This has been a week when I’ve had to squeeze books in to my life when I can. I wouldn’t mind that if the other demands on my time were fun things but sadly they are just necessary things. Still, I’m happy with the books I’ve read and bought. They’ve made me week lighter. Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’ s up next.
I started three new-to-me series this week, an FBI mystery, a Nordic Noir and a Cozy Supernatural mystery. Two of them worked really well. So now my challenge is how I keep moving through the new series in parrallelt to the ones I’m already following. Still, that’s a good challenge to have.
I’m a late comer to the Mercy Kilpatrick series, which was launched with ‘A Merciful Death‘ back in 2017. I can see why this has been so popular. ‘A Merciful Death’ was solid entertainment. A well-told story with prose that lubricated the plot and main characters with strong roots in Oregon’s Prepper culture. .I enjoyed the simple but skillful storytelling and the the believable dialogue. Most of all, I liked meeting Mercy Kilpatrick. It was refreshing to meet a skilled FBI agent who was more than a brain, a badge and a dark suit. Mercy’s background, her secrets, her fraught relationship with her family, and her private obsessions, made the novel much more engaging. There are six more audiobooks already available. I’ve downloaded the next one, ‘A Merciful Truth’ to read next month.
I enjoyed Hans Rosenfeldt’s novel ‘Cry Wolf‘ and his Nordic Noir TV series ‘The Bridge‘ so I was expecting good things of ‘Sebastian Bergman’ and I wasn’t disappointed.
The plot was a marvelous construction: dark, twisty, surprising and revealed at a pace that maximises the tension. All of that wasamplified by the well-defined characters of the police officers investigating the murders and by a deep understanding of what grief does to people. The character of Sebastian Bergman, was the icing on the cake. He’s an easy man to dislike: arrogant, transactional, sociopathic. Not surprisingly perhaps, he’s also an easy man to believe in. I admired that the authors didn’t let him become any more likeable as the book went on but they did help me understand how he came to be who is.
Sometimes, Swedish books translated into English have a muted feel to them, as if I’m seperated from the story by a thin sheet of glass. ‘Sebastian Bergman’ wasn’t like that. It was engaging, nuanced and fluent.
The title of the original Swedish version of this book was ‘Det fördolda‘ which translates as ‘The Hidden‘. In the US, it was released as ‘Dark Secrets’. I think both titles are a better fit for the story than ‘Sebastian Begrman‘. Bergman is a key character in the story but the power of the story comes from an ensemble cast and from the depth and complexity of the deceptions that the investigating team have to tackle to solve the murders.
There are another seven books in this series and I’m looking forward to reading them.
I’d hoped that ‘Crossing Over Easy’ would give me a cozy supernatural sereis to dip into when I’m in the mood for something light. Unfortunately, I ended up setting it aside at 40%. There was nothing wrong with it except that it was trying a little too hard at the start. It just wasn’t to my taste. It’s a meringue of a book: light, sweet and hollow. It uses magic as wish fulfilment, which is fine except these weren’t the kind of wishes that I would like to have fulfilled. Still, it was offered free on Audible and it was worth trying. I’m sure there’s a fairly large audience out there for this book.
I bought three books this week. One is a debut novel about revenge, one was a Don Winslow thriller novella recommended by a reviewer who I follow and one is standalone novel by a writer I follow.
Rita Marsh is a good person.
By day, she runs a care home, looking after the elderly and infirm. By night, she’s a vigilante, posing online as young girls and snaring the men who prey on them, exposing them for what they are. Rita has successfully kept her two lives separate for years. But when an old classmate returns from her past, her two worlds start to collide. With both of her selves unravelling, Rita will have to choose between justice and revenge.
Is she a force for good – or will she become someone to fear?’
This debut novel was released in hardcover by Faber in 2024 as ‘The Revenge Of Rita Marsh‘. I liked the title and the cover, so I was surprised to find that when the paperback edition, released in March 2025, the title had changed to ‘Her Two Lives‘ and has been give an much more generic cover. I’d have passed this version over if I’d seen it on a shelf.
It’s a bit of a roll of the dice but I’m fascinated by ‘Women Who Kill’ thrillers so I’m giving this one a chance.
It was 1970 in a defeated Rhode Island fishing town. Vietnam and Nixon dominated the national news. Both the near and distant future looked bleak.
But they were five inseparable high school friends with something incredible in common: an unwavering resolve to look after each other no matter what hell life threw at them. And they were on a mission.
The plan was simple: Go off the grid before they turned 18 to avoid the draft. They’d sell some grass, stack some cash, then head west and start a commune. What could possibly go wrong?
I’ve enjoyed every Don Winslow story that I’ve read. This one came recommeded and it was included in my Audible membership, so it was irresistible.
JOANNE HAYNES HAS A SECRET.
THAT IS NOT HER REAL NAME.
And there’s more. Her flat isn’t hers. Her cats aren’t hers. Even her hair isn’t really hers.
Nor is she any of the other women she pretends to be. Not the bestselling romance novelist who gets her morning snack from the doughnut van on the seafront. Nor the pregnant woman in the dental surgery. Nor the chemo patient in the supermarket for whom the cashier feels ever so sorry. They’re all just alibis.
In fact, the only thing that’s real about Joanne is that nobody can know who she really is.
But someone has got too close. It looks like her alibis have begun to run out…
I enjoyed the first two books in C. J. Skuse’s female serial killer series ‘Sweetpea‘ and ‘In Bloom’. I’m curious to see what she does with a stand-alone thriller, especially one with such an usual premise.
This week, I’m continuing with an Urban Fantasy series that I found this year and trying out a new time travel book from an author who normally writes crime novels.
Aileen has a few rules for her life. Do her job and go home safe. Keep the supernatural world away from her human family. Stay off the vampire radar. And, above all, don’t get involved in spook politics.
But when Liam comes back into town bringing a mystery that threatens the life she’s built, she finds every closely guarded rule flying out the window as she sinks ever deeper into the supernatural world.
Ultimately, it may be the people she loves the most who pay the price in the high-stakes game that vampires call life
I enjoyed ‘Shadow’s Messenger’, the first book in the Aileen Travers series and decided to follow this Urban Fantasy series about a newly turned vampire trying to stay independent in a supernatural world that she was forced into when she was turned against her will. I’m hoping to see some character development for Aileen and some more world-building. I’m also hoping that the plot avoids the enemies to lovers cliché.
At the end of a deadly bear hunt across the wilderness of Northern Sweden, the successful hunters are shaken by a grisly discovery. Across in Kurravaara, a woman is murdered with frenzied brutality: crude abuse scrawled above her bloodied bed, her young grandson nowhere to be found. Only Rebecka Martinsson sees a connection.
Dropped from the case thanks to a jealous rival, she now stands alone against a killer who brings death to young and old, spawned by a horrifying crime that festers after 100 years on ice.
I stopped following Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series a while ago. I like her writing but I was beginning to go off the people. I’ve had two of her newer books, ‘The Locked Room’ and ‘Bleeding Heart Yard‘, in my TBR pile for a couple of years now. I was reluctant to add another to the two already waiting to be read but reluctance was replaced with, ‘That I want to try’ when I saw that the premise of ‘The Frozen People‘ was a police Cold Case team solving old crimes by going back in time. It’s a fun idea. I want to see what Elly Griffiths does with it.
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Mike Finn's Fiction 