Review by Booklist Review
Retired early from his post as Tórshavn's police department's IT director, Tristan Haraldsen and his wife, Elsebeth, happily relocate from the Faroese capital to scenic, remote Djevulsfjord. There, Tristan will serve as sheriff, overseeing the grinds, controversial whale slaughters that sustain Faroese fishing villages through barren winters. Unfortunately, Tristan and Elsebeth find themselves woefully unprepared for Djevulsfjord's insularity. At the first grind, Tristan is attacked by Jónas Mikkelsen, the village's vicious young troublemaker, who flees with his brother into the wild cliffs above the bay. Search parties find nothing until Jónas plunges from a cliff with a whaling knife lodged in his chest. The area detective, Højgarrd, insists that Jónas' simpleminded brother has snapped under Jónas' unrelenting cruelty. But Tristan swears he saw a man on the cliff. Resolving to keep Jónas' death from becoming another of Djevulsfjord's buried secrets, Tristan digs into the village's dark past. Hewson expertly paints a punishing Faroese winter, crafting the perfect backdrop for this chilling addition to the growing field of crime fiction set in the Faroe Islands (see, in particular, Chris Ould's Jan Reyna series).--Christine Tran Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this promising series launch from Hewson (the Nic Costa series) set on the Faroe island of Vágar, the chief duty of 55-year-old Tristan Haraldsen, a part-time district sheriff who recently retired from the police on account of his health, is to ensure that the fishermen from the village of Djevulsfjord follow the rules of an ancient and savage ritual, the whale hunt known as the grind. During the course of the hunt, the two Mikkelsen brothers, Jónas and Benjamin, go missing. Meanwhile, Tristan's wife, Elsebeth, has a chance encounter with an angry animal rights activist that leads the couple to investigate the mysterious death of Tristan's predecessor as district sheriff and the disappearance of a local policewoman's brother. This grim tale, almost the stuff of Norse myths, offers little hope or redemption as absolute evil wraps its way through Djevulsfjord-where outsiders are not welcome. The story starts slow, but once the fate of the Mikkelsen brothers becomes clear, readers will be gripped and hold fast until the shocking end. Hewson's fans will look forward to the next installment. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The creator of Rome's Nic Costa (The Savage Shore, 2018, etc.) takes an excursion to the wild side of the Faroe Islands, "where crime [is] as rare as Catholicism."Even though Tristan Haraldsen, a former office manager for the Trshavn Police, has always thought of himself as a town man, he and his wife, Elsebeth, have retired to the Faroes village of Djevulsfjord, where he's accepted the part-time, largely ceremonial post of district sheriff. His one serious responsibility is to preside over the grind, the ritual slaughter of beached whales. The job doesn't suit him a bit. He recoils from the wholesale violence, the copious blood, and, in particular, the image of 10-year-old Jnas Mikkelsen precociously stabbing a whale. Worse news swiftly follows. Both Jnas and slow-witted Benjamin Mikkelsen, who's always been at the mercy of the often cruel brother who's 18 months younger than him, disappear at the height of the grind. The natives assume it's another prank by Jnas, and they're not far wrong: He's forced Benjamin away from home and into the treacherous wilderness for reasons he feels no need to explain. The plot thickens when Jnas is found stabbed to death with a whaling knife, putting considerable pressure on Haraldsen both to investigate and not to investigate. As he grows more and more convinced that the mystery is rooted in the death of the boys' uncle Kaspar Ganting, who fell or was pushed over the Lundi Cliffs a year ago, Haraldsen and area police officer Hanna Olsen are strongly encouraged by their superiors to leave ill enough alone. Nor can Haraldsen forget the fate of his predecessor, District Sheriff Kristian Djurhuus, who died just a week after Kaspar Ganting.As grim as the bleakest of Nordic noir. If you think the solution to the crime will produce a happy ending, just wait till the chilling final pages. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
