CRIME FICTION
THE ICE BENEATH HER by Camilla Grebe (Zaffre £12.99)
A High-profile swedish novel that’s been sold to ten countries with film rights going to the makers of The lord Of The rings — this is the debut from stockholm-born grebe and it lives up to its reputation.
Opening with a gruesome murder in a sleek home in the capital’s suburbs, where a young woman has been decapitated and her head posed for effect, it then quickly introduces homicide detectives Peter lindgren and Manfred Olsson, who remember a similar murder ten years previously — though of a young man — that was never solved.
enter criminal profiler hanne lagerlindschon, who had a relationship with lindgren that turned sour and who is now suffering early onset dementia.
But who is the victim? And where is the celebrated owner of the house, the rich and controversial clothing tycoon Jesper Orre? is he the murderer? Cross-cutting between the characters at an ever-increasing pace, this is scandi-noir at its powerful bleakest.
NONE BUT THE DEAD by Lin Anderson (Macmillan £12.99)
This 11th novel featuring scottish forensic scientist Dr rhona Macleod fully lives up to the exceptional standard of its predecessors. Anderson is a fine storyteller, providing rounded characters — people with pasts they want to conceal — intricate plots and, above all, ravishing locations.
This story is set on sanday, one of the most northern of the Orkney islands, where the wind blows at gale force almost all the time and the weather can turn into an enemy within an instant.
human remains are discovered under the tarmac playground of what was once a primary school, which is now being renovated by a newcomer who then finds 13 ‘magic flowers’ symbolising the souls of dead children who may have attended the school.
Meanwhile, in a glasgow tenement a decomposed body is discovered, which may also have a link to the island. Macleod finds herself caught up in the locals’ evil past and present. shades of The Wicker Man, with a touch of Agatha Christie. superb.
COLD KILLERS by Lee Weeks (Simon & Schuster £20)
British gangster stories tend to leave me cold. They lack the glamour of their U.s. counterparts, and everyone here seems obsessed with the legends of the Krays and the richardsons.
But this one defeats my natural scepticism, for it is told with an icy eye for violence, and a telling ear for the depravity of 21st-century hard men. yet it is written by a married former english teacher who lives in Devon.
eddie, one of four brothers in a notorious east end crime family, is tortured and murdered while visiting london from his home in Marbella, spain. his vicious elder brother Tony also lives there, all but imprisoned in his lavish villa, as he is wanted for murder and drug trafficking.
Di Dan Carter and female Ds eb Willis launch an investigation at the gangster’s funeral, but it emerges that Carter has history with the murdered man’s widow.
not for the faint-hearted, and with a scarface-like south American villain, it bursts off the page like arterial spray from a newly slaughtered body.