THE KILLING FOREST by Sara Blaedel (Grand Central), 320 pages, $19.50 paper. Rating: NNNN
This latest instalment of the terrific Danish crime series has police investigator Louise Rick returning to work after an extended leave.
She’s assigned the case of a teenage boy who went missing after a coming-of-age ritual in the forest. Rick is as unshakeable as the ancient trees. But when facts link the youth to the baffling death of her long-ago boyfriend, Rick is forced to confront a past she thought she had buried.
It’s classic Blaedel: super-smart writing and a setting that dredges up our most primeval fears.
THE TRAP by Melanie Raabe (House of Anansi), 312 pages, $19.95 paper. Rating: NNNN
It took five years for the English translation of Melanie Raabe’s psychological thriller to come out. It was well worth the wait.
Munich crime novelist Linda Conrad hasn’t written a word since she witnessed her sister’s murder 12 years earlier. Crippling agoraphobia has trapped her in her house, where a chance flick of the remote brings her face to face with the stranger she saw killing her sister. Conrad tracks him down and formulates a plan to catch him – one that forces her to write again.
A fast-paced and captivating debut, The Trap is a breath-stopper from start to finish.
BETTY BOO by Claudia Piñeiro (Bitter Lemon), 315 pages, $21.95 paper. Rating: NNNN
Something smells bad in La Maravillosa, the gated community where a Buenos Aires industrialist is found with his throat cut.
When crime-novelist-turned-ghostwriter Nurit Iscar is asked to cover the story for El Tribuno, she teams up with the newspaper’s recently demoted crime reporter, gathers up her girlfriends and moves into the high-security enclave.
What unfolds is a fine tale of revenge, friendship and love in middle age. Piñeiro writes with a loquaciousness that likely owes a lot to the original Spanish. Betty Boo is a rollicking satire on class, politics and media in contemporary Argentina.
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