The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason

The Shadow District: a Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb --- 344 pages

Indridason, an internationally best-selling author of "Nordic Noir" crime thrillers, starts a new series, projected to be a trilogy, set during the American occupation of Iceland in World War II.  

His two detectives are Stephan Thorson (or Thódarson ) a Canadian Army investigator working as a liaison officer with a Reykjavik police detective called Flóvent. It's the bitterly cold winter of 1944 when they are assigned to investigate the death of a young woman found strangled in an alley behind the National Theatre, in an area known as the Shadow District. The case was never satisfactorily resolved.

Over sixty years later, an elderly pensioner living alone in a tiny flat in Reykjavik, is found dead on his bed, after a worried neighbor calls the police and asks them to check on him.  At first the assumption is that he died in his sleep of natural causes. But an autopsy proves otherwise.  A retired police detective named Kónrad who volunteers to work on cold cases for something to do, offers to follow up when the initial investigation turns up nothing.  Soon  Kónrad discovers some intriguing connections between the death of the old man and the unsolved crime from the war years, and realizes that to solve the present day crime he must finally discover the truth of the old crime.

Indridason is a master of his craft.  The second volume in the trilogy, The Shadow Killer, is due out next summer. Highly recommended.

Click HERE to read an interview with the author, Arnaldur Indridason, talking about his new series, from Crime Fiction Lover.com

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers' Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

 

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Career of Evil: A Cormoran Strike Novel by Robert Galbraith --- 492 pages

The third novel in the Cormoran Strike series of crime novels by J.K. Rowling writing under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, is equally suspenseful as its predecessors, The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm.

This time out, Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott, are in pursuit of a sociopath serial killer who is stalking Robin because of a long festering grudge against Strike. The trouble is, Strike can think of at least four men from his past who could be twisted, sick, violent and vengeful enough to qualify as suspects.

Adding to the tension in the office is Robin's ambivalent attitude about her relationship with her fiance, the insufferable Matthew, and the wedding lurking on the horizon. In the course of the investigation we learn more about both Robin and Strike's backstories, which helps explain a lot about their difficult partnership.

A real page turner, almost impossible to put down, and once finished, you'll want to go back and pick out the clues you missed the first time through.

Click HERE for the Chicago Tribune review.

Click HERE for the National Public Radio review.

Click HERE for the New York Times review.

Click HERE for the Boston Globe review.

The Last Taxi Ride by A.X. Ahmad

The Last Taxi Ride; A Ranjit Singh Novel by A. X. Ahmad --- 361 pages

The second book in a new mystery series featuring an ex-Indian Army captain who now ekes out a living driving a taxi in New York City.

The story involves an Indian film star fallen on hard times, the Mumbai mob's efforts to infiltrate the large East Indian expatriate community in New York, and an ingenious new form of human trafficking. Both the taxi driver brotherhood and the
vibrant culture of the East Indian neighborhoods are vividly portrayed. The story is an interesting combination of crime fiction and a romantic subplot straight out of a Bollywood film.

The author was born and raised in India, educated in the United States, and has worked as an architect. The first book in the series is The Caretaker.

Click HERE to check out the author's web site.

Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd

Murder at Mansfield Park: A Novel by Lynn Shepherd --- 363 pages

In her first novel Lynn Shepherd demonstrates she is a literary talent to reckon with, as she turns Jane Austen's classic Mansfield Park inside out and into an equally witty murder mystery to boot.

The famously meek Fanny Price has been transformed from the poor and put upon relation to a spoilt and conniving heiress, while Mary Crawford now takes center stage as the quietly intelligent and long-suffering heroine of Shepherd's tale, faced with the horrifying choice of incriminating either her beloved but headstrong brother Henry, or Edmund, the man who has secretly won her heart, as the murderer.

Shepherd also introduces her own sleuth, the London thief-taker Charles Maddox. Retained by the Mansfield family to discover the truth of these terrible events, Maddox finds himself captivated by Mary's quiet intelligence and strength of character.

Throughout her carefully plotted tale, Shepherd also brilliantly maintains Austen's distinctive narrative voice, seamlessly interweaving Austen's words with her own. What P.D. James attempted to do in Death at Pemberley, Shepherd has achieved in Murder at Mansfield Park, giving us a murder mystery that might have come from the fertile pen of Austen herself.

Lynn Shepherd has published two subsequent mysteries with literary antecedents, featuring Charles Maddox: The Solitary House (based on Charles Dickens' Bleak House) and A Fatal Likeness (based on the lives of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein). A fourth Charles Maddox mystery, based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, is scheduled for publication later this year. All are highly recommended.

Click HERE to check out Lynn Shepherd's blog!