Family festivities turn chilly...
THE DARKEST DAY by Hakan Nesser (Mantle £16.99) A MASTER of Nordic noir, Nesser created one of the most memorable figures in Swedish crime fiction in the downbeat Inspector Van Veeteren, who last appeared in 2003.
This new novel introduces the more cheerful Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a man born of an Italian father and Swedish mother who is recently divorced and who has formed a pact with God in an attempt to make sense of his life.
It’s 200 pages before the inspector arrives in this story of a dysfunctional family in the small town of Kymlinge just before Christmas — when not one, but two relatives disappear within 24 hours.
It takes a further 300 pages to get an answer to his investigation, but in doing so, he becomes a marvellously compelling companion.
Told with wry humour and compassion, Nesser has four more Barbarotti stories to come — cherish them all. WITHOUT A WORD by Kate McQuaile (Quercus £13.99)
THIS exquisite second novel begins with a disappearance.
It is November 2006, and Orla is in London when her friend Lillian, who has moved back to her native Ireland, Skypes her on the computer as she has ‘so much to tell’ her.
Then, Lillian suddenly announces there is someone at the door and disappears from the screen — but she never returns.
Orla waits and waits, until she finally realises that something terrible has happened.
Spin forward ten years and the mystery remains unsolved, until Orla receives a visit from Ned Moynihan, the detective who examined Lillian’s original vanishing.
He is receiving anonymous notes suggesting he failed to conduct a thorough investigation and wrongly suspects the letters are from Orla.
The story of what really happened finally emerges from the darkness, demonstrating just how fine a storyteller McQuaile has become.
DEATH ON THE CANAL by Anja de Jager (Constable £19.99) TROUBLED Dutch detective Lotte Meerman is trying to rebuild her life and career when she finds herself caught up in a killing outside an Amsterdam canal-side bar.
She tries to save the victim,
but he bleeds to death in her arms. Police believe the man was a drug dealer, so she gets herself transferred to the squad pursuing the case.
Six British tourists have died after being sold heroin rather than cocaine and the squad is determined the canal killing must not contaminate its case, but Meerman is convinced that there is a child involved and that the murder was not about drugs.
Amsterdam is beautifully captured, and Meerman is an engaging if conflicted character who is becoming more interesting with each book in this series.