English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion
Group read-alongs
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August 2022 - read-along
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by David Lagercrantz
to be published on the 23rd of August 2022. Sweden.Inspired by Sherlock Holmes, an exhilarating new thriller from the bestselling author of The Girl in the Spider's Web--a murder investigation in which two unlikely allies race to uncover a shadowy international conspiracy.
Professor Hans Rekke is a world authority on interrogation techniques, capable of dizzying feats of logic and observation. He was born into wealth and power and has a picture-perfect wife and daughter. But he also has a fragile psyche that falls apart under pressure.
Micaela Vargas is a street-smart police officer, daughter of Chilean political refugees, who grew up in the projects on the outskirts of Stockholm and has two brothers on the wrong side of the law. She is tenacious and uncompromising, and desperate to prove herself to her fellow cops.
Micaela needs Hans's unique mind to help her solve the case of a murdered asylum-seeker from Afghanistan. Hans needs Micaela to save him from himself. Together, they need to find the killer before they're both silenced for good.
12) Oath Undo Me
by Megan Formanek
to be published on the 31st of August 2022. Viking.Historical Fiction (Viking) female protagonist.
Astrid is free, widowed after two years in an unwanted marriage. She wants to reclaim her life and become the warrior she always wanted to be, just like her father. Horrified by her best friend’s unwelcomed proposal, she flees everything she has ever known for a chance at life across the Baltic Sea, assuming a new identity in a land unknown.
Aldeigjuborg, in the land of the Rus', is far different to her native homeland. With the support of her new mentor, she is given the opportunity to create a life within the walls of a town she would have previously dreamed of raiding. Being a Viking is more than adventure and travel. Riches can be found in trade, through the learning of new languages and cultures.
Soon, Astrid realises everything has a price, and a promise made can have unintended consequences.
Oath Undo Me is book one in the Viking Trading Lands series, inspired by archaeological evidence.
13) Ice Queen: A Chilling Scandinavian Crime Thriller
by Morgan Greene to be published on the 31st of August 2022. Finland.Keep her happy, or heads will roll …
DI Jamie Johansson is trying to find normality in Kurrajakk when she gets the chance to sit in on the Interpol interview linked to her last case.
A pattern of mutilation and beheading on the Finnish border has Jamie’s full attention, but Interpol seem more interested in the Russian connection. Begrudgingly, they let her follow up, and as usual, Jamie’s nose for trouble doesn’t steer her wrong.
The lake-side town of Leppasalmi is bathed in darkness for three months a year, and as Jamie and Thorsen arrive, the sun begins to set for the polar night. The local polis superintendent is working to keep her people safe from an ever-present threat and knows the long night always spells trouble. Wary of strangers and afraid to step foot outside, the entire town hunkers down for dusk. The denizens have accepted the abductions and killings as a part of life, but Jamie and Thorsen refuse to kneel.
The Ice Queen’s word may be law, but Jamie has never been good at taking orders …
***
Ice Queen is the sixth novel in the DI Jamie Johansson series, and the harrowing follow-up to Quiet Wolf. With a dark psychological edge underpinning the classic Scandi-noir themes, and plenty of twists and turns along the way, the series is perfect for fans of Mo Hayder, Jo Nesbø, A J Rivers, and Angela Marsons.
Mod
by Sólveig Pálsdóttir with Quentin Bates as translator. Published on the 27th of August 2022. Iceland.When wealthy doctor Ríkarður Magnússon goes to sleep in his luxurious caravan and doesn’t wake up, detectives Guðgeir Fransson and Elsa Guðrún are called to the Westman Islands to investigate what looks like murder.
Suspicion immediately falls on Ríkharður’s young, beautiful and deeply troubled girlfriend – but there are no easy answers in this case as they are drawn into family feuds, disgruntled friends and colleagues, and the presence of a group of fitness-obsessed over-achievers with secrets of their own.
As their investigation makes progress, Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún are forced to confront their own preconceptions and prejudices as they uncover the sinister side of Ríkharður’s past.
Harm is the third novel featuring the soft-spoken Reykjavík detective Guðgeir Fransson to appear in English. Sólveig Pálsdóttir again weaves a complex web of intrigue that plays out in the Westman Islands, remote southern Iceland and Reykjavík while asking some searching questions about things society accepts at face value – and others it is not prepared to tolerate.
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book The Son in paperback will be out on the 9th of August 2022 with a Special Edition. Norway. The original was out in 2014.From the author of the bestselling Harry Hole series comes an electrifying tale of vengeance set amid Oslo’s brutal hierarchy of corruption. Featuring an introduction by James Ellroy.
Sonny Lofthus has been in prison for almost half his life: serving time for crimes he didn't commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin--and a stream of fellow prisoners seeking his Buddha-like absolution.
Years earlier Sonny's father, a corrupt cop, took his own life rather than face exposure. When Sonny discovers a shocking truth about his father's suicide, he makes a brilliant escape and begins hunting down the people responsible. But he's also being hunted--by enemies too numerous to count.
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by Christoffer Petersen
to be published on the 21st of August 2022. Greenland.Some things are taboo, even for vigilantes, and when Hazel Burnett a.k.a. Havoc crosses the line everybody suffers.
Taboo is an intense, action-packed short story, not for the fainthearted.
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by Sleiman & Dart Adams published on the 9th of August 2022. Denmark.A powerful story of struggle, survival, and hope for the future is told by one of Denmark's most successful artists.
The violent, compelling debut, co-written with journalist Dart Adams, provides a complex portrait of one man and the various ways in which every social system that was supposed to help him failed him, while also delving into the psychology of immigrant gangs and the young men who fall into them. But ultimately, it's a narrative about tenacity, survival, and optimism for the future.
Sleiman was born in Lebanon during the 1982 bombardment and is a Palestinian. His family eventually moved to Denmark, but their new life there was far from perfect. Sleiman was subjected to domestic violence as well as social rejection as a Muslim immigrant. Angry and powerless, he found himself drawn to gang life.
Sleiman had dropped out of school and was one of his gang's most feared and revered members as a teenager. He was involved in hundreds of crimes during his peak, but after surviving an attempted assassination, he addressed his demons and permanently abandoned the gang life. Sleiman is now narrating his story in his own words in the hopes of discouraging others from following in his footsteps.
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by Anna Karolina to be published on the 19th of August 2022. Sweden.Is he guilty or innocent? Even he doesn’t know…
On the eve of their thirtieth birthday, twins Jasmine and Nicolas Moretti celebrate late into the night. But when Nicolas wakes several hazy hours later, Jasmine is dead—and he is covered in her blood. Panicking, he takes the murder weapon and runs into the cold Stockholm night.
For the police, it’s an open-and-shut case. Nicolas is guilty. And given that he remembers so little of what happened that night, even he isn’t convinced of his innocence.
Emma Tapper, an ex-cop driven to drink by a tragedy she’s devastated she couldn’t prevent, is recruited by defence lawyer Angela Köhler to help with the high-profile Moretti case. While her new boss seems more concerned with winning than discovering the truth, Emma begins investigating the circumstances of the murder.
As she digs into the case, Emma finds herself clashing with former colleagues who are convinced they already know the truth. And the more horrific secrets she unearths, the more her own traumatic past returns to haunt her. She’s not used to working to free a man behind bars, but something tells her Nicolas might be innocent. But if he didn’t do it, who did?
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by Geoff Wolak published on the 19th of August 2022. U.K., Sweden.Young adult, paranormal, conspiracy thriller, and romance fiction series. Football team captain, and popular school president, Ricky Roskov leaves school in England to start work in his uncle's factory, to make enough money for college, a future in politics planned.
Modelling for the company brochure, he gets noticed, and he accidentally starts a very lucrative parallel career in modelling and acting, soon surrounded by beautiful models.
Involving himself in charity work and politics in his home town, a dying women sets him on the trail of uncovering corruption, conspiracy, rape and murder at the hands of the town's elite.
This is young adult fiction, romance, paranormal conspiracy thriller, crime and coming of age, strong and regular hetro sex, some violence, a slow burn build-up of characters and events, empire building, a feel-good story.
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by Griff Hosker
to be published on the 26th of August 2022. Viking.The last Viking left in the New World finds fresh challenges when his growing family is forced to leave their home on the Patawomke River to sail north and find a new home amongst tribes who may be hostile. As his clan grows Erik learns to adapt to this new world and all its wonders.
English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic...
Books mentioned in this topic
Erik's Clan (other topics)Taboo: A short story of illusion (other topics)
Roskov, Book 14 (other topics)
Harm (other topics)
The Guilty One (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Griff Hosker (other topics)Geoff Wolak (other topics)
Anna Karolina (other topics)
Sleiman (other topics)
Dart Adams (other topics)
More...
1) The Shadow Lily
A haunting and complex novel, this second installment in Johanna Mo’s The Island Murders series finds Detective Hanna Duncker contending with new questions and discoveries that threaten to upend everything she thought she knew about her family.
Small-town police detective Hanna Duncker has a past. Her deceased father was convicted of murder and arson long ago, and she has taken up residence and resumed her police career in her hometown after his death. She and her partner Erik Lindgren are called to investigate the disappearance of a father and his infant son from their home while his pregnant wife was away on a weekend trip. As the investigation unfolds, Hanna makes a breakthrough in her ongoing private investigation of her father’s crimes: a discovery that could change everything she thought she’d learned so far.
In The Shadow Lily, Johanna Mo’s follow-up to The Night Singer, we find Hanna even further entangled in the web of relationships and partial truths that trapped her father for well over a decade. Are guilt and innocence as definite as they seem? And can she handle yet another unravelling of her family’s story?
2) Ice Islands
Major Rake Ozenna faces dangerous choices and deadly consequences in this rip-roaring political thriller that takes you from the ice islands of Finland to the bustling streets of Tokyo via Russia and the White House . . . Buckle up, this is a thrilling ride!
Major Rake Ozenna's mission is simple: gain access to the Kato family - Japan's most dangerous crime empire - and stop the threat to America. But when the secret son of the Russian leader is executed and Rake's target, Sara Kato, is implicated in the murder, a political crisis between Russia, Japan and the US is set in motion.
It's a race to protect Sara and earn her trust whilst escaping the inhospitable terrain of the icy Aland island. Meanwhile, Russia wants revenge for the murder, a catastrophic move when it is revealed Japan have been stockpiling nuclear weapons.
As Rake learns the true extent of their deadly plans, he must draw on every ounce of his training to succeed. Because if he fails, it won't just be his life that will be lost . . . the consequences will be global!
3) Boulder
Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname ‘Boulder’. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no – and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.
With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.
Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world – and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.
4) Adapt: A short story of reflection
Following a period of rest and recuperation, Havoc is forced out of hiding to seek help with her new drug therapy, only to draw the attention of VOC Pharmaceuticals and the relentless pursuit of their most prized asset.
Adapt is an intense, action-packed short story, not for the fainthearted.
5) After She'd Gone
Unsettling, gripping and darkly glamorous, After She'd Gone is a timely psychological thriller about the danger of beauty, the lure of power, and the fierce love of a mother for her son.
Liv loves her son, Adrian. That's why she keeps a low profile in Sandefjord, Norway: just another tired single mother, trying to make ends meet. She has never told her son about the secrets she carries or the life she lived before he was born. She will do anything to keep him safe.
Anastasia's life is transformed when she moves from Russia to Milan and starts modelling. Suddenly, she's rich. She's desired. But then she begins to see the dark side of her new life: the high-pressure catwalk shows; the glamorous, drink-fuelled after-parties; the sun-baked Italian palazzos owned by powerful men. She will do anything to escape
Selma is a feature journalist in Oslo. She's horrified to uncover an unsavoury and dangerous underworld when she writes an article looking into the modelling industry. Then, a woman goes missing in Sandefjord...
6) Love
A novel of intersecting historical threads.
Love narrates celebrated Norwegian writer Tomas Espedal’s search for death. The decision blossoms within I—the I-person—"like some interior bloom, black and beautiful” on a warm spring day in May, and it is this resolution that fills his self-imposed final year with meaning: Death. It can be so beautiful. One must create this beauty for oneself. One must submit to this naturalness, one must choose it, like pulling the duvet over oneself in bed or jumping off a bridge. But almost immediately life deals I a wildcard: a new love affair brings some of the best days he’s ever known and threatens his pact with death. Will he be able to leave Aka and the child she’s carrying? He has put an endpoint on his life to intensify experience but is he sure that disappearing from their lives, becoming an absent father, is the best thing for all of them? Set against Espedal’s constant reference, the ebb and flow of the seasons, something close to ecstasy propels this most introspective of narratives towards a universal truth.
7) The Loki Sword
An ancient blade, fit for the gods but tainted with a deadly curse.
Bjarki Bloodhand has finally managed to subdue his gandr, the spirit that gives him the ferocity of a bear in battle. Yet losing his berserker prowess may leave him at the mercy of his foes.
Meanwhile, his half-sister, the shield maiden Tor Hildarsdottir, has slain two warriors from the personal retinue of the new Jarl of Norrland – and now faces brutal reprisals for their deaths.
Valtyr Far-Traveller claims he has a solution to their problems: a long voyage south to the wild Slav lands to find a fabled lost sword said to once belong to the Norse trickster god.
The journey will prove more perilous than anything Bjarki or Tor has ever attempted before. Can all three heroes hope to survive the desperate hunt for... The Loki Sword?
8) The Intrigue in the North: A Constable Petra Jensen Novella
In the middle of bittersweet preparations for Luui’s sixth birthday, Constable Petra Jensen is torn between family and duty when given a special assignment by Commissioner Lars Andersen.
The Intrigue in the North is the fifteenth in the Greenland Missing Persons series of novellas and novels set in the harsh, unpredictable Arctic, rich in tradition, myth and culture.
The Intrigue in the North picks up the story following The Last Day of Old Magic and continues the adventures of Constable Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen, ably assisted by interesting characters, together with a few familiar faces making cameo appearances in the series.
The Greenland Missing Persons stories are set prior to The Ice Star and Seven Graves, One Winter.
9) Touch
A mesmerizing, panoramic story of one man's search to find a lover who suddenly disappeared decades before
When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue--a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he'd known in the sixties when they were students in London--both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life. Even as the pandemic upends his world, Kristofer finds himself pulled toward an answer to the mystery of Miko's sudden departure decades before, compelling him to travel to London and Japan as the virus threatens to shut everything down.
A heart-wrenching love story and an absorbing mystery, Touch delves into the secrets of the past to explore the hidden lives that we all possess, the pain and beauty of our past loves and friendships that continue to leave their mark on us. Searching and lyrically rendered by acclaimed author Olaf Olafsson, Touch is a stunning tribute to the weight of history and the complexities of the human heart.
10) The Guilty One
Is he guilty or innocent? Even he doesn’t know…
On the eve of their thirtieth birthday, twins Jasmine and Nicolas Moretti celebrate late into the night. But when Nicolas wakes several hazy hours later, Jasmine is dead—and he is covered in her blood. Panicking, he takes the murder weapon and runs into the cold Stockholm night.
For the police, it’s an open-and-shut case. Nicolas is guilty. And given that he remembers so little of what happened that night, even he isn’t convinced of his innocence.
Emma Tapper, an ex-cop driven to drink by a tragedy she’s devastated she couldn’t prevent, is recruited by defence lawyer Angela Köhler to help with the high-profile Moretti case. While her new boss seems more concerned with winning than discovering the truth, Emma begins investigating the circumstances of the murder.
As she digs into the case, Emma finds herself clashing with former colleagues who are convinced they already know the truth. And the more horrific secrets she unearths, the more her own traumatic past returns to haunt her. She’s not used to working to free a man behind bars, but something tells her Nicolas might be innocent. But if he didn’t do it, who did?