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Devil's Fjord

31/5/2019

 
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Davie Hewson: Severn House £20.99
 
WHEN a novel opens with the words “He was on the roof of their little cottage mowing the thick and umber turf” it’s safe to assume the story’s not set in London, New York or Tokyo.
Lawn-clad houses are commonplace in the Faroe Islands, however, adding a special dash of other-worldliness to the work of a crime writer seeking an exotic backdrop for an equally unpredictable plot.
In fictitious Djevulsfjord on the real-life island of Vágar, the community’s tightly intertwined fishing families subsist on ever-dwindling ocean harvests. Summer is almost at an end by the time Djevulsfjord makes its first substantial catch of the season: a pod of “blackfish”, or pilot whales.
As locals band together to divide up the result of the traditional grind, Benjamin and Jónas Mikkelsen skulk on the periphery, Benji towed along in the wake of his trouble-making younger brother.
District sheriff Tristan Haraldsen and his wife Elsebeth are foreigners on the west coast of Vágar, newly arrived as sea-changers from the relative metropolis of the Faroese capital, Tórshavn. Tristan’s job is to ensure the grind adheres to government regulations – a role that marks him as an outsider employed to observe while the rest of the village participates.
When the inevitable altercation occurs it’s 10-year-old Jónas who in a split-second of fury attacks, slashing Tristan with a whaling knife before fleeing with Benji onto the nearby mountain, Árnafjall.
Almost immediately the treeless moors, razor-edged crags and jagged cliffs seem to devour the pair, leaving no trace to be found by searchers.
The boys’ mother, Alba, waits in anguish. The previous year her own sibling, Kaspar, was killed by a fall from Árnafjall, and two other men either died or disappeared in unexplained circumstances at about the same time.
For such an insignificant hamlet Djevulsfjord is fast amassing an unnervingly long list of casualties.

The Place on Dalhousie

24/5/2019

 
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Melina Marchetta: Viking $32.99
 

ROSIE Gennaro and Jimmy Hailler first cross paths under the most unexpected of circumstances.
Sydneysider Rosie is in Central Queensland escaping the misery of her father’s sudden death and the realisation that his widow, her despised stepmother, is refusing to relinquish control of a house renovated years earlier by Rosie’s parents.
Jimmy is also serving a period in exile, unable to leave the Sunshine State to return to his own home in Sydney until a good-behaviour bond has been completed.
When pitching in to help a town besieged by flooding brings the pair together for a fortnight, they find comfort in each other.
Two years later, having rediscovered a mobile phone misplaced after he and Rosie parted, Jimmy retrieves 12 months’ worth of voicemail and is shocked to discover he has a son. Toto is living with Rosie at her old family home in Dalhousie Street, Haberfield – just a hop, skip and jump from the neighbourhood in which some of Jimmy’s closest friends live.
Now working as a FIFO miner Jimmy can afford to fly from Brisbane to Sydney to visit Toto and Rosie – but will he be welcome? Afraid of following his parents’ poor example and disappointing his child, he hesitates.
Rosie is struggling. Reliant on welfare payments to support herself and Toto she is confined to the upper level of her childhood residence.
The rooms downstairs are the domain of 40-something Martha, still grieving the loss of her mother and then her husband in too short a time-span. Attractive and lonely, Martha has caught the attention of former rugby league star Ewan Healy, however, a man with an equally complicated life.
The latest release from the queen of multi-generational, multicultural family fiction (most notably, Looking for Alibrandi), Dalhousie interweaves the perspectives of Australians from various cultural backgrounds in a touching tale of mixed messages and uncertainty.

The Spanish Promise

17/5/2019

 
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Karen Swan: Macmillan $29.99
 
WITH just over a week to spare before her wedding, London-based wealth counsellor Charlotte Fairfax barely flinches when a major bank seeks her help to resolve an awkward financial predicament in Spain.
A powerful client’s billionaire father, on the brink of losing his life to cancer and now crippled by a stroke at the age of 98, is moving to bequeath the entirety of his generations-old business portfolio to a mid-40s café worker in Madrid – a woman completely unknown to the aristocratic family and its advisors, giving rise to the assumption that she must be the latest in a line of mistresses. Mateo Mendoza is worried; if his papa, Carlos, succeeds in transferring his assets to this stranger, the prestigious Mendoza empire will cease to exist.
Charlotte’s mission is simple: fly in, convince this mysterious interloper to accept a million-euro payoff in return for relinquishing any further claim on Carlos and his estate, and fly out just as quickly, all in time to take pride of place at her rehearsal dinner and attend one final gown fitting over the weekend.
What should be a straightforward negotiation becomes infinitely more challenging, however, when ghosts from Charlotte’s younger days resurface.
The investigation into Carlos’s links to his apparently unwitting beneficiary soon begins to draw Charlotte ever-deeper into the Spanish heartland, leading away from the glamorous capital with its galleries and cocktail parties to Ronda, a spectacularly situated, white-washed village in the Andalusian countryside where the echoes of civil war atrocities still reverberate.
Will doing her professional utmost to preserve the Mendoza inheritance mean sacrificing more than Charlotte is prepared to give up on the personal front? As her supposedly routine assignment becomes more complicated with every passing hour, Charlotte finds herself questioning her own identity and values just as closely as the waitress’s.

The Island

3/5/2019

 
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Ragnar Jónasson: Michael Joseph $32.99
 
ON AN isolated volcanic plateau in Iceland’s Westman Islands, surrounded by open ocean and populated ordinarily by only seabirds and sheep, four childhood friends reunite.
It’s a bittersweet time for the group, gathered now to honour a fifth member of their teenage-years posse, Katla, killed at the age of 20 exactly a decade earlier while spending a quiet weekend at her family’s wilderness cabin.
Katla’s younger brother Dagur is finally taking steps to overcome the horrendous event and the cascade of misery it triggered. The siblings’ father, accused of having murdered Katla, committed suicide while in custody and their mother, distraught, slipped further and further into malaise until Dagur had no choice but to admit her to a care home, where she continues to languish.
Now living alone, Dagur welcomes the chance to spend a few days away with Benedikt, Klara and Alexandra – three people with whom he grew up in a small satellite town on the fringe of Reykjavík.
It’s been 10 years since Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir lost her own daughter, Dimma, and eight years since her husband, Jón, died. Hulda’s career has stalled, leaving her trapped in a too-small flat barely paid for by a meagre mid-level police salary, and her prospects of gaining a much-needed promotion are all but non-existent.
Tragedy for the reminiscing foursome brings an unexpected change of fortune for Hulda, however, when a body is found below an intimidatingly sheer cliff near their holiday cottage.
As the senior officer on duty when the incident is logged she has first call on the case. Could this be an opportunity for Hulda to demonstrate her true ability at last?
This is the second book in Ragnar Jónasson’s Hidden Iceland trilogy: a prequel set a quarter of a century before The Darkness. The final instalment is scheduled for release next year.

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