Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen and Megan E Turney (translator)
| Thirty Days of Darknes by Jenny Lund Madsen and Megan E Turney (translator) | |
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| Category: Thrillers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A female author it's possibly too easy to find disagreeable blunders her way around a provincial death scene, but cosy crime this is not. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 384 | Date: May 2023 |
| Publisher: Orenda Books | |
| ISBN: 9781914585616 | |
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Hannah presents as an unlikeable, bitter woman, an author of failing if well-regarded literary short novels. Sorry to leave her bottles of red wine behind her for an afternoon at a book fair, she flukes her way into a public argument with the latest hot shot in the world of crime fiction, saying he's populist trash and only writing what anyone could write. Cue the bet that she cannot live up to that accusation. Her publisher duly books her flights from Denmark to Iceland, where she is put up for a wintry month away from it all. Just on the point of despairing – about her writing, about the people and the lack of stimulus for her plot, more or less about everything – word comes that the landlady's nephew has been found dead…
This remains both an intriguing proposition, as well as featuring an intriguing case. The death is almost a welcome one, coming as we know it must and yet feeling some relief from the rest of the plot. Because Hannah is not exactly the provider of joy. I defy anyone to get through the first few pages and really think her a sympathetic character, and added to that is what everybody else sees as her naivety, especially the lowly rural cop she keeps pestering with her ideas about what she insists is a murder case. With the few examples of her bad genre writing we witness it's a great stretch to say we're enamoured with her and keen for her book to progress, leaving us with the fact that a young lad who hates the open water has been fished out of the harbour as main interest.
Of all things, this reminded me somewhat of the more recent, meta efforts of the great Anthony Horowitz. It's not that the character is writing herself into the investigation as he's taken to doing, she's doing what any pressured, blocked novelist might do and transcribing to some extent the case around her, but the way this is delivered with the most immediate of present tenses and with some extent of it looking at the forming of a crime book did push this into that kind of ballpark. What the Horowitz character has, of course, is the typically atypical mastermind detective to work everything out – Hannah has her own blundering behaviour.
And that behaviour is a hole in the success of this book, as once it's laden on so heavily at the beginning that she's a city girl in dislike of everything and everyone, especially success, it's bonkers to accept she would turn up at this village, nose around in complete ignorance and never fail to disparage their provinciality. And I know she would – partly because the writing is regardless of that so good and so intimate I can stake that claim quite firmly. Like it or not, you're almost handcuffed to this woman as she stumbles through the dark times towards knowing all she needs of the case.
Ultimately, we're more satisfied with the case – throwing suitable curve-balls, choosing just the right time to take a darker turn, and so on. Another thing that raises eyebrows is the declaration even before we've started that this will launch a series – if ever that crosses our mind during this it's impossible to see what kind of thing future books will be like, if she'll be the only returning character or not, or even where they will be set. On these pages, at least, Madsen seems to have presented a suitable rural Iceland, even if I could not quite picture the town layout and amenities.
That is what makes this most definitely in the Scandi-/Nordic crime category, and it's a perfectly solid example. It doesn't do what so many Icelandic dramas do, ie weave three three completely different plot strands into one, and some genre fans will certainly disprove of the added elements regards the writing and literature, but on the whole, despite all such quibbles, this remains a very decent debut. I am grateful for my review copy, for which three and a half stars seems a snowfall or two too negative, in all honesty.
Finally this put me in mind of a different strand of thriller book, as well. For when Hannah is excluded by language from all the Icelandic speakers, I had flashbacks almost to the deaf hero at the core of Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic and its commendable sequels.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen and Megan E Turney (translator) at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen and Megan E Turney (translator) at Amazon.com.
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