The Owl Always Hunts at Night
Written by Samuel Bjork, translated by Charlotte Barslund — Bjork is yet another name to add to the pantheon of Nordic Noir authors. This is his second solidly written police procedural featuring Oslo detectives Holger Munch and Mia Krüger, following on from I’m Travelling Alone. Here,…
The Legacy of the Bones by Dolores Redondo
Translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia — Just how many secrets is it possible to have in one family? Well, if it’s Spanish author Dolores Redondo’s Baztan Trilogy, it appears the answer is very many indeed. After the disturbing revelations about her mother in The…
The Devil's Daughters
Written by Diana Bretherick — Formerly a criminal barrister, Diana Bretherick now lectures in criminology at the University of Portsmouth. In 2012, she won the Good Housekeeping New Novel Competition with her debut, City of Devils, which was subsequently published by Orion in 2013, and was…
Hard Light by Elizabeth Hand
You know you’re on a weird ride when out of the blue an 11-year-old girl in the story asks, “Do you want to see the dead babies?” That happens about two-thirds of the way into Hard Light, the third Cass Neary novel by American writer…
The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo
Translated by Isabelle Kaufeler — The Baztan valley in the Pyrenees in the north-east of Spain is misty, rainy and remote. Immersed in Basque traditions and superstitions, it creates an atmospheric backdrop to a novel which combines police procedural with a disquieting sense of the…
Compulsion by Bruce W Perry
Karl Standt has a back story. The former New York cop, now a private investigator, is still regaining his health after broken bones and a drug addiction were the price he paid for tracking down a missing heiress. All this happened in Gone On Kauai,…
Steps to Heaven
Written by Wendy Cartmel — A soldier sharpens his knife on a whetstone. He says a silent prayer to his God. And then he commits an act of appalling savagery. But this is not Afghanistan, or Iraq. It is the garrison town of Aldershot. Sergeant…