Category: Scandinavia

The Calendar Man | The Twelfth Night

29/11/2019

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $5.99 each Kindle e-books

DANISH-BASED author Christoffer Petersen’s Christmas offering to fans of Arctic noir is a pair of seasonally themed novellas designed to be enjoyed progressively across the Advent–New Year period.
The action in the first of the two releases, The Calendar Man, begins on December 1 and continues in bite-sized chapters that can be read in less than 15 minutes per day throughout the lead-up to Christmas, culminating on Christmas Eve, when Scandinavians (including Greenlanders) celebrate by sharing meals and opening gifts together. It is the literary equivalent of the 24-part Julekalendere programs broadcast on television every year and the internationally popular windowed wall calendars.
The second picks up the storyline on January 5 and runs for 48 hours to end early on the morning immediately after Twelfth Night, or Mitaartut.
Both feature a cast of central characters introduced in Petersen’s previous series, set in the same location a quarter of a century earlier: police colleagues Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen, Gaba Alatak, Aqqa Danielsen and Atii Napa and politician’s daughter Pipaluk Uutaaq from Greenland Crime, and Iiluuna Mattikalaat, a troubled child from Arctic Short Stories.
Even in 2042 serious crime is rare in Greenland – so rare that when an Advent calendar is found on a mutilated body in the capital, Nuuk, Commissioner Jensen is recalled to duty despite being on extended leave at the time.
First Minister Uutaaq is taking no chances with law and order in her rapidly developing city. A vote on independence from King Frederik’s Denmark is looming and nothing – not even a cryptic and very public corpse – can be allowed to derail the democratic process.
Juxtaposing the elements of a contemporary crime thriller with the warmth of traditional festivities in a remote, otherworldly setting, Petersen serves up a glimpse into a culture as exotic and mysterious to outsiders as it is rich and welcoming.

A Wolf at the Gate

6/9/2019

Lexie Conyngham: The Kellas Cat Press $5.44 Kindle e-book

BARELY have Ketil Gunnarson and the coastal raiding party he’s helping to lead landed on English soil when a stranger appears at their riverside camp with a message from the remote Norse settlement Orkney. Earl Thorfinn, no less, is requesting Ketil’s immediate return to the islands.
Struggling to cling to power in the midst of would-be usurpers’ relentless attacks against him, Thorfinn has welcomed the appearance of an influential religious delegation from Colonia in Saxony – a northwestern region of continental Europe that nearly a thousand years later will be part of Germany.
Ketil’s arrival back at the earl’s stronghold in Birsay a few days later is ill-timed, however.
With his Icelandic offsider, Lambi, he has scarcely had time to resume feasting in the familiar hall of Thorfinn and his wife Ingibjorg when a death is reported. A neighbour of Ketil’s childhood friend Sigrid has been found dead – and the presence of an axe protruding from his skill suggests it wasn’t accidental.
Suspicion is cast in a multitude of directions, not least of all at Lambi: a foreigner with an unknown past who has been accused of stealing a valuable drinking cup from a fellow Norseman.
Further complicating an already-uncomfortable situation, one of the Saxon visitors is an acquaintance Ketil had been hoping to avoid seeing again.
In the second instalment of her Orkneyinga Murders series, Scottish author Lexie Conyngham overlays a cast of complex characters on the real-life backdrop of 11th-century Orkney as described in detail in one of Iceland’s best known Old Norse sagas.
Both Thorfinn and Ingibjorg are documented historical figures, first introduced to Conyngham’s readers in Tomb for an Eagle, and the tumbledown-stone remains of their quarters and wider community at Birsay can still be visited, injecting an added dash of factual fascination to this fast-moving mystery.

Devil's Fjord

31/5/2019

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 Island

3/5/2019

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.

Liv

18/1/2019

Mikaela Bley: Scribe $32.99

FOR Swedish TV journalist Ellen Tamm, a few days at her family’s estate on a relatively isolated island about an hour’s drive outside Stockholm is supposed to form part of an emotional rehabilitation plan.
Crime reporter Tamm is still reeling from the after-effects of her entanglement in the disappearance and death of a young girl, Lycke (the subject and title of author Mikaela Bley’s debut novel), in the city earlier in the year and that case’s reawakening of memories of her own twin sister’s drowning when they were children.
For the past several months has been unable to work. In fact, she is barely holding her life together, leaving the rent on her apartment unpaid, eating poorly if at all and closing herself off from her friends and colleagues.
On her way to the island, however, Tamm drives straight into a tiny satellite community in upheaval. A woman’s body has been found in a vehicle that morning and police have an area of the roadway cordoned off.
Should Tamm continue on as scheduled to spend the allocated time being fussed over by her controlling mother, or should she instead give in to her professional instinct and start digging for information on this new victim? She is, after all, the first member of the media to have arrived on the scene, even if her presence there is due to sheer chance.
As details of motorist Liv’s identity are unravelled Tamm discovers a world of anti-social behaviour, unconventional relationships, public deception and personal betrayal that pushes her ever-deeper into the darkness of self-doubt, mistrust and fear. Has she made an error of judgement from which she will never be able to recover this time?
A psychological thriller with deeply disturbing themes at its heart, Liv inhabits the unseemly underbelly of the outwardly picture-perfect existence of middle-class Swedes.

Northern Light

21/12/2018

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $24.99

CONSTABLE Hákan Sigurdsson is faced with an unpalatable choice: volunteer to join the world’s least-established multinational law enforcement task force, Polarpol, based at sea in the Arctic, or be dismissed from his position with the Icelandic police by none other than his own sister, Reykjavik’s commissioner.
To be fair, it’s not an ideal situation for Jenny Sigurdsdóttir, either. Since his marriage disintegrated her brother has been out of control – angry, disengaged, bitter and, increasingly often, at least half drunk.
For his daughter’s sake, if nothing else, Sigurdsson must refocus. Perhaps this unexpected posting will become his salvation.
At the same time, English IT genius Adrian Seabrook has a secret he’s desperate to spill. Seabrook has decided that a high-profile cybersecurity conference in Reykjavik will provide just the global audience he’s been seeking.
Not everyone is as eager as Seabrook to have the information shared, however.
As the date of his planned public revelation nears, the would-be whistleblower finds himself under attack. Assassination attempts are made; two of his closest aides are killed.
Among those with Seabrook in their sights are Byrne Cantrell and Edie Teal, a couple whose passion for each other is exceeded only by their passion for creating human carnage. Together they are one of the deadliest combinations for hire anywhere on the planet, determined to complete one last assignment before packing away their concealed weapons and settling down to a life of baby-raising bliss. The hit on Seabrook will be their spectacular finale.
Polarpol has barely been commissioned when suddenly Sigurdsson and his new colleagues – one representative each from Canada, Alaska and Russia – are called into action.
Now, Seabrook’s chances of leaving Iceland alive hinge solely on the efficacy of Polarpol’s untested team.
Northern Light is the first book in a series derived from Christoffer Petersen’s Greenland thrillers featuring Sergeant Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen.

My Polar Dream

23/11/2018

Jade Hameister: Macmillan Australia, $29.99

JADE Hameister has always been an exceptional achiever.
Aged six she walked to the summit of Mt Kosciuszko.
At 12 she convinced her parents to take her on a family hike through the Himalayas to Everest Base Camp.
The following year, at 13 Hameister set her sights on reaching the South Pole.
Only one obstacle stood in her way: the Hameisters’ chosen guide insisted she be at least 16 years old before attempting such a gruelling expedition.
Undaunted, she decided to kill time with a couple of relatively straightforward warm-up treks: to the North Pole and across the Greenland icecap.
Never having skied, she prepared with a few days’ training in New Zealand’s South Island, then set out from the Svalbard Archipelago in Norway determined to become the youngest person ever to ski entirely unsupported and unassisted from outside the final degree of latitude to the most northerly point in the world.
Along the way her youthful ambition, inspiring teenage message and passionate environmental focus caught the attention of both the National Geographic Society (which engaged a videographer to accompany Hameister and her father on each of their three increasingly taxing challenges) and the team behind the global phenomenon of TEDx talks.
Those same characteristics quickly drew the ire of a cohort of anonymous online trolls, however, who used the phrase “Make me a sandwich” to suggest Hameister’s true purpose as a woman should be to wait on men.
Her reply – along with the nearly three years’ worth of agony, frustration, ecstasy and relief that preceded it as she completed her sub-zero hat-trick – is recounted in Hameister’s own voice, from the joy of opening special letters written by her closest school friends to the physical torture of hauling twice her own bodyweight in a sled over jagged ridges of ice.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

12/1/2018

Book reviews

Categories

Archive