English Translations of Scandinavian/Nordic Mysteries & Thrillers discussion

For July we have only two books which will be published this month, so far. 1) A Grave for Two by Anne Holt published 4 Jluy 2019. Norway.

Selma Falck's personal life and career as a lawyer have hit rock bottom. That is until Hege Chin Morell - Norway's best female skier - approaches her desperate to overturn a doping charge. With two months to the Winter Olympics, Selma faces the seemingly almost impossible task of clearing Morell's name.

However, when a male skier is found dead after a training accident, it becomes clear to Selma that there is something more serious at risk. Encountering corruption, hidden enmity and shady connections, the pattern of recent crimes and ancient sins becomes undeniable. As Selma's race against time begins, she realizes that more lives are at stake...

2) Knife by Jo Nesbø published 11 July 2019. Norway.

'Nesbo is one of the best thriller writers on the planet' Daily Express

A man like Harry had better watch his back...

Following the dramatic conclusion of number one bestseller THE THIRST, KNIFE sees Harry Hole waking up with a ferocious hangover, his hands and clothes covered in blood. Not only is Harry about to come face to face with an old, deadly foe, but with his darkest personal challenge yet.

The twelfth instalment in Jo Nesbo’s internationally bestselling crime fiction series.

As always we will add books as they become known to us. Good reading.

We have The Heart Keeper by Alex Dahl to be published 4 July 2019. Norway. Was to be published 18 June 2019, but was put into July.

"How far would you go to get your daughter back?

It’s been twelve months since Alison Miller-Juul’s world fell apart when her six-year-old daughter, Amalie, drowned. Twelve months of sympathy cards, grief counselling and gritting her teeth, but it’s still only the vodka and pills that seem to work.

Alison no longer cares about anything. She can’t smile at her step-son, she can’t answer her friends’ texts, she can’t even look at her husband. All Alison wants is Amalie back.

Then she learns that the girl who received her daughter's heart lives just a few streets away. Unlike Amalie, this girl has a future. She’s alive because Amalie’s heart beats for her. And in the darkest recess of Alison’s brain, an idea begins to take shape…

We had The Flood by Kristina Ohlsson published 27 June 2019 and not included as of yet, until now. Sweden. I kept leaving off the h in Ohlsson, bad Ken. I kept looking at Kristina Olsson and couldn't figure why The Flood wasn't there. That's the reason.

A man, wearing his daughter’s wedding ring, is found in front of his fireplace, a bullet hole in his chest. A funeral director searches desperately for his brother – a man who doesn’t seem to be missed. A woman struggles to protect her children and her life as her husband turns ever more dangerous.

Fredrika Bergman and Alex Recht believe that these three cases are totally unrelated… until they uncover a connection between these three people that changes everything. Soon Bergman and Recht are pulled into an escalating series of events where old sins return to haunt all involved. And someone is leaving them taunting messages… but who, and why?

Ken wrote: "We had The Flood by Kristina Ohlsson published 27 June 2019 and not included as of yet, until ..."

Thanks for this Ken, as I liked this series and have hoped for a new book. Also like her other series but this is most welcome news, have downloaded it today iBook. Thanks again and keep well.

THE MANDAN MYSTERY: SAGA OF THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA by F.A. WESTMARK published 15 July 2019.

Did the Vikings come to North America five hundred years before Columbus? Maybe. Some evidence suggests the Vikings came here. This fictional story, using historical information, is about the adventures of a band of Vikings exploring many parts of America. They explored everywhere on foot and by canoe. Horses came to the Americas seven hundred years later with the Spanish Conquistadors. Was it idyllic? Perhaps not. Dangers lurked everywhere and life was short and difficult. Some might suggest the story is romanticized and simplified. I think the Native Americans were people with hopes and dreams, like everyone. They struggled to survive as we all do. Some Old Norse words are introduced and used to make the readings more authentic and interesting. However, the locations are real. Modern people have given names to many of the places, but had no meaning to the Vikings and Indians.

A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson was published 25 June 2019. Sweden.


M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family is a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: How far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they knew about their life—and one another.

Eighteen-year-old Stella Sandell stands accused of the brutal murder of a man almost fifteen years her senior. She is an ordinary teenager from an upstanding local family. What reason could she have to know a shady businessman, let alone to kill him?

Stella’s father, a pastor, and mother, a criminal defense attorney, find their moral compasses tested as they defend their daughter, while struggling to understand why she is a suspect. Told in an unusual three-part structure, A Nearly Normal Family asks the questions: How well do you know your own children? How far would you go to protect them?

The Storm Knight by Frederick E. Smith published 5 July 2019. Norway.

"Any underwater wreck approached for the first time was exciting; this one with its sinister secrets had my nerves on edge ..."

Steve Brand, a young Canadian skin-diver on holiday in Norway, unwittingly brings the cold touch of fear to the tiny village of lndal, still bitter and resentful of a war-time betrayal.

To help a lovely girl prove her father innocent of treachery, Steve joins forces with the tempestuous Steen Ericson in an underwater partnership that diced with death.

A malignant, dangerous wreck held the secret of a bloody massacre, and it was there, fathoms deep in Blood Fjord, that nightmare became reality.

"A Deception in Denmark: an Elspeth Duff Mystery Book 6" by Ann Crew published 1 July 2019. Denmark. On Amazon not on Goodreads Yet.

Fabia Alberti has stolen the identity and is using the fortune of her best friend who was killed in a car accident ten years before. Fabia is now a rising star in the opera world, but her promising career is threatened by the arrival of her former voice teacher, Eve Gardiner, who sees through Fabia's deception. That night Eve is murdered at the Kennington Copenhagen hotel. Matters are complicated by Fabia's growing closeness to Robbie MacArthur, who wants to hide his own criminal past, and a Russian tenor, Viktor Kirillov, who constantly upstages Fabia. She wishes Viktor dead and tells Robbie. Soon Viktor is killed as well. Lord Kennington, owner of the hotel, calls his special security advisor, Elspeth Duff, away from her wedding trip to investigate Eve's death. Her new husband agrees to follow but has growing doubts about his relationship with Elspeth.

This is the sixth in the Elspeth Duff Mysteries series.

Deep River by Karl Marlantes an American author, published 2 July 2019. Finland & U.S.A..

Karl Marlantes’s debut novel Matterhorn, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, has been hailed as a modern classic of war literature. In his new novel, Deep River, Marlantes turns to another mode of storytelling—the family epic—to craft a stunningly expansive narrative that is no less rich and honest in its depiction of human suffering, courage, and reinvention.

Born into a farm family in late nineteenth-century Finland, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and Aino—are brought up on the virtue of maintaining their sisu in the face of increasing hardship, especially after their nationalist father is arrested by imperial Russian authorities, never to be seen again. Lured by the prospects of the Homestead Act, Ilmari and Matti set sail for America, and the politicized young Aino, haunted by the specter of betrayal after her Marxist cell is disastrously exposed, follows soon after. Not far from the majestic Columbia River and in the shadow of Douglas firs a hundred meters high, the brothers have established themselves among a logging community in southern Washington, and it is here, in the New World, that each sibling comes into their own—Ilmari as the family’s spiritual rock; Matti as a fearless logger and the embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit; and Aino as a fiercely independent woman and union activist who, time and again, sacrifices for the political beliefs that have sustained her through it all.

Layered with fascinating historical detail, this is a novel that breathes deeply of the sun-dappled forest and bears witness to the stump-ridden fields the loggers, and the first waves of modernity, leave behind. At its heart, Deep River is an extraordinarily ambitious exploration of the place of the individual, and of the immigrant, in an America still in the process of defining its own identity.