A Scandinavian Wicker Man without the atmosphere.
Max Fjellanger returns to Norway for the funeral of an old friend and finds himself immersed in a 30-year-old murder case in Sundstøl’s (The Ravens, 2015, etc.) latest.
As young policemen in Eidsborg, Max Fjellanger and Knut Abrahamsen investigated a missing person case that was never solved; shortly afterward, Max left the police force and moved to America, where he became a private investigator and married Ann. He and Knut did not keep in touch, but when he hears about his old friend’s death, he impulsively returns to Norway for the funeral and confronts memories of the past. Knut’s death, ruled a suicide at first, seems suspicious, as does the recent disappearance of a young woman who was researching an old stave church and its wooden saint. The missing man from 30 years ago also had a scholarly interest in that church and its ritual traditions. Assuming this is no coincidence, Max teams up with a librarian named Tirill to uncover the truth behind these disappearances and Knut’s death. Rumors suggest that some members of the church community may be conducting their own, more pagan rituals connected to the summer solstice. Max and Tirill must be careful whom they trust, because some people are clearly willing to kill to protect their centuries-old secret. There is a clever plot here, and Max and Tirill are an engaging duo, but the novel lacks emotional depth. Most of the characters just don’t seem complex enough to drive the action-packed plot, and this leaves many scenes feeling flat. Though the novel moves somewhat slowly, the climax manages to feel rushed and lacks full explanation and development. The connection between early Christianity and paganism, while not new, could have been more thoroughly explored to add complexity and resonance.
A Scandinavian Wicker Man without the atmosphere.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0280-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.
Crime-fighting Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett outdoes himself during a temporary transfer from sleepy Saddlestring to fashionable Jackson Hole.
Will Jensen, the Jackson game warden, was a great guy and a model warden, but once his wife left him six months ago, he spiraled into madness and suicide, and now Joe’s been called to replace him. The transition is anything but smooth. There’s no question of Joe’s family coming with him, so he’s reduced to hoping he can get a signal for the cell-phone calls he squeezes into his busy schedule. En route to his new posting, Joe has to pursue a marauding grizzly. He arrives to meet a formidable series of challenges. Cantankerous outfitter Smoke Van Horn wants to go on attracting elk with illegal salt licks without the new warden’s interference. Animal Liberation Network activist Pi Stevenson wants him to publicize her cause and adopt a vegan diet. Developer Don Ennis wants to open a housing development for millionaires who like their meat free of additives. Ennis’s trophy wife Stella simply wants Joe—and he wants her back. As he wrestles with these demands, and with a supervisor riled over Joe’s track record of destroying government property in pursuit of bad guys (Trophy Hunt, 2004, etc.), Joe slowly becomes convinced that Will did not kill himself.
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.Pub Date: May 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15291-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
This tense psychological thriller shows Hoag at the top of her game.
In Hoag’s (Cold, Cold Heart, 2015, etc.) latest, Minneapolis homicide detective Sam Kovac has been separated from his longtime partner, the diminutive yet hard-charging Nikki Liska.
Nikki wanted more time with her teenage sons, so she sought assignment to the department’s new cold case unit, where she's intrigued by the decades-old unsolved murder of Ted Duffy, a sex crimes detective, despite push back from a retired detective close to his family. Sam’s first case without Nikki is the double murder—"raw animal violence"—of Lucien Chamberlain, an Asian studies professor, and his wife, Sondra, who were slashed to death with the professor’s own antique samurai weapons. Chamberlain was an egotistical, misogynistic megalomaniac. Even his adult children hated him. Son Charles is damned by OCD and his father’s unachievable expectations. Daughter Diana is bipolar and hypersexual. Nikki's and Sam’s cases become parallel stories of anger, isolation, ambition, violence, revenge, and perversion. With Duffy’s widow married to his prosperous twin brother and reluctant to cooperate, Nikki has no lead until she discovers Evi, Duffy’s long-ago foster child. Sam has too many suspects, including an ex-con working for a handyman service, Charles and Diana, and professor Ken Sato, Diana’s lover and Lucien’s rival for department chair. Hoag adds depth to the tale with secondary characters like the preening Sato; fragile librarian Jennifer Duffy, broken and isolated by her father’s murder; and the new homicide lieutenant, Joan Mascherino, who's tough-minded and empathetic, with knife-keen intelligence hidden under a prim personality intolerant of swearing. With an ear for sardonic cop dialogue and humor—Sondra Chamberlain regularly ended her day with a "bottle of Chateau Blackout"—Hoag livens up these two already fast-paced, ripped-from-the-headlines mysteries with interesting factoids about such things as the history of female samurai.
This tense psychological thriller shows Hoag at the top of her game.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95455-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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