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A murder at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, bears a close resemblance to one in Trondheim, Norway. The corpse of the museum curator in Virginia is found flayed in his office by the cleaning staff; the corpse of an archivist at the library in Norway is found inside a locked vault used to store delicate and rare books. Richmond homicide detective Felicia Stone and Trondheim police inspector Odd Singsaker find themselves working on similar murder cases, committed the same way, but half a world away.
A six-year-old girl is found in the Norwegian countryside, hanging lifeless from a tree and dressed in strange doll's clothes. Around her neck is a sign that says, "I'm traveling alone." A special homicide unit in Oslo reopens with veteran police investigator Holger Munch at the helm. Holger's first step is to persuade the brilliant but haunted investigator Mia Krüger, who has been living on an isolated island, overcome by memories of her past.
Stavern, 1983. After a brutal robbery, a young policeman named William Wisting is edged off the investigation by more experienced officers, but soon he is on another case that has not even been recognised as murder. Forgotten in a dilapidated barn stands a bullet-riddled old car, and it looks as if the driver did not get out alive. This case will shape William Wisting as a policeman and give him insight that he will carry with him for the rest of his career.
The producer of a troubled play invites the cast to spend the weekend in his remote Scottish Highlands estate to hash out the problems. When the housemaid finds the playwright murdered in bed, Thomas Lynley and his partner must unmask the villain.
A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk, the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in "the shadow district", a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now?
Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country. The victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect.
A murder at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, bears a close resemblance to one in Trondheim, Norway. The corpse of the museum curator in Virginia is found flayed in his office by the cleaning staff; the corpse of an archivist at the library in Norway is found inside a locked vault used to store delicate and rare books. Richmond homicide detective Felicia Stone and Trondheim police inspector Odd Singsaker find themselves working on similar murder cases, committed the same way, but half a world away.
A six-year-old girl is found in the Norwegian countryside, hanging lifeless from a tree and dressed in strange doll's clothes. Around her neck is a sign that says, "I'm traveling alone." A special homicide unit in Oslo reopens with veteran police investigator Holger Munch at the helm. Holger's first step is to persuade the brilliant but haunted investigator Mia Krüger, who has been living on an isolated island, overcome by memories of her past.
Stavern, 1983. After a brutal robbery, a young policeman named William Wisting is edged off the investigation by more experienced officers, but soon he is on another case that has not even been recognised as murder. Forgotten in a dilapidated barn stands a bullet-riddled old car, and it looks as if the driver did not get out alive. This case will shape William Wisting as a policeman and give him insight that he will carry with him for the rest of his career.
The producer of a troubled play invites the cast to spend the weekend in his remote Scottish Highlands estate to hash out the problems. When the housemaid finds the playwright murdered in bed, Thomas Lynley and his partner must unmask the villain.
A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk, the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in "the shadow district", a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now?
Before Harry took on the neo-Nazi gangs of Oslo, before he met Rakel, before The Snowman tried to take everything he held dear, he went to Australia. Harry Hole is sent to Sydney to investigate the murder of Inger Holter, a young Norwegian girl who was working in a bar. Initially sidelined as an outsider, Harry becomes central to the Australian police investigation when they start to notice a number of unsolved rape and murder cases around the country. The victims were usually young blondes. Inger had a number of admirers, each with his own share of secrets, but there is no obvious suspect.
When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theater, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one and secrets and lies are a way of life. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts as Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness - blinded by snow and with a killer on the loose.
Two hundred years ago a loyalist family fled to England to escape the American War of Independence and seemingly vanished into thin air. American genealogist Jefferson Tayte is hired to find out what happened, but it soon becomes apparent that a calculated killer is out to stop him.
From the best-selling author of Cry Baby, the beginning of a brilliant and gripping police procedural series set in Liverpool, perfect for fans of Peter James and Mark Billingham. A woman at home in Liverpool is disturbed by a persistent tapping at her back door. She's disturbed to discover the culprit is a raven and tries to shoo it away. Which is when the killer strikes. DS Nathan Cody, still bearing the scars of an undercover mission that went horrifyingly wrong, is put on the case.
The only person who might have the answers to a baffling murder case is the victim's seven-year-old daughter, found hiding in the room where her mother died. And she's not talking. Newly-promoted, out of his depth, detective Huldar turns to Freyja for her expertise with traumatized young people. Freyja, who distrusts the police in general and Huldar in particular, isn't best pleased. But she's determined to keep little Margret safe. It may prove tricky. The killer is leaving them strange clues: warnings in text messages, sums scribbled on bits of paper, numbers on the radio.
Cal McGill is an Edinburgh-based oceanographer, environmentalist and one-of-a-kind investigator. Using his knowledge of the waves - ocean currents, prevailing winds, shipping records - McGill can track where objects came from or where they've gone. It's a skill that can help solve mysteries ranging from disappearances to murder. Two severed feet wash up on two different islands off the coast of Scotland. Forensics shows that the feet belong to the same body.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound, and dumped in water around London.
It's DS Logan McRae's first day back on the job after a year off on the sick, and it couldn't get much worse. Three-year-old David Reid's body is discovered in a ditch: strangled, mutilated and a long time dead. And he's only the first. There's a serial killer stalking the Granite City, and the local media are baying for blood. Soon the dead are piling up in the morgue almost as fast as the snow on the streets, and Logan knows time is running out. More children are going missing. More are going to die.
On a hot July morning on Sweden's idyllic vacation island of Sandhamn, a man takes his dog for a walk and makes a gruesome discovery: a body, tangled in fishing net, has washed ashore. Police detective Thomas Andreasson is the first to arrive on the scene. Before long, he has identified the deceased as Krister Berggren, a bachelor from the mainland who has been missing for months. All signs point to an accident - until another brutalized corpse is found at the local bed-and-breakfast.
In 1986, Eddie and his friend are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy little English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code; little chalk stick figures they leave for each other as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing will ever be the same.
Adrian McKinty was born in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied politics and philosophy at Oxford before moving to America in the early 1990s. Living first in Harlem, he found employment as a construction worker, barman, and bookstore clerk. In 2000 he moved to Denver to become a high school English teacher and it was there that he began writing fiction.
Astrid Bell has known most of her roommates for years, but while they have a history together - romantic pairings, one-night stands, friendships - each of them also has a past. Astrid is on her way home one day when her neighbor knocks her off her bike. Seeing she is bruised but not broken, her roommates help her home. The next day, they learn that same neighbor was beaten to death hours later. Each of them tells the police what they know and are dismissed - until Astrid stumbles over another body.
DI Nikki Galena: A police detective with nothing left to lose, she's seen a girl die in her arms, and her daughter will never leave the hospital again. She's gotten tough on the criminals she believes did this to her. Too tough. And now she's been given one final warning: make it work with her new sergeant, DS Joseph Easter, or she's out.
A promising young singer is found dead in a clearing in a forest, gruesomely murdered - her larynx cut out and an antique music box placed carefully atop her body, playing a mysterious lullaby that sounds familiar but that no one can quite place. Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker, of the Trondheim Police Department, still recovering from brain surgery, is called in to investigate.
Singsaker, now married to Felicia Stone, the American detective he met while tracking down a serial killer, fears the worst when another young girl, also known for her melodic singing voice, suddenly goes missing while on a walk with her dog one night. As the Trondheim police follow the trail of this deadly killer, it becomes clear that both cases are somehow connected to a centuries-old ballad called "The Golden Peace", written by a mysterious composer called Jon Blund in the 17th century. This lullaby promises the most sound, sweet sleep to the listener - and as time ticks by, the elusive killer seems as if he will stop at nothing to get his hands on this perfect lullaby.
Jorgen Brekke returns at the top of his game in this nonstop thrill ride through place - and time.
The story is very good. Unfortunately the narrator has chosen to represent the Norwegian accents which should be found in this translation with British/Irish/even some Scottish accents. Very disconcerting.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
The story switches back and forth between 18th century and 21st-century Trondheim. It is a time machine tour of Scandinavia.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I wanted to like this book, but in the end it was rather mediocre... The characters and plot never really defined themselves nor was any depth of story accomplished... The characters seemed rather thin and one dimensional... The story itself kinda treaded water... There was some definite potential, but that potential was never realized... The narration was adequate, but at times flowed poorly... It was odd that a scandinavian story had so many accents from the British Isles... The brogues and lilts were odd, and the american accent used for the female lead sounded very bland, slightly robotic... Not bad enough to return, but awfully close...
3 of 5 people found this review helpful
It was a good second installment that warranted immediately going out and finding the third. Exciting story, some genuinely tense moments., and I have to admit to being a sucker for stories that link to events from the past, which this one does very well.
That said, the narrator had trouble with accents. I didn't preview before I bought it (that's how much I enjoyed "Where Monsters Dwell") so I didn't realize it had a different narrator. He's given everyone different, terribly inconsistent British accents. Also, his attempts at American accents are distractingly bad. I'd definitely read or listen to more works by Jorgen Brekke, but I would think twice before listening to anything else narrated by Paul Hodgson.
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
This was my first J Brekke book. It was well written, had an unusual plot and enough suspense. I just was never on the edge of my seat--thus the lower rating.