is a job for the new boy in town, Detective Sergeant Buchan. On recovering the corpse, Buchan realises he knew her. Intimately. And she was murdered before ending up in the river. An easy enough read, but somewhat implausible. The descriptive writing in places has a somewhat dated feel.
Ted Fox is an online marketing and social media consultant.
