Monday, 29 February 2016
Sunday, 28 February 2016
Saturday, 27 February 2016
Voices (A Reykjavík Murder Mystery) by Arnaldur Indriðason
Paperback: It is a few days before Christmas and Reykjavík hotel doorman, occasional Santa Claus and long-time resident of its basement, Gudlauger, has been found stabbed to death in his room in a sexually compromising position. With the hotel fully booked, the hotel manager is determined to keep the murder from his guests and his reputation intact but Detective Erlendur quickly discovers that the placidly affluent appearance of the hotel covers a multitude of sins.
It soon becomes apparent that both staff and guests have something to hide, but it is the dead man who has the most shocking secret: many years previously he was the most famous child singer in the country. Two old 45s on which he had sung have become prized collectors' items. Is it this brush with stardom that has led to his death? Or is the murder a family matter, concerning the victim's estranged father and sister?
As Detective Elinborg investigates a separate case of child abuse, and Erlendur continues to struggle both with his troubled family relationships and the ghosts of his own youth, their parallel stories probe deeper into the riddle of this third Reykjavik Murder Mystery published in 2006.
About the author: Arnaldur Indriðason worked for many years as a journalist and critic before he began writing novels. Outside Iceland, he is best known for his crime novels featuring Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli, which are consistent bestsellers across Europe. The series has won numerous awards, including the Nordic Glass Key and the CWA Gold Dagger. In 2013, he won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing worth €125 000 for Skuggasund. Arnaldur's books have been published in 26 countries and translated into at least 24 languages.
Rating: 5/5
Friday, 26 February 2016
Silence of the Grave (A Reykjavík Murder Mystery) by Arnaldur Indriðason
Paperback: Building work in an expanding Reykjavik uncovers a shallow grave.
Years before, this part of the city was all open hills, and Erlendur and his team hope this is a typical Icelandic missing person scenario; perhaps someone once lost in the snow, who has lain peacefully buried for decades. Things are never that simple.
Whilst Erlendur struggles to hold together the crumbling fragments of his own family, his case unearths many other tales of family pain. The hills have more than one tragic story to tell: tales of failed relationships and heartbreak; of anger, domestic violence and fear; of family loyalty and family shame. Few people are still alive who can tell the story, but even secrets taken to the grave cannot remain hidden forever.
Silence of the Grave (2005) is the second book in the award-winning Inspector Erlendur series. It won the Nordic Glass Key Award in 2003, the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year 2005, and nominated for the Barry Award in 2006.
About the author: Arnaldur Indriðason worked for many years as a journalist and critic before he began writing novels. Outside Iceland, he is best known for his crime novels featuring Erlendur and Sigurdur Óli, which are consistent bestsellers across Europe. The series has won numerous awards, including the Nordic Glass Key and the CWA Gold Dagger. In 2013, he won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing worth €125 000 for Skuggasund. Arnaldur's books have been published in 26 countries and translated into at least 24 languages.
Rating: 4/5
Thursday, 25 February 2016
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Tuesday, 23 February 2016
A Song of Shadows (A Charlie Parker Thriller) by John Connolly
Paperback: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? - Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Grievously wounded but unbroken, private investigator Charlie Parker faces the darkest of forces in a case with its roots in the Second World War, and a concentration camp unlike any other.
Recovering from a near-fatal shooting and tormented by memories of a world beyond this one, Parker retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to recover. There he befriends a woman named Ruth Winter and her young daughter. But Ruth has her secrets. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her.
His enemies believe him to be vulnerable. Fearful. Solitary.
But they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid and far from alone.
For something is emerging from the shadows.
A Song of Shadows (2015) is the thirteenth book in the supernatural and hair-raising albeit exceptionally riveting Charlie Parker series. The next and fourteenth book in the series - A Time of Torment - will be out on 7 April 2016 in the UK and in July in the USA.
About the author: John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. His debut - Every Dead Thing (1999) - which introduced the character of private detective Charlie Parker, swiftly launched him right into the front rank of thriller writers, and all his subsequent novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers. Books To Die For (2012), a nonfiction anthology, which he edited with Declan Burke, was the winner of the 2013 Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards for Best Critical/Biographical Book of the Year. He is the first non-American writer to win the US Shamus award for Every Dead Thing. In 2007 he was awarded the Irish Post Award for Literature.
Rating: 6/5
Friday, 19 February 2016
Blood Stain (True Crime) by Peter Lalor
Paperback: It proves to be a morning that none of the cops, ambos or locals will ever forget. A glimpse into the dark, cockroach corners of the soul. A lot of the blokes there that day are never the same again. There are murders and there are murders. There are bodies and there are bodies, and then there is what lies waiting for Bob Wells - the senior investigating officer and one of the few to see the crime through from start to finish - the others behind the front door of this little brick house with its blinds drawn and air-conditioner working against the oppressive Hunter Valley (Australia) heat.
On 29 February 2000, Katherine Knight committed an unspeakable act. A mother of four from three blokes and a grandmother who sang about the little piggy and the teddy bears, she seduced and then stabbed John Price 37 times. A former abbatoir worker, she skinned him. A loving partner, she cooked him with vegetables, making a soup with his head. Made gravy. Left him on plates for his family. John Price's death is shocking beyond comprehension. It defies the imagination.
Why?
Price was her de facto and he wanted out. She did not like that. It was her nature to go one step further. To go over the borderline.
It is only later that the true horror of this begins to sink in. The cold, calculated spite. The layers of payback. The fact that she has done all this and then cooked and served him for his children.
What of the woman who did it? She must have been mad. Of course she was. The sane do not behave like that. She was a monster. Less than human, less than sentient. Wasn't she? It seemed important to us that she was because it was too horrible to contemplate otherwise.
People said that most of the time, Katherine Knight seemed normal and had a heart of gold. Dressed her kids up and sent them to Sunday school. Sewed dresses for friends' babies. Visited the sick. Ran people around in her car. She would do anything for anyone, her family say. Until she got angry. You just didn't cross her. She was judged to be legally sane - of right mind - when she committed a crime so horrible that the media shied away from the detail. She planned it and she did it knowing that it was wrong. It was all about revenge. And possibly even pleasure. And that is what makes this murder so worthy of examination. To examine her past is not to give her an excuse.
How can somebody be so bad? So immoral? And yet...not be mad?
Journalist Peter Lalor covered the trial and wanted to know what made Knight go way over the borderline. In this unflinching account - Blood Stain (2002) - he uncovers the layers of her dysfunction, opening the door of 84 St Andrews Street and taking us into the lives of Knight's ex-partners, her family, the world in which she was raised, and the locals of Aberdeen, New South Wales, Australia.
Katherine Knight is the first Australian woman serving a life sentence without parole and which she is never to be and will never ever be released. In handing down her sentence, Justice Barry O’Keefe described her crime as premeditated and horrific, "evil actions" that indicated cognition, volition, calm and skill.
On 11 September 2006, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal on Monday rejected Knight’s appeal against the sentence, which she claimed was manifestly excessive. "This was such an appalling crime almost beyond contemplation in a civilized society," Justice Peter McClellan said in his written judgment. The psychiatric evidence indicates that her personality is unlikely to change in the future and, if released, she would be likely to inflict serious injury or perhaps death on others, Justice McClellan said.
About the author: Born in Bendigo, educated in Melbourne and later marooned in Sydney, Peter Lalor is an award winning author and journalist. He has written a number of books including the best-selling Ned Kelly True Crime prize-winning Blood Stain, The Bridge (2005), a history of The Sydney Harbour Bridge and Barassi (2010), a personal portrait of Australian football's first born son. A cricket writer and beer editor for The Australian newspaper, he has worked as a journalist for twenty-five years.
Sunday, 14 February 2016
Saturday, 13 February 2016
Thursday, 11 February 2016
The Fortune Hunter (True Crime) by Suzy Spencer
In 1995, the 70-year-old widow Beard married the 32-year-old mother of twin daughters and gave her homes, cars and more jewellery and designer clothes than she could ever wear.
But it was not enough for Celeste.
Claiming she was depressed, she checked into a psychiatric facility, where she met fellow patient Tracey Tarlton, a prominent bookstore manager. Celeste seduced Tracey, convincing her that the only way they could be together would be to kill Steve.
In the wee hours of an October morning in 1999, former Austin television executive Steve Beard Jr awoke to a shotgun blast to his abdomen. On 25 January 2000, Steve died, almost four months after he was shot. He was 75.
Tracey was arrested but refused to implicate Celeste until she learned the truth about her lover. In a sordid trial sensationalised even more by the antics of famed Texas defense attorney Dick DeGeurin, the depths of Celeste's lies were revealed in a tale of lust, betrayal and regret.
This new edition of The Fortune Hunter (2015) has been updated throughout.
Celeste Beard is now a convicted American murderer who is serving a life sentence at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas for the 1999 murder of her millionaire husband, Steven Beard. She is Texas Department of Criminal Justice offender #1157250. She will be eligible for parole in 2043, when she is 80 years old. Tracey Tarlton received a 20-year sentence in exchange for testifying against Celeste Beard and was released on parole in August 2011 and currently lives in San Antonio, Texas.
About the author: Suzy Spencer is the author of four true crime books - Wasted, a New York Times bestseller; Wages of Sin, which was featured on the 2013 season premiere of Investigation Discovery’s Deadly Sins; Breaking Point, the story of Houston mother Andrea Yates; and The Fortune Hunter, which was called “riveting” and “blockbuster” by Globe magazine.
But after nearly ten years of writing true crime, Suzy desperately needed to laugh. She thought writing about sex would help her do that. So, in December 2004, Suzy began a journalistic investigation into Americans’ alternative sex practices. The result is her most emotionally challenging book yet - Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality.
Secret Sex Lives, Suzy’s first memoir, was featured on Katie Couric’s talk show, Katie; was named a Publishers Weekly fall 2012 pick in the memoir category, as well as a Barnes & Noble editor’s recommendation; and was featured twice at the 2012 Texas Book Festival.
In addition to Katie, Suzy’s been interviewed on Good Morning America, ABC World News, Primetime, and Dateline NBC; numerous shows on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Court TV, and Investigation Discovery and on Oxygen and the E! Channel.
Suzy has freelanced for ABC News, Salon.com, People magazine, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Los Angeles magazine, the Texas Observer, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Austin Chronicle.
She holds a Master of Professional Writing and a Master of Business Administration, both from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Baylor University.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)