Author: BewBob

Review by Gill Car

I’ve always enjoyed my choice of holiday destination at the same temperature as my favourite crime novel locations: Cold. And it doesn’t come much colder than Greenland, the setting for Christoffer Petersen’s “Seven Graves, One Winter” the first in a series featuring Constable David Maratse. I discovered this author right at the beginning of Lockdown#1 and was immediately immersed in a world of not just a crime to be solved but also Greenlandic politics, language, traditions, fishing, hunting and sled dog wrangling along with all the other delights and hardships of living and working on a huge rock covered in ice and snow.

In Greenland graves are dug in summer in readiness for those who will die in the frozen winter months when the ground is unforgiving. Retired Constable Maratse is out fishing one day when he hooks the body of a teenage girl. Her mother is a prominent figure who hires the former police officer to investigate the circumstances of her daughter’s death. One of the seven prepared graves has now been filled. Will the case lead to more being used?

Maratse is taciturn by nature but I really enjoyed slowly getting to know about him and his previous history, and he contrasts well with his former police partner and friend Petra Jensen, who later gets her own “Greenland Missing Person” series. Petersen is a prolific author who has several series on the go at any one time. Characters cross between them and he enjoys messing with timelines. The author lived and worked in Greenland for several years and his voice and personal experience concerning daily life on the island feels lived and authentic. If you like your crime cold, laced with intrigue and political shenanigans then I hope, like me, you will be drawn into the world of Maratse and Jensen.

Reviewed by Keith Young

You saw it happen.

 You said nothing.

 Who would trust you now?

My first book by Gytha Lodge and I was certainly not disappointed. Without giving any spoilers away…

The novel starts with a man; Aidan Poole, logging onto his laptop for a late night video call with his girlfriend, Zoe. We’re all getting used to online video calls during the last year (and no, this isn’t a Covid-set tale, don’t worry!) but this is a nightmare scenario: seeing that the person you’re calling is not alone; that there’s a stranger in their house and they’re not aware of it. All Aidan can do is watch…and, more specifically, listen to the sounds of a struggle and then…nothing.

What’s happened to Zoe?

And why doesn’t he call the police immediately?

Questions that DCI Jonah Sheens and his team must consider when they finally get involved in the case.

I saw Gytha reading from the opening of this book at an episode of Virtual Noir at the Bar last year and the book lived up to the intriguing open.

From the impressive DC Hanson who takes a leading role in the Investigations (and who deserves to be promoted!) to the range of featured characters in the story – making up a collective mix of clever, devious, pushy and quiet, it all adds up to a good, exciting story.

The plot is intriguing: is it a murder, or is it suicide?

If it is a murder, there are probably 8 or 10 potential candidates to be the murderer and from starting to read until very nearly the end we’re given a whole range of possibilities.

Some great writing and sub plots to keep the reader intrigued, this was a very hard down book down before it finishes.

I will certainly be reading more of her books.

Note: You can register for free at Gytha’s virtual launch party for her new novel Lie Beside Me

Register free here

Review by Rachel Sargeant

The blurb:

“It was Ali who found the body of a murdered newborn baby, hidden in the garden of her convent school. In an Ireland riven by battles of religion and reproduction, the case becomes
a media sensation, even as the church tries to suppress it. But this is not the first dead baby Ali has found.
“For Detectives Vincent Swan and Gina Considine, the pressure to discover the identity of the dead child is little help against a community with secrets to protect. Gina knows all too well how many of Ireland’s girls are forced to make difficult decisions in terrible circumstances, silenced by shame. Is Ali one of those girls? Because what evidence there is, points to Ali herself…”

The review:

On the surface this is a police procedural. Detective Inspector Swan and Detective Sergeant Considine investigate the murder of the three-day-old baby found in a garden shed at a private convent school in Dublin. However, like A Famished Heart, the first book in this excellent series, this novel is also a piece of quality literary fiction.

As well as chapters from Swan’s point of view, we hear from Ali, one of the two girls who find the child. This is a coming-of-age story for her as she strives to find her way as a young woman in a world that frowns on her wish for independence. She also revisits a secret from her family’s past that leads to a tragedy in the present.

The story is a reminder that 1950s attitudes to women, contraception and childbirth were alive and well in 1984, when this novel is set. (And, let’s face it, they’ve still not gone away in some quarters…) Even our trusty detectives are products of their times, and they subject Ali to obscene scrutiny.

It was first published as In a Rosary Garden by Cargo Publishing in 2013, when it won the Dundee International Book Prize, but was relaunched by Viper Books this January as the second in a new series featuring Swan and Considine. A Famished Heart was one of my Top Reads of 2020, and The Rosary Garden looks set to be high on my list this year.