The Fire Pit by Chris Ould

The Fire Pit by Chris Ould --- 461 pages

Faroese detective Hjalti Hentze is initially called out  to deal with an apparent suicide at Muli on the island of Eysturoy, but his case morphs into something far more serious when the skeleton of a woman is discovered half dug up from under a stone walled sheepfold nearby. Hentze finds old records indicating that a Norwegian woman and her young daughter had been  reported missing 40 years ago from a notorious commune at Muli, run by a Danish man, Rasmus Matzen, on land owned by the dead man, Boas Justesen.

Nobody mourns Justesen's death, but some still remember his fascination with the Danish hippies who briefly occupied Muli in the 1970s, so Hentze decides to do some digging into the past, even though the local force is short on manpower and money after recent events (related in a previous book, The Killing Bay).

Meanwhile British homicide investigator Jan Reyna is still looking for answers for his mother’s suicide in 1976. Lydia Reyna had taken Jan and run away from her husband and her life on the Faroes, to Denmark. And there she had committed suicide, leaving four-year-old Jan alone in the flat. Although he has no recollection of what happened, and even though he was rescued and adopted by his mother's sister and her husband in England, it's clear that this early trauma has cast a profound shadow over Jan's life.

These two major subplots of the novel intertwine until the reader realizes that Reyna's personal quest and Hentze's investigation into the past are coalescing into a a single arc of horrific crimes spanning forty years. 

Chris Ould combines the psychological suspense of British thrillers with the spare narrative and atmospheric style of Nordic Noir. Reyna and Hentze are very different  in their approach to investigation, but those very differences make them better and stronger as partners in the search for truth and justice for the victims.

Ould has thoroughly researched the geography and history of the Faroes Islands All the locations, both Danish and Faroese, are vivid and tangible, grounding the novels with an authentic sense of place.  This would make a great series for Masterpiece Mystery.

The three books of the Faroes trilogy --- The Blood Strand, The Killing Bay, and The Fire Pit --- are best read in sequence as the story lines all overlap.  Ould says he is moving on to other projects now but hints that he may return to the Faroes at some future date.  May that time come soon!

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Crimefictionlover.com

Click HERE to read a review from The Crime Review.com

When Falcons Fall by C.S. Harris

When Falcons Fall: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery by C.S. Harris --- 355 pages

The eleventh book in Harris' intriguing Regency mystery series.  It's 1813, and Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has brought his family to the small village of Ayleswick-on-Teme in Shropshire, ostensibly to honor a promise to a dying friend. But the truth is that the friend, Jamie Knox, a London tavernkeeper, looked enough like Devlin to be his brother; and was killed by a man who mistook him for he Viscount.  Now Sebastian hopes that Jamie's family in Ayleswick might be able to tell him something more about the mysterious man who may have fathered both Jamie and himself.

But no sooner did Sebastian and his wife Hero and their entourage arrive in the village when Sebastian is forced to put aside his own quest to assist the young and inexperienced local magistrate in investigating the death of a young widow, also a visitor to the village, whose body is found in the watermeadow beside the River Teme, with an empty laudanum bottle at her side.

It takes very little effort for Sebastian to determine that Emma Chance did not commit felo-de-se ---suicide --- a criminal offense in 19th century England. It takes a little longer to determine how she really met her death, but the true challenge is discovering why she died and who killed her.

With Hero's assistance, Sebastian learns that Emma Chance was not her real name, and that her purpose in coming to Ayleswick was not just a sketching expedition. But was there some connection between the dead woman and Lucien Bonaparte, the estranged brother of the French Emperor Napoleon? Lucien supposedly broke with his brother and fled to England for refuge; he and his family are visiting an estate near Ayleswick. When a British agent keeping Lucien under surveillance is ambushed during a meeting with Sebastian, the Viscount wonders which of them was actually the target?

Sebastian’s investigation takes a new turn when he discovers that Emma is just the latest in a series of young women in Ayleswick who have supposedly committed suicide. Ayleswick reveals itself to be a place where greed and injustice have festered for decades — and where someone is pursuing a relentless revenge. What will it take to stop the killing? 

Click HERE to read a review from High Voltage.

Click HERE to read a review from the Historical Novel Society.

Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus.

Click HERE to read a review from Publisher's Weekly.