Tuesday, 6 September 2016
Monday, 5 September 2016
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Friday, 2 September 2016
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End (The Story of a Crime Series) by Leif G W Persson
Paperback: Between Summer's Longing an Winter's End (2010) is the first novel in a trilogy that has become the defining account of the unsolved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme - an event that still haunts the collective Swedish memory. It is acclaimed as one of the greatest Swedish crime novels of all time and is an award-winning Swedish classic.
Stockholm. The dead of winter. The temperature is already well below freezing.
A young American dies, falling from a tall building. It appears to be a casual, self-inflicted death. It should be an open-and-shut case. But when Superintendent Lars Martin Johansson begins to delve beneath the layers of corruption, incompetence and violence that threaten to strangle the Stockholm police department, he uncovers a complex web of treachery, politics and espionage.
Johansson quickly realizes that there is nothing routine about this suicide as it soon takes him from domestic drama to the rotten heart of Sweden's government and the murder of the prime minister.
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End is a riveting insider's combination of black satire, thriller, psychological drama, and police procedural about the biggest police investigation in recorded history.
The book is translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlen.
About the author: Leif G W Persson is the Grand Master of Scandinavian crime fiction. Over three decades, he has taken a scalpel to the political and social mores of Swedish society in his dark, complex and satirical crime novels. His work melds the social realism of a Balzac or a Dickens with the hard-boiled street smarts of James Ellroy.
Born in 1945, Persson has had an extraordinary career. At once Scandinavia's most renowned criminologist and leading psychological profiler, Persson has also served as an advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Justice. Since 1991, he has been Professor at the National Swedish Police Board and is regularly consulted by media as the country's foremost expert on crime. He is the author of nine novels. Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End is the first to be translated into English. His most recent novel, The Dying Detective (2016), was awarded Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year by the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers.
Rating: 3/5
Rating: 3/5
Thursday, 1 September 2016
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Nightmare In The Sun (True Crime) by Danny Collins
Hardback: "They'd been talking about and planning a move for ages. They had their hearts set on a nice villa, away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist resorts." - Bernard O'Malley on his brother's dream.
"Two bedroom house in 4000 metre square plot. Pine trees, water, electricity. No agencies. 30 000 euros." - The advert in the Costa Blanca News which ensnared the O'Malleys.
"The rumours were awful and very hurtful to the family. We knew something dreadful must have happened." - Jenny, daughter of the O'Malleys, on early speculation that her parents had faked their disappearance.
"If we hadn't been led to the spot, we would never have found them." - Police Chief Jose Abellan on the confession by one of the suspects that led to the discovery of the bodies.
"There is no blueprint for what you do and how you do it. You have your own life to lead, but you live with it constantly - every hour of the day it's there." - Bernard O'Malley.
In September 2002, house hunters Anthony and Linda O'Malley from Llangollen, North Wales, arrived in Benidorm on Spain's Costa Blanca to bid for a house at auction that they had earmarked for their retirement. Within a week of their arrival, the couple vanished.
Welsh detectives, alerted by large sums of cash withdrawn from the couple's UK bank accounts, launched their own missing persons inquiry. Daughter Nicola Welch, frantic with worry but with no idea of what really happened, made an appeal on Crimewatch for her parents to get in touch.
Six months after the disappearance, following emailed ransom demands from a mysterious figure codenamed Phoenix, Spanish police recovered the bodies of the couple from under the cellar floor of a villa in Alcoy, 40 kilometres inland. The full horrifying story was pieced together in a painstaking investigation.
The O'Malleys had been tricked into viewing the property, held captive for five days and forced to hand over the money they had saved for their deposit. When they were no longer of use, they were callously disposed of in the cellar of the very house they had hoped would be their dream home.
In April 2006, two men from Venezuela were found guilty by a Spanish court of kidnap, robbery, torture and murder. Jorge Real Sierra was jailed for 62 years and Jose Antonio Velazquez Gonzales for 54 years.
Investigative journalist Danny Collins helped North Wales officers track down the killers in a tense search that saw his life threatened and took him into the rough and tumble of a Benidorm underworld never seen by tourists. His story, Nightmare in the Sun (2007), is a cautionary tale for all who seen an escape to the Mediterranean sun.
About the author: Danny Collins is a freelance investigative journalist working crime-ridden southern and eastern Spain from Gibraltar to Valencia. The disappearance of the O'Malleys was one of the last cases he covered before taking semi-retirement in 2004 as news editor of the CBN News Group to become its senior correspondent. He is a regular broadcaster and accomplished cartoonist and writes a regular weekly column on British affairs that is syndicated along the Spanish Costas.
He was born in Fulham, London, in 1939 and had a varied career from 16-year-old deck boy in the Mercantile Marine to working for the Ministry of Defence. He became a London nightclub proprietor before taking up crime reporting. In 1990 he and his wife Nikki moved to Spain to share a house with a delinquent Persian cat in a mountain village in Sierra Aitana.
Thursday, 18 August 2016
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Saturday, 6 August 2016
Friday, 29 July 2016
Scandal In Prior's Ford (The Prior's Ford Series) by Eve Houston
Paperback: The villagers have more than a few home truths to share.
There is a storm brewing at the Women's Rural Institute in Prior's Ford. When WI president Moira Melrose is defeated in an election by village newcomer Alma Parr, the two neighbours are soon caught up in a bitter dispute - and are dragging their husbands, families and the entire village into battle with them.
At Tarbethill Farm, things are going from bad to worse both on the land and at the family table. Bert McNair refuses to forgive his son Victor for selling some of their farmland to developers and things take a dramatic turn that no one could have predicted.
When poison-pen letters appear on the doormats of the villagers, the residents are forced to face some of their darkest secrets. But just who wrote the letters? And what do they have to gain by causing so much scandal?
Scandal in Prior's Ford (2011) is the fourth instalment in the delightful Prior's Ford series set in a pretty Scottish border village.
About the author: A former journalist, Evelyn Hood is best known for family sagas mainly set in her home town of Paisley (Renfrewshire) and on the Clyde Coast, although she is also the author of 'Forward by Degrees', a history of the University of Paisley. The history was commissioned to mark the University's centenary as a place of further education and was published in April 1997.
Evelyn has also published six one-act stage plays, a Scottish pantomime, a children's musical and a number of short stories and articles. Unpublished but performed stage work includes a full length play, three pantomimes, six children's musicals, and a large number of monologues and sketches.
Her hobbies include reading and amateur drama, and she lives in West Kilbride, Ayrshire with her husband. They have two grown sons.
Eve Houston is Evelyn's pseudonym.
Rating: 5/5
Thursday, 28 July 2016
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