Review by New York Times Review
I CAN TELL you in just two words Why ALEX (MacLehose, $24.95), a thriller by the fashionable French author Pierre Lemaitre, was such a sensation in Europe. Partisan politics. Just kidding! The two words are - sadistic sex. Lemaitre's plot is laid out with mathematical precision: a beautiful woman is kidnapped, stripped naked, thrown into a cage and subjected to the systematic torture of a brutal captor. But just as ravenous rats are about to overrun her cage, she manages to escape and assume a fresh identity - as the emblematic female avenger who seems to be all the rage these days. If this sounds a bit like "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," it's because Stieg Larsson did much to validate sadomasochism as a plot device, and thriller writers jumped all over it. That novel and its two sequels are certainly fueled by the dynamic character of Lisbeth Salander, but her narrative also has a graphic sexual context, and it goes like this: A helpless child who is abused by her father and raped by her courtappointed guardian grows up and takes revenge on her father by sinking an ax in his head - but not before being beaten, shot in the head and buried alive. The punishment she dishes out to her guardian makes that ax in the head feel like a kiss. Revenge narratives go all the way back to the Greeks, but it's the vagina dentata component that sets a specimen like "Alex" apart, as Lemaitre adapts Larsson's blueprint with moves of his own. The rats are a particularly effective touch. Like the original atrocity that scarred her in mind and body as a girl, the femme fatale's method of payback is excruciating. The ending is also dark and ironic the way the French like their noir fiction. In Frank Wynne's assured translation, there's even a raffish quality to the prose. (A hotel receptionist is described as "a young man with his hair gelled into a side flip as though he'd just been slapped.") But in the end, it's still a formula, one that manipulates women as if they were the avatars in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" - and it has already worn thin. SOME SOLDIERS come back from war, put down their weapons and walk straight into their old lives. Some don't. Those are the ones George Pelecanos is writing about - is writing for - in THE DOUBLE (Little, Brown, $26). Spero Lucas, the young Marine veteran we memorably met in "The Cut," returned from Fallujah thinking he could appease his inner warrior by working as a private investigator back home in Washington, D.C. That belief is shaken when he finds himself inclining toward extreme violence to resolve his cases. A slow and painful death actually seems too good for Billy King, "a goatish figure, more Minotaur than man," who preys on lonely women, and Percy Malone, a "spidery" villain who pimps high school girls. But Lucas is an honorable man, and he frightens himself. It's astonishing all the good stuff Pelecanos can pack into one unpretentious book: meaty substance, multiple story lines, vital characters, choice dialogue and all those descriptive details (about what people are wearing, driving and listening to on their car radios) that make the story so rich. What really stays with you, though, are those visits Lucas makes to veterans' hospitals ("No one would ever film a Budweiser commercial here") and those quiet talks he has with the forgotten soldiers he calls brothers. FIRST-TIME AUTHORS HAVE a tendency to throw everything into the pot. Barry Lancet does that very thing in japantown (Simon & Schuster, $25) when he gives the personal life of his private eye too much prominence in an otherwise sophisticated international thriller. Jim Brodie is already stretched thin, running an antiques business in San Francisco and managing a detective agency in Tokyo. But with his expat history and familiarity with Japanese language and culture, it's only natural that the San Francisco cops would consult him about the blood-soaked kanji ideograph found at the scene of a multiple murder. And we're with him all the way when he flies to Tokyo on the trail of a sinister gang of assassins. Having lived and worked in Japan for more than 25 years, Lancet brings an impressive breadth of knowledge to the historical aspects of the mystery and a sharp sense of immediacy to its action. WHAT WONDERS THERE are in America's own backyard, if we only think to look. That's what the Norwegian writer Vidar Sundstol does in the land of DREAMS (University of Minnesota, $24.95), a murder mystery translated by Tiina Nunnally and set against the harsh landscape of the Lake Superior shore. This region was settled by hardy Scandinavian pioneers, and Lance Hansen, a police officer who works for the United States Forest Service, is proud to be descended from such stout stock. ("What dreams those people must have had.") But the murder of a Norwegian tourist shocks him into thinking about other victims and other acts of violence that might have been lost to history. There's a wintry bleakness to Hansen's brooding about the past, which is more interesting than the case he's working and more compatible with the austere setting. Hansen is a good cop and a decent man, but the extraordinary choice he opts for at the novel's end makes it certain that he'll not be having pleasant dreams for a very long time.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 6, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Winner of the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel, this transplanted Scandinavian thriller is set in Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior and is the first book of a trilogy. Lance Hansen is a police officer with the U.S. Forest Service, but his real passion is local history. While making his morning rounds, he finds the body of a young man who has been bludgeoned to death. No one can recall a murder in this part of Minnesota, and, indeed, Hansen has to go back almost 100 years to find another oddly enough, in the same area. Hansen calls in the local sheriff, who quickly refers the case to the FBI. The dead man, it turns out, was a Norwegian tourist, and the friend he was traveling with is the prime suspect. FBI agent Bob Lecuyer flies in a detective from Oslo, Eirik Nyland, who befriends Hansen. Hansen is just as intrigued by the story of a murdered Native American in the 1800s as he is in the current murder, and finds some ominous ties to his own family. The landscape is a big part of the story, as is the history of the area, making this a fascinating look at Minnesota as well as a suspenseful thriller. The novel will certainly appeal to Scandinavian crime-fiction fans, but the vivid Minnesota setting should expand its audience considerably. A fine mix of history and mystery.--Alesi, Stacy Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Norwegian crime novelist Sundstol's stellar psychological thriller, the first in his Minnesota Trilogy, stunningly evokes the North Shore of Lake Superior and its people-Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish settlers, as well as Objibway Native Americans. When 46-year-old forest ranger and amateur historian Lance Hansen checks out a report of someone illegally pitching a tent near the lake, he comes across a distraught naked man smeared with dried blood and close by the body of the man's murdered companion, both apparently Norwegian tourists. Lance soon gets entangled in a web of intrigue, revenge, and old unresolved conflicts-not the least agonizing of which is with his brother, Andy, whom Lance saw near the murder site before discovering the body. Sundstol, who lived two years on the North Shore, makes dreams his central metaphor for the monsters that old Vikings and the Ojibway both knew lurked at the base of the universe and in the depths of human hearts. Like his detective Eirik Nyland, brought from Oslo to investigate the crime, Sundstol is an outsider, and as such, he clearly recognizes the violent energy beneath the placid surface of Cook County, Minn. Nunnally's convincing translation helps bring it all to unforgettable life. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Lance Hansen, a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer, amateur archivist, and local historian, discovers a blood-smeared nude despondent Norwegian tourist when he is called in to investigate an unauthorized campsite on the north shore of Lake Superior. Nearby, Hansen also finds the brutally murdered corpse of the tourist's companion. Because a Norwegian died on federal land, Eirik Nyland, an Oslo detective, is flown in from Norway to assist the FBI with the investigation. As Hansen simultaneously examines the ties between this killing and the century-old murder of an Ojibwe man, he must choose between justice and family loyalty. VERDICT Winner of the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel of the year and nominated for the Glass Key for best Scandinavian crime novel of the year, Sundstol's superb first entry in his acclaimed Minnesota trilogy, now published for the first time in the United States, interweaves a Nordic noir flavor with the history and heritage of Minnesota's Cooke County. Nunnally's translation is accessible to an American audience. Fans of Scandinavian crime novels and mysteries with a Minnesota setting will enjoy this chilling psychological thriller. [The other two novels in the trilogy, Only the Dead and The Ravens, are forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.-Ed.]-Russell Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A police officer fears that his brother is guilty of murder. Lance Hansen may be a police officer for the U.S. Forest Service, but his real love is the history of the area where he grew up: Cook County, Minn., on the shores of Lake Superior. Hansen's job, which is usually limited to ticketing people for illegal fishing or camping, gives him plenty of time to peruse the historical society records he keeps in his house. Like most of his neighbors, he is of Scandinavian descent; in his case, Norwegian. Hansen's peaceful life comes to an end when he discovers the savagely beaten body of a Norwegian canoeist and his near-catatonic friend. Crack homicide detective Eirik Nyland is sent from Norway to confer with Bob Lecuyer, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation. When they realize that the two men were gay, they decide that the surviving partner is the most likely suspect. Hansen is concerned because his brother, who was close to the Cross River at the time of the murder, almost killed a gay fellow student back when he was in high school. But he has not gone to the police with any testimony nor mentioned his background to anyone. Hansen makes another connection between the recent death and the story of one that took place generations before, when Joe Caribou, an Ojibway Indian, vanished in the same vicinity but may have been murdered by Hansen's ancestor. Now Hansen imagines that he's seeing the earlier victim as he travels the area. Hansen can't bring himself to identify his brother as a suspect, but the guilt of covering up his story is killing him. The first of Sundstl's Minnesota trilogy to be published in the U.S. is literate, lyrically descriptive and mystical. The next can't come too soon.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
