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Long Way Home (DI Zigic and DS Ferreira Series) by Eva Dolan

Paperback:  Long Way Home (2014) is a major new detective series set in England from the publishers of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbo and Fred Vargas.

A migrant worker is burnt alive in a suburban garden shed and it soon becomes clear that the owners of the shed have something to hide.  DI Zigic and DS Ferreira are called in from the underfunded Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit to investigate the murder.

But while DS Ferreira thinks they have found their killers, her boss, DI Zigic, is not so sure.  It seems that some other people might have had good reason to see the victim dead:  Andrus Tombak, slum landlord - witnesses say the two had fought;  Clinton Renfrew, convicted arsonist, and EDL member; Fintan Maloney, landlord of Irish pub, Maloneys, where there is more on offer than just the beer;  and any number of local thugs who, as ’employers’, abuse cheap foreign labour.

Zigic and Ferreira know all too well the problems that come with dealing with a community that has more reason than most not to trust the police, but when another migrant worker is attacked, tensions rapidly begin to rise as they search for their killer.

About the author:  Eva Dolan is the alter ego of an Essex based copywriter and intermittently successful poker player.  She blogs, she writes, she talks about herself in the third person and feels vaguely uncomfortable about it.  Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Dagger for unpublished authors when she was just a teenager, Long Way Home is her debut novel and the start of a major new crime series.

Rating:  5/5

The Healer by Antti Tuomainen

Paperback:  One man's search for his missing wife in a dystopian futuristic Helsinki that is struggling with ruthless climate change

It is two days before Christmas and Helsinki is battling a ruthless climate catastrophe:  subway tunnels are flooded;  abandoned vehicles are left burning in the streets;  the authorities have issued warnings about malaria, tuberculosis, Ebola, and the plague.

People are fleeing to the far north of Finland and Norway where conditions are still tolerable.  Social order is crumbling and private security firms have undermined the police force.  Tapani Lehtinen, a struggling poet, is among the few still able and willing to live in the city.

When Tapani's beloved wife, Johanna, a newspaper journalist, goes missing, he embarks on a frantic hunt for her.  Johanna's disappearance seems to be connected to a story she was researching about a politically motivated serial killer known as "The Healer."  Desperate to find Johanna, Tapani's search leads him to uncover secrets from her past.  Secrets that connect her to the very murders she was investigating.

The Healer (2013) is set in desperate times, forcing Tapani to take desperate measures in order to find his true love.  Written in an engrossingly dense but minimal language, The Healer is a story of survival, loyalty, and determination.

Even when the world is coming to an end, love and hope endure.

The Healer is translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers.

About the author:  Finnish Antti Tuomainen (b 1971) was an award-winning copywriter in the advertising industry before he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author.  The critically acclaimed Veljeni vartija (My Brother's Keeper) was published two years later.

In 2011 Tuomainen's third novel, Parantaja (The Healer), was awarded the Clue Award for 'Best Finnish Crime Novel 2011'.  Thus emerged a bright new star in the field of crime and noir.  The Finnish press labeled Parantaja the story of a writer who is desperately searching for his missing wife in a post-apocalyptic Helsinki as "unputdownable".  With a piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen is one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime genre formula.

Antti Tuomainen lives in Helsinki, Finland where he lives with his wife.  In addition to novels, he also writes short stories and magazine articles.  You can find him easily on Facebook and he will be happy to hear from you.

Rating:  5/5

Let The People Speak Again

A Rich Treasure Trove

We Shall Overcome

No 9

What We Choose To Put In The Soil

The Concept of Dread

Twelfth Night

Feast of St Catherine of Siena (Patron of Europe)

Sandile Dikeni, b1966, South African Poet

Prophet of Death: The Mormon Blood-Atonement Killings (True Crime) by Pete Earley

Paperback:  "I am the prophet of God...I am much more than that;  much, much more." - Jeffrey Don Lundgren

Charismatic thief, philanderer and self-proclaimed man of God, Jeffrey Lundgren began preaching his unique dogma of radical Mormonism in Independence, Missouri.  To the members of his small but fanatically devoted sect, he was the "Last Prophet", whose coming was foretold in the Book of Mormon.

A master of hypnotic oratory, Lundgren used his own twisted interpretations of religious texts to justify any excess - perversion, sexual slavery...even human sacrifice.

On 17 April 1989, Lundgren and a group of his followers led the Avery family - a husband, wife, and their three young children - into a barn in rural Ohio and slaughtered them, one by one.

Prophet of Death (1991) is a terrifying true account of mind control, sex, religious obsession and murder by the Edgar Award-nominated nationally bestselling author, Pete Earley.

About the author:  Pete Earley is a storyteller who has penned 17 books including four New York Times bestsellers, including The Hot House and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist Crazy:  A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.

After a 14-year career in journalism, including six years at The Washington Post, Pete became a full-time author with a commitment to expose the stories that entertain and surprise.

His honest reporting and compelling writing helped him garner success as one of few authors with “the power to introduce new ideas and give them currency,” according to Washingtonian magazine.

When Pete’s life was turned upside down by the events recounted in his book Crazy, he joined the National Alliance on Mental Illness to advocate for strong mental health reform on the public stage.

This new advocacy has taken him to 48 different states and multiple countries around the globe where he delivers speeches to rally against the troubled mental health systems and for the mentally ill.