The first of Indridasons books featuring Inspector Erlandur (since surnames are patronymic or matronymic, Icelanders call everyone regardless of rank by their first names) translated into English, this story chilled me to the core and I am looking forward to spending more time in Reykjavik as the series progresses. Upon discovering the murder of a man named Holberg, Erlandur and his partners Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli must work to determine if this is the usual clumsy Icelandic crime or something more. As the book progresses […]
Miserable Weather + Terrible Taxes = Happy People?
If I’d just seen Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, I never would have read it. First of all, the cover of the Finnish edition is hokey as hell. Bad publisher. Go to your room and think of what you’ve done. Second of all, what would you think, if you saw a book that’s just 300 odd pages about Scandinavia and Scandinavian people? Boring, right? Booth mentions very early on that many people to whom he talked about his book project […]
The beginning of the Anna Kronberg thriller series
Dr. Anton Kronberg, renowned bacteriologist, receives word that he is needed at what is believed to be a crime scene. A corpse with cholera has been dumped into the waterworks – was it an attempt to infect London? Another clever person has been summoned as well: Sherlock Holmes. Holmes figures something out about Dr. Kronberg that no one else knows. He’s a [spoiler]. Dr. Kronberg’s secret could get the good doctor arrested, and possibly even killed. It turns out the man didn’t die of cholera, but […]
Outlander-Adjacent Historical Fiction
Before I continue to catch up on reviewing books I read last year, I want to take a moment to thank my ones of loyal readers who have all been waiting so patiently for more posts; silently and without interruption, or page views of the site to disturb my concentration, ignoring my blog completely to make sure I felt no pressure, going about your lives as though my sporadic reviews all of books in exactly the same genre are not the fulcrum of your very […]