Arnaldur Indriðason: The Draining Lake

Now available in mass-market paperback:

The Draining Lake
Arnaldur Indriðason
Vintage
ISBN 978-0-09-949414-0
2 September 2008
$11.99 in Canada

En français : L’homme du lac

In the wake of an earthquake, the water level of an Icelandic lake drops suddenly, revealing the skeleton of a man half-buried in its sandy bed. It is clear immediately that it has been there for many years. There is a large hole in the skull. Yet more mysteriously, a heavy communication device is attached to it, possibly some sort of radio transmitter, bearing inscriptions in Russian.

The police are called in and Erlendur, Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli begin their investigation, which gradually leads them back to the time of the Cold War when bright, left-wing students would be sent from Iceland to study in the ‘heavenly state’ of Communist East Germany.

The Draining Lake is another remarkable Indridason mystery about passions and shattered dreams, the fate of the missing and the grief of those left behind.

Christian Jungersen : L’exception

Maintenant disponible en format poche :

L’exception
Christian Jungersen
Le livre de poche, « Thrillers »
ISBN 978-2-253-12058-2
8 février 2008
14,95 $ au Canada

In English: The Exception

Iben et Malene, deux amies employées au Centre danois d’information sur les génocides, reçoivent d’étranges menaces de mort par e-mail : les courriers du corbeau regorgent de formules empruntées aux grands tortionnaires de ce siècle et à l’histoire des génocides. Très vite, Iben et Malene pensent être victimes de la vengeance d’un criminel de guerre serbe, Mirko Zigic.

Mais, alors que l’enquête piétine, le doute s’installe… Peu à peu les deux jeunes femmes basculent dans la paranoïa, leur amitié se fissure et l’atmosphère confinée de leur bureau devient insoutenable.

Nouveau maître scandinave du suspense, Christian Jungersen décrypte le subtil jeu d’alliances et de mésalliances qui structure nos vies en société. Vertigineux jusqu’à la dernière ligne.

Christian Jungersen: The Exception

Now available in trade paperback:

The Exception
Christian Jungersen
Anchor
ISBN 978-0-385-66196-6
8 July 2008
$21.00 in Canada

En français : L’exception

Four women – intimate with the psychology of evil – work together for a small nonprofit that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe the messages come from one of their recently profiled war criminals. As the tensions mount among the women, each discovers that none of the others is exactly the person they seem to be. Their obsession with tracking down the killer turns into a witch hunt: one by one, the women dismiss the idea that the threats were sent from the outside and begin to suspect each other, disclosing the jealousies and contempt that have been simmering just beneath the surface.

A tautly woven philosophical drama with all the trimmings of an electrifying murder mystery, The Exception heralds Christian Jungersen as a gifted storyteller and keen observer of the human psyche.

Halldór Laxness: The Fish Can Sing

New Edition:

The Fish Can Sing
Halldór Laxness
Vintage
ISBN 978-0-307-38605-2
19 February 2008
$16.50 in Canada

Original Title: Brekkukotsannáll
En français : Les annales de Brekkukot

The Fish Can Sing is one of Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness’s most beloved novels, a poignant coming-of-age tale marked with his peculiar blend of light irony and dark humor.

The orphan Alfgrimur has spent an idyllic childhood sheltered in the simple turf cottage of a generous and eccentric elderly couple. Alfgrimur dreams only of becoming a fisherman like his adoptive grandfather, until he meets Iceland’s biggest celebrity. The opera singer Gardar Holm’s international fame is a source of tremendous pride to tiny, insecure Iceland, though no one there has ever heard him sing. A mysterious man who mostly avoids his homeland and repeatedly fails to perform for his adoring countrymen, Gardar takes a particular interest in Alfgrimur’s budding musical talent and urges him to seek out the world beyond the one he knows and loves. But as Alfgrimur discovers that Gardar is not what he seems, he begins to confront the challenge of finding his own path without turning his back on where he came from.

Johan Theorin: Echoes from the Dead

Echoes from the Dead
Johan Theorin
Delta
ISBN 978-0-385-34221-6
25 November 2008
$14.00 in Canada

En français : L’heure trouble

On a gray September day, on an island off the coast of Sweden, six -year -old Jens Davidsson ventured out of his backyard, walked out into a fog, and vanished….Now twenty years have passed, and in this magnificent debut novel of suspense—a runaway bestseller in Sweden—the boy’s mother returns to the place where her son disappeared, drawn by a chilling package sent in the mail… In it, lovingly wrapped, is one of Jens’ sandals—sandals Julia Davidsson put on her son’s feet that very last morning.

Now, with only a handful of clues, Julia and her father are questioning islanders who were present the day Jens vanished—and making a shocking connection to Öland’s most notorious murder case: the killing spree of a wealthy young man who fled the island and died years before Jens was even born. Suddenly the island that once seemed so achingly familiar turns strange and dangerous… Until Julia finds herself facing truths she never imagined—about what really happened on that September day twenty years ago, about who may have crossed paths with little Jens in the fog, and how a child could truly vanish without a trace…until now.

Henning Mankell: Depths

Now available in trade paperback:

Depths
Henning Mankell
Vintage
ISBN 978-0-676-97872-8
15 April 2008
$21.00 in Canada

En français : Profondeurs

October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-southeast. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge. His instinct for his profession is reflected in the comfortable domesticity he enjoys with his wife – herself meticulous in every detail.

Close to the waters where soundings are taken Tobiasson-Svartman alights on a barren skerry, presumed uninhabited, and is surprised to discover there a young woman, Sara Fredrika. Despite her almost feral appearance, something about her strikes him to the core. The mission is a success and the Svea returns to Gothenburg. Tobiasson-Svartman, however, remains haunted by this chance encounter; his equilibrium has been disturbed, and he is now compelled to find any pretence to return to the remote islet.

In Depths Mankell confirms his status as a writer deserving acclaim beyond the crime genre. By delving deep into the male psyche, he has produced a novel as tense and compelling in every way as the Wallander series, but also powerful, moving and ultimately tragic.

Helene Tursten: The Glass Devil

Now available in trade paperback:

The Glass Devil
Helene Tursten
Soho Press
ISBN 978-1-56947-489-1
1 April 2008
$14.50 in Canada

Pastor Sten Schyttelius, his wife, and his son, a schoolteacher, have been shot dead. Could this be the work of a cult of Satanists, as the clues left by the murderer indicate? Detective Inspector Irene Huss is on the case.

Morten Ramsland: Tête de chien

Tête de chien
Morten Ramsland
Gallimard, « Du monde entier »
ISBN 978-2-07-077957-4
4 septembre 2008
39,95 $ au Canada

In English: Doghead

«Nous, on aimerait vraiment savoir comment il a survécu, pour être franc, on aimerait vachement le savoir. On voudrait savoir comment il s’en est sorti, ce qui explique que moi, le plus jeune, et ma soeur Stinne, l’aînée, nous sommes venus au monde. Mais Grand-Père se referme comme une huître et descend du schnaps. Il refuse de raconter ce que les Allemands lui ont fait.

“La peste ou le choléra”, dit-il à la place.»

Asger Eriksson finira par savoir comment son grand-père Askild a traversé la guerre, et comment il a séduit sa grand-mère Bjørk, malgré l’opposition des parents de la jeune fille, riches armateurs à Bergen, en Norvège. Il nous parlera des boîtes de conserve de Bjørk, remplies de l’air de sa ville natale, dont elle aura besoin une fois loin de chez elle, et des grandes oreilles de son propre père Niels qui lui permettent d’entendre des choses inouïes…

Des années trente à nos jours, son récit embrasse les bonheurs et les malheurs d’une famille comptant plus d’un personnage loufoque en son sein, et entraîne le lecteur dans une saga étourdissante.

Morten Ramsland: Doghead

Now available in trade paperback:

Doghead
Morten Ramsland
Black Swan
ISBN 978-0-552-77343-0
13 May 2008
$21.95 in Canada

En français : Tête de chien

Naughty Boys.Dirty Secrets.Mad Dogs.

In the Eriksson family, childhood is a shocking experience, full of crude and disturbing rites of passage. It all started with Askild ‘the Crackpot’, chased by bloodhounds on a German plain after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp. His son, Niels ‘Jug Ears’ Junior, is born in an outhouse, and wins respect by kicking other boys in the balls.

And his son, Asger ‘the Liar’, collects stories about his shipwrecked family which are always exciting though not entirely true. He is haunted by the time he spent hidden in the space under the stairs with his fat aunt, aka ‘the Little Bitch’. Unable to banish Doghead, a horror from his childhood, to the shadow realm, he reveals the very bad deeds children can do – to push his family story forward, past a point of no return.

Doghead is a richly imaginative farcical tragedy; a witty saga of three generations of wild Eriksson men. It touches on chilling themes – concentration camps, child abuse, alcoholism, rape – yet warmly celebrates the stories that hold families together.

Carina Burman: The Streets of Babylon

The Streets of Babylon
Carina Burman
Marion Boyars Publishers
ISBN 978-0-7145-3138-0
1 May 2008
$20.00 in Canada

The setting is London in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition. Together with a Welsh police inspector, the successful Swedish authoress Euthanasia Bondeson goes in search of her beautiful companion, who has disappeared in the narrow streets and alleyways of London.

She meets beggars and whores, artists and society beauties, all actors on the modern city’s stage in a drama of dark shadows and ever-changing desires. In this world where gender boundaries are constantly shifting, can we even tell who is a man and who is a woman? With skirts flapping, Euthanasia forges her way through this romp of a crime novel, surveying the streets that Sherlock Holmes himself would not tread until a whole generation later.