Review by New York Times Review
IT SOMETIMES SEEMS as if there's a support group for every lost soul on our planet. In kill the NEXT ONE (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26), we're even introduced to a source of reinforcement for would-be suicides. There's a perverse symmetry to the way things work in this mind-bending psychological thriller by the Argentine author Federico Axat, translated here by David Frye. Let's say that someone like Ted McKay, who has just learned he has an inoperable brain tumor, decides to kill himself. A shadowy organization (known as the Organization) will send someone like Justin Lynch to his door with the suggestion that he first take out two other people - one a vicious killer who has eluded justice and the other a sad sack like himself who wants only to die. ("He knows all about it; he'll be waiting for you.") For his efforts, the next person in this "suicide circle" will relieve McKay of his own suffering: "Think about the difference it will make for your family when they find out a stranger has come into your house and shot you, compared with a suicide." McKay executes his first kill and takes pride in getting off a perfect shot. But he discovers he's been misled about the would-be victims in this macabre daisy chain. (One hadn't even wanted to commit suicide.) "I admit that I concealed some information," the sinister Lynch confesses. But by then, the damage has already been done. Or has it? Truth, illusion and downright deceit keep crossing invisible lines in this hallucinatory plot, so it becomes easy to lose focus on who's who and what's what. The shape-shifting characters and fantastic events keep sending McKay to his therapist (and us to ours) for clarification. While Axat stubbornly withholds that clarity, he expands on these mystifying events in imaginative ways. Strange totems, like a talismanic horseshoe McKay clutches for dear life, come and go, and a psychiatric hospital with the calming name of Lavender Memorial might be anything but therapeutic. And what are we to make of the rogue possum that no one but McKay seems able to see? Federico Axat is the kind of hypnotic writer you love to read but can never entirely trust. WHEN THE DAYS grow short and winter draws in, you can count on Val McDermid for a good reason to stay indoors. Especially when her latest novel, out of bounds (Atlantic Monthly, $25), features Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland's Historic Cases Unit and one of the prolific Scottish author's most personable sleuths. This tightly plotted procedural opens on what appears to be a routine, if horrific, accident after a group of bored teenagers hot-wire a Land Rover and take it for a joy ride. Karen gets involved when the DNA from the sole survivor triggers a "familial" match to evidence from a 20-year-old rape and murder case. After all these years, it looks as if a 24-year-old hairdresser named Tina McDonald might finally be granted a measure of justice. No "silly wee lassie" like some of the clueless young characters she writes about so sympathetically, McDermid applies her formidable intelligence and muscular style to the kind of urban crime novel that gives Scotland its tough rep and vigorous lingo. ("Bampot" and "bawbag" are far more colorful than plain old "idiot.") In McDermid's fiction, plot is always front and center, and this plot is a good one. But it's the brawny characters and their beefy dialect that really keep us coming back to this superior series. SCANDINAVIAN AUTHORS are famously unsentimental, but Kjell Eriksson could move a man-eating shark to tears. You might be tempted to avert your eyes from an early scene in stone COFFIN (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $25.99), in which a young mother and her little girl are deliberately mowed down on a rural road near the Swedish city of Uppsala. As she lies dying, the woman's last words - "Why are you killing us?" - cast a distinct chill. Ann Lindell, an officer in the Violent Crimes unit, finds this one hard to take. So do the other cops, such tender hearts that they can't imagine living in a home without the comfort of plants. But let's not forget that Sweden is a nation where ministers are also called to crime scenes. In this translation by Ebba Segerberg, Eriksson acknowledges deep emotion without becoming maudlin. Even a grumpy old cop who suggests the woman's missing husband killed his wife and child and fled to the Caribbean to play golf is, in his own way, unbiased. "He hates us all," swears a colleague. VAL MCDERMID WOULD hardly recognize the image of Scotland in PLAID AND PLAGIARISM (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), Molly MacRae's mystery about murder and mayhem in the Highlands. In the tourist town of Inversgail, to be precise, where four women have acquired Yon Bonnie Books, a shop on the picturesque High Street. After a spot of vandalism at her home, Janet Marsh and her partners are open for business, which they hope to expand eventually by adding on a tearoom and a B&B. But for now, MacRae is content to establish the guidelines and goal posts of a new cozy mystery series - which means the violence is largely offstage and the drama is tempered with humor. If it weren't for the corpse that turns up in a shed in Janet's back garden, you'd hardly know there's a murderer in paradise.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
A young mother and her six-year-old daughter have been run down on a leafy road in Uppsala, Sweden. Ann Lindell and her police colleagues quickly conclude that the victims' husband and father is the prime suspect; he has disappeared. But he turns up dead, too, an apparent suicide. Soon the body count rises to five, and Lindell and her team are investigating a pharmaceuticals firm, where the dead husband was lead researcher, and the possibility that they were doing illegal testing on primates. Additional plot developments crop up, but even in the midst of a complex case, Lindell is almost consumed by her loneliness for Edvard, the lover she herself left some months before. She also realizes she is pregnant by a man she met in a bar. Should she get an abortion? Lindell's thoughts and her predicament are interesting, but crime fans may be disappointed in the perfunctory resolution of the case.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Tragedy strikes the well-to-do Cederén family in Eriksson's satisfying seventh ensemble mystery to be published in the U.S. (after 2015's Open Grave). A hit-and-run driver kills Josefin Cederén and her six-year-old daughter as they are walking to church on a road near Uppsala. Homicide detective Ann Lindell and her colleagues suspect successful businessman Sven-Erik Cederén, the victims' husband and father, who has disappeared. The police soon discover that Sven-Erik kept a mistress, owned foreign property, and engaged in shady business dealings, and yet odd inconsistencies strain the seemingly open-and-shut case. Eriksson smoothly shifts among the troubled minds of those affected by the deaths, including Sven-Erik's gentle lover. Lindell's empathy for the murdered woman (unlocked by Josefin's poignant diary) tends to drift into pining for stoic builder Edvard Risberg, threatening to funnel the book's emotional momentum away from the Cederéns. Still, readers who prefer measured, character-driven procedurals to gore or wisecracks will be entranced. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
When a speeding car kills a young mother and daughter, complications indicate much more than a simple hit-and-run.Josefin Cedern and her 6-year-old daughter, Emily, are struck by a car and killed while walking to the graveyard in southern Sweden where Emilys grandmother is buried. Their deaths hit Ann Lindell and her fellow detectives in Uppsala-Ns Violent Crimes unit hard. Though the hit-and-run might have been a simple, tragic accident, policy necessitates an investigation for possible foul play. Neighbors report a recent change in Josefins demeanor, and tension between her and Emilys neglectful father, Sven-Erik, has recently spiked. When the man turns up missing along with a large sum recently transferred from his bank, he shoots to the top of the suspect list. Could he have gone to the Dominican Republic, where hes recently purchased property? In the middle of this, a group of activists called the Animal Liberation Front take over a local television station to protest the practices of MedForsk, a medical lab that happens to employ Sven-Erik. The head of the company, Jack Mortensen, tries to stonewall, but he withers under Anns skillful questioning. The case ultimately leads the Violent Crimes team to Spain, where the cooperation of local police becomes crucial to closing the case. After a period without a committed relationship, Ann meanwhile contemplates a reunion with her ex, Edvard, a decision complicated by an accidental pregnancy. Erikssons seventh (Black Lies, Red Blood, 2015, etc.) is full of twists, three-dimensional characters, quiet authority, and heart. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
