Denmark’s Queen of Crime launches a new series in the US next week with THE UNDERTAKER’S DAUGHTER (on sale February 6th) - and thanks to Grand Central, I’m thrilled to give CBTB readers an early chance to read the first two chapters from it! Blaedel, best known for her detective novels featuring Louise Rick, now branches out into a very different style of suspense writing—THE UNDERTAKER’S DAUGHTER shifts focus from solving crimes with Louise Rick to unraveling the family secrets of Ilka Jensen, a Danish woman with family in the US.
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Book Review: THIS IS HOW IT ENDS by Eva Dolan
THIS IS HOW IT ENDS (on sale 3/13/18) will suit readers looking for a crime book that shifts focus away from the crime at its core and towards the social and cultural tensions that precipitated it—and the interpersonal fallout that it, in turn, precipitates. Thought-provoking and gritty, this socially-aware crime novel delivered one of my more conflicted reading experiences in recent memory. Writing this review has been a challenge precisely because there were just as many things I enjoyed about this book as there were qualities that frustrated me and held me back from fully sinking into this read.
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CBTB's Essential Nordic Noir
Today’s blog post details my picks for essential Nordic Noir reads — aka the authors whose works you should check out to see if this crime fiction sub-genre is for you. This is by no means an exhaustive list - there are tons of fantastic crime writers hailing from Scandinavia - but it’s a great place to start if you’ve never tried Scandinavian crime fiction before, or if you’re trying to expand your Nordic Noir collection!
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Book Review: THE PERFECT MOTHER by Aimee Molloy
When I picked up THE PERFECT MOTHER by Aimee Molloy (on sale May 1st), I was hoping for a domestic thriller that would fill the BEHIND CLOSED DOORS-shaped hole in my heart—and that’s exactly what I found. THE PERFECT MOTHER is that perfect blend of breezy plotting, chilling subject matter, and addictive interpersonal drama that makes for what I like to call “popcorn reading”: an utterly addictive, can’t-get-enough kind of read. Fans of BEHIND CLOSED DOORS by B.A. Paris, LIE TO ME by J.T. Ellison, and BIG LITTLE LIES by Liane Moriarty will feel right at home in Molloy’s story of the pressures of motherhood and the lies friends hide from one another.
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CBTB's Recommended January Releases
One of my 2018 goals for Crime by the Book is to find new and even better ways to connect you with crime books that will be exactly what you’re looking for. To serve this purpose, I’m testing out a new blog feature today - a monthly list of “Recommended New Releases”! I’ll always use my blog to write full reviews of the crime books I’m reading - but this list will help you get a quick overview of the new CBTB-recommended crime fiction releasing each month, and will provide links to my full reviews (and any relevant Author Q&A’s or “extras”) for each book.
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