Scandinavian noir at its noirest. It’s hard, maybe unthinkable, to imagine how Hancock will follow it up.
Hancock’s striking debut rips the lid off a 3-year-old murder case and reveals even uglier secrets beneath.
DS Erik Schäfer, of the Copenhagen police’s Violent Crimes Unit, is perfectly satisfied that he knows who cut attorney Christoffer Mossing’s throat and left him to bleed out in his own bed. Minutes after the murder, the security camera in Mossing’s driveway captured an image of Anna Kiel leaving the house without making the slightest effort to conceal herself. But that was the last anyone saw of Anna—until now, when she’s begun to send insinuating notes to Demokratisk Dagblad business reporter Heloise Kaldan that are unsettling in their reference to amorphophallus titanum, the so-called corpse flower native to Sumatra, and their ritualistic closing lines and disturbingly detailed knowledge about the scant details of Heloise’s private life. Already treading on thin ice ever since the confidential information her lover, Martin Duvall, the communications chief to the commerce secretary, provided for her exposé of a fashion mogul’s investment in a textile factory in Bangalore didn’t quite pan out, Heloise strains to avoid any contact with the presumptive killer. The deeper she digs into the cold case, however, the closer its nightmarish details seem to impinge on her own past. Schäfer, meanwhile, is brusquely brushed off by real estate tycoon Johannes Mossing, who seems actively opposed to getting justice for his son’s murder. The highly suspicious hanging of Ulrich Andersson, the ex-reporter who covered the case for the Dagblad, kicks the investigation into high gear. But it won’t be laid to rest until Heloise comes face to face with Anna and hears why she was so indifferent to that security camera three years ago.
Scandinavian noir at its noirest. It’s hard, maybe unthinkable, to imagine how Hancock will follow it up.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64385-828-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crooked Lane
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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