Margit Anderson, a Seattle-based free-lance translator of Scandinavian languages, discovers the body of an elderly Danish man, apparently murdered by a robber. She receives a letter from the victim, however, containing sketches of and runic hints to a long-lost (and supposedly destroyed) Danish treasure. Symbolic dreams, office and home break-ins, and dangerous pursuit punctuate her subsequent quest for information.
Tiina Nunnally is an American author and translator.
Nunnally was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She was an AFS exchange student to Århus, Denmark in 1969-70. She received her MA in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a PhC from the University of Washington in 1979. She has a long association with the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, but she is not a salaried faculty member. Since 2002 she has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband Steven T. Murray, both full-time freelance literary translators.
Nunnally is an award-winning translator of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, who sometimes uses the pseudonym Felicity David when edited into UK English. Her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize in 2001, and Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow won the American Translators Association's Lewis Galantière Prize.
Her first novel, Maija, won a Governor's Writers Award from the State of Washington in 1996. Since then two more of her novels have been published.
The Swedish Academy honored Nunnally in 2009 with a special award for her contributions to "the introduction of Swedish culture abroad".
I read the books backwards but it wasn't earth shattering thing to do. Runemaker is the first book followed by Fate of Ravens. I like that Nevada Barr wrote a brief message "A beautifully crafted first mystery." But I think Steve had something to do with it. Say a dare you. Anyway I enjoyed both books and recommend them to you.
I am a fan of Scandinavian mystery authors, so I had hopes that this edition would lead me to a new author. I can only damn the book with faint praise. The book was OK, but did not induce me to seek out additional work by Mis Nunnally. Kristi & Abby Tabby
PROTAGONIST: Margit Andersson, translator SETTING: Seattle SERIES: #1 of 2 RATING: 3.5 WHY: Margit Andersson is a freelance translator of Scandinavian languages. She's befriended an 80-year old man named Soren Rasmussen while doing translations for him. She finds him stabbed to death; shortly thereafter, she receives mail from him which includes sketches of some runes. Her research reveals that the runes have to do with Danish artifacts known as Golden Horns which had been stolen hundreds of years ago. The plot was a bit of a stretch, but I did like the fact that Margit didn't engage in stupid amateur-sleuth type behavior. Nunnally is an experienced translator and reveals interesting information about that profession.