Book Review: The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen

The Silent Girl is the first book by the author that I've read and I can say that I truly enjoyed it as the well-written crime novel that it is.
    It all starts when a boy discovers, during a tour of the so-called haunted places of San Francisco, the severed hand of a woman. The police are notified and detectives Jane Rizzoli and Barry Frost rush to the scene, along with medical examiner, Maura Isles. The hand was found in the garbage, where they soon also discover a gun, and so the detectives feel pretty certain that the rest of the body of the victim, who’s a woman, will also be lying somewhere nearby. So they start searching and before too long they find what they seek on the building right above the crime scene. The woman is decapitated and according to Dr. Isles, no matter how strange that may sound, the lethal weapon was most likely a sword. The victim doesn’t carry any kind of identification on her person, so it will not prove easy to find out who she is. And as they are in Chinatown where the people do not know how to speak English, or rather chose not to do so, they bring in a cop with roots from China to help with the investigation. Johnny Tam, as we are soon to find out, is an ambitious young cop, whose big dream is to be promoted to homicide by the time he’s thirty. And most likely he’ll just manage to do that, since he works hard, likes to take initiative and does everything he can to help the two detectives solving the case.
     Thus the three of them form an unlikely partnership that’ll do anything possible to discover the truth. We say unlikely because as characters each couldn’t be any different from the other. Jane loves taking risks and she’s stubborn, and she doesn’t seem able to believe anything that defies her logic, while Barry is really sad over lost love, but at the same time he’s tenderhearted, charming and open-minded. As for Johnny, we can say that in the very least he’s secretive, but nevertheless bright, well-trained, and tireless, with undecipherable eyes.
     Through the mostly third-person, but at times first-person narration, we travel back and forth in time and along with the protagonists we start to pick the dots that when connected will create the mosaic behind the story. And we are talking about a huge mosaic, which hides behind it a lot of painful secrets, but that also delivers to the reader some snippets of wisdom, like this one: “Without ties to our ancestors, we are lonely specs of dust, adrift and floating, attached to nothing and no one.”
     The author though is not only interested in the mystery, so she embarks on a short journey through the myths and legends of ancient China, she talks about the sense of dignity of certain people that borders obsession when it comes to matters of right and wrong, and she finally brings under the microscope the relations between the members of more than one families. The way she sets up her plot is masterful, the violence she describes sometimes becomes brutal, but her outlook is definitely humane. The issue of justice seems to be very important to her heroes, so through their actions or lack of them, they seem to imply that sometimes one has to take the law into his own hands in order to serve it.
     This is a great crime novel and I highly recommend it to each and every fan of the genre

Book Review: Those in Peril by Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith is one of my all time favorite authors. I’ve travelled time and again through his novels to central and southern Africa and to ancient Egypt. The Courtneys, the Ballantynes and the magus Taita are some of the most memorable literary heroes and I admit that I have spent many hours of agony and reading joy with them.
     In Those in Peril we don’t meet any of them though. The main protagonists are a couple of seemingly opposite characters that have nothing much in common: Hector Cross who runs a security firm and Hazel Bannock, an ex tennis player and the head of a big oil company.
     Hazel doesn’t like nor trust Hector, despite the fact that her late husband had a very high opinion about his person. Since the latter died she’s being working hard to earn her place in a most competitive world, where men hold all the power, and she’s been doing fine. However, in order to do even better she has to get rid of the heavy shadow that her husband still casts over her whole being and from the past that he created for her. It’s in this past that she considers Hector to belong to. But at the exact moment that she’s getting ready to get rid of him, something happens that turns her plans and her world upside down: her luxurious yacht is taken over by pirates in the open waters east of Somalia and her daughter Cayla who was aboard is taken as a prisoner. Now this seemingly all powerful woman has to all that she can to secure her release. So she leaves the emirate of Abu Zara, where one of her oil fields is based in a rush, and heads for the US where she gets in touch with the FBI and the secret services of her country, and even with the president himself, asking for help. As she’s soon to find out there’s nothing much they can do for her, thus, left with no other option she swallows her ego and half-heartedly calls Hector, the only man who can make things happen. He will start planning a rescue mission right away, a mission however which will take a lot of time to come to be, since the pirates have as their base a semi-independent region of Somalia, where the only laws that apply are the ones dictated by the old sheikh. As the information starts to accumulate and the plans of the mission reach their final stages, Hazel almost unwillingly finds herself forming a close relationship with Hector, and feels her disgust of him turn into something completely different, something she couldn’t think possible to happen ever again. Under the direst circumstances she feels the touch of love.
     This novel can be read as a big adventure, but as a love story as well. The main characters are rich but nonetheless lonely people, who are desperately trying to find something or someone to fill their blanks and bring a touch of happiness into their lives. The action in many scenes is fast paced, sometimes there are torrents of blood and the violence is pretty brutal, but every now and then things slow down and the narration becomes tender and deeply humane. All you need is love, the author seems to say and he’s trying to prove that when there’s that no obstacle is too big for people to overcome. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don’t. And that is a fact of life.
    I’d say that the strength of this novel lies heavily on its well-crafted heroes, since it’s not only Hector and Hazel who manage to impress us with their psyches, but also -the gun and fist crazy- Irishman Paddy, the Russian superwoman Nastiya, quiet Tariq, as well as the villains. However, I wouldn’t say that this is one of his best novels because despite all the lovemaking and the action something seems to be missing; exactly what I cannot really say. What I can say though is that when I finished reading it I felt like it didn’t reach the high standards set by the author himself in his previous novels. A good read nevertheless.

Book Review: The Dead Kid Detective Agency by Evan Munday

I think that Neil Gaiman’s fans would love The Dead Kid Detective Agency for one reason or another. To begin with a lot of the action takes place in a graveyard, then the main character somehow reminds us of Coraline and Bod and, finally, every now and then the narration becomes dark, without lacking though a sense of humor.
     This is the story of October Schwartz, a thirteen year old girl that moves with her manic-depressive father to the town of Stickville where the latter is hired as a science teacher.
     October is a lonely girl, with a healthy imagination, and pretty sad since her mother passed away ten years before. She’s growing up very much alone since her father seems to be enclosed in a world all of his own, and her only joy comes from reading books. She really loves reading a lot, her favorite author is Stephen King, but she also likes to write. She’s currently, and for quite some time actually, working on her first novel titled Two Knives, One Thousand Demons, even though her muse seems to have abandoned her lately.
     The place she likes the most in the new city is the cemetery, which is conveniently situated very close to her home. She often goes there at night to think, to reminiscence and to read. And all is well, until there comes a time when she sees a transparent figure sliding away into the darkness; and then another. As she’s soon to find out every night the cemetery becomes the playground for the ghosts of five dead children. It’s exactly with these kids, her dead friends, that she’ll found The Dead Kid Detective Agency.
     The first case that they’ll hire themselves to investigate is that of the murder of the French teacher, October’s favorite teacher. The six of them, along with her best (living) friends, Yumi and Stacey, will start on a journey into a world of mystery, full of obstacles and colored with agony, which will make their friendship even stronger, but that will also bring out the best of each and every one of them. October, that lonely soul, will all of a sudden find herself in the epicenter of the attention not only of the people around her, but also of somebody else, who doesn’t seem to have her best interests in mind. Each new day will bring with it a surprise, now and then pleasant, most of the times not, and every night will pave the way to new unrest. And, sooner or later, she’ll also come to realize that everything happens for a reason, and that her unwilling arrival at that place served a purpose after all; to create a new beginning for her life.
     The landscape where the events of this story take place is bleak, but not scary. The author talks in a superb way about death and the traces it leaves behind in its passing, about loneliness, about the imagination, which is sometimes the only thing that can keep us going, but he also takes a good look into the fragile but complicated souls of his young heroes; especially his heroine’s. October seems to be brave but nevertheless frightened, strong but with lots of weaknesses, determined but willing to take a step back when the circumstances demand it of her. She’s a girl of this modern age, though she seems to remind us every now and then of a heroine from times past.
     This is a well-crafted adventure, with a big heart, which can bring much reading joy to young and adult readers alike.

Book Review: The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams

A serial killer, The Stranger You Seek of the title one could say, is on the loose creating chaos and spreading panic over the city of Atlanta; the city where Keye Street, a private detective, lives. Keye used to work for the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI and could have had a bright future in the Bureau if it wasn’t for her drinking, which first led to her losing her job and then her marriage falling apart.
     Now, after being clean for a while, Keye runs her own P.I. firm, and spends her time going after small-time criminals, who somehow didn’t make it to the court for their trials, serving warrants and acting as an investigator for a big law firm. However, no matter how hard she tries to fill her days with work and nothing more than work, so that she’ll have no time to think about the past, she feels that something is really missing from her life. What? Love maybe, but also the chase. She misses chasing the really bad guys; those that provided her with a challenge. Thus, when the murderer called the Wishbone Killer gets to work, Keye is more than happy to help the police as a consultant. What they expect of her, of course, is not to capture the killer, but to create his profile, something that’s not going to prove easy to do. The person behind the murders seems to be highly intelligent and very organized and is not one of those people that leave anything to chance. He does his killings in an almost clinical way, leaving no trace behind, apart of course from his signature, which consists of certain cuts and bruises on the bodies.
     Despite everyone’s efforts, the perp remains free, the bodies keep piling up, and so does the pressure on the authorities. Thus those in power have to find a scapegoat to appease the spirits, even for a little while, and surely no one but Keye could be better for the part. The media, with the help of some of her so-called friends, will start digging into her past and dragging her into the mud, while the police after buying its moment of peace, will hire an ex-colleague of hers, an analyst who now makes a living appearing in trials as an expert witness and a name by showing up in one TV show or another, to offer his valuable input. Keye is sure that he’s not the man for the job, since he seems to have lost his work ethics, but that’s none of her business. However, she has no doubt that things are not the way they look and she’d like to do something about it; but what? Her hands are tight. Besides she has a lot of work to do of her own, so the cops, or rather their bosses, well, they can go to hell. Like it or not though, the case will keep following her, haunting her, since for some reason the killer wants her working on it and will do anything to keep her put.
     While all that happens we also get a chance to take a look at the personal life of the detective; a life that from the very beginning was set on the road to catastrophe, since death seemed to follow her every step. She spends every waking moment living with her personal phantoms and looks to be heading from one dead end to the next. Keye, simply seems to be one of those desperate souls who, however how hard they try, they can never be happy.
      The world that the author creates is bleak, just as bleak as the real world. Some of the subjects that occupy her mind, apart from crime of course are those of homosexuality, of the people that seem unable to fall in love, and of family relations that are kept together by a thin invisible thread, which can at any single moment break and thus break them.
     The Stranger You Seek is a finely crafted novel that could be read not only as a thriller but also as a travel story; a story that traverses the places and the souls of its heroes. A job well done.
     This book comes out in the US on the 30th of August.

The Dagger shortlists announced

This year's shortlists for the Gold Dagger, Ian Flemming's Steel Dagger and John Creasey's New Blood Dagger have been announced by The Crime Writers Association today, along with the ITV3 People's Bestseller Dagger shortlist. The nominated books in each category are:


CWA Gold Dagger shortlist:

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
Snowdrops by AD Miller
The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger shortlist:

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
Cold Rain by Craig Smith
The Good Son by Michael Gruber
The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

CWA John Creasey (new blood) Dagger:

Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
Kiss Me Quick by Danny Miller
The Dead Woman of Juárez by Sam Hawken
The Dogs of Rome by Conor Fitzgerald

ITV3 People's Bestseller Dagger:


The Sixth Man by David Baldacci. Read my review here
Worth Dying For by Lee Child. Read my review here
Good As Dead by Mark Billingham
Dead Man's Grip by Peter James
Before the Poison by Peter Robinson

Book Review: Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

This is one of those special novels that one just feels happy to read. The truth is that I didn’t even know the name of its author, until I watched a show about him on Greek TV, and that was it; I’ve decided to dive into his world and, according to those who know best, there’s no better way to start than by reading Death and the Penguin.
     This story could be described as a kind of satire. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but funny it is, even though it describes a world more or less bleak, where the most outrageous and serious things can happen; one after the other, or at once.
     It all begins when Viktor, a short-story writer and journalist, who has a penguin as a pet, is offered a job to write obituaries for a newspaper. He never thought he could do that, but since the money is good he decides to give it a go. Besides, he can work from home and that’s a bonus.
     Before too long he comes to realize that he’s really good in this field of writing and his boss seems to be more than happy with his work. So, as the time passes, more and more requests will start coming his way, and along with them more money. And thus all his financial worries will vanish. However, some day, by pure chance, he’ll find out that all those people whose obituaries he’s asked to write, die shortly afterwards, and most of them under suspicious circumstances. Something stinks and he knows it, but he’s not inclined to dig deeper into this matter, since he can sense danger all around him.
     In the meantime he, who until now used to be very lonely, spending more or less all his time in his house in Kiev, starts to make some new friends: Militiaman Sergey, little Sonya, who suddenly invaded his home and his heart, and her nanny, Nina, all of sudden come to claim a part in his life. So in a building that used to house only him and Misha the penguin, now come to live two, or at times three, more people. What the hell is going on; one would ask, but the truth is that in this story anything goes. And that’s why, soon enough we’ll see Misha becoming a kind of minor celebrity himself, as some rich people more than happy to pay a lot of money in order to have him present at one funeral or another, will start hiring him. However, fame, as usual, brings trouble, and Misha will one day find himself in the sights of a man, who has some dark plans for him.
     The author has created a unique crime novel parody, in which black humor sets the pace, and where the most unlikely things are likely to happen; things even stranger than the ones we’ve already mentioned. So, somebody breaks into Viktor’s house and instead of stealing leaves some money for him on the table, a man dies with his last request being of his house to be burned, and a young attractive woman falls in love with a much older and graceless man, but not for his money.
     Viktor is not only an animal lover and a philanthropist, but also a kind of everyday philosopher and a poet. So, he considers his job “death as planned economy”, while he thinks that the best season for one to write obituaries is, “autumn, season of dying nature, of melancholy, of seeking the past”. Finally, somewhere he claims that, “the pure and sinless (people) did not exist, or else died unnoticed and with no obituary”.
     This novel was so successful that Kurkov decided to write a sequel, Penguin Lost, which we will review for you next month. In the meantime read this interview he gave to the Guardian.

Book Review: The Preacher by Camilla Läckberg

A boy, in The Preacher, at the crack of dawn, discovers the naked corpse of a young woman in the otherwise serene Swedish seaside town of Fjällbacka, and rushes to inform his parents. As expected they call the police, and since because of the holiday period the local precinct is undermanned, the chief calls in detective Patrik Hedström, who’s the only cop on leave readily available. He, somewhat reluctantly, since his girlfriend is eight months pregnant, agrees to visit the scene of the crime, but once he arrives there he comes to realize that he did the right thing, since apart of the body of the woman they also recover the bones of two other females who presumably died many years before.
     As the mystery deepens and the plot thickens, and some ghosts from the distant past come out in the open again, we spend some time watching Patrik’s girlfriend Erica, a usually overactive soul as she tries to come to terms with her boredom, but also survive the visits of some of her relatives that only remember that she exists when the holiday season arrives. At the same time we take a look at the everyday lives of the members of an unusual family who, one way or another, have a lot of secrets to hide and are not in good terms with the police, or with anyone at that.
     Patrik, despite his constant worrying about Erica, has to work hard and fast to get results, because there’s pressure on the cops from everyone; from the local politicians and the media, as well as from the shop owners who see their businesses suffer big losses, as the tourists start to leave the town in a rush. But no matter how much he wants to solve the case as fast as he can, luck will not to prove to be on his side, as a young woman will soon disappear from the face of the earth, leaving behind no trace, and everyone will think that the killer is behind the new crime as well. As one would expect tensions rise and the police has a lot of explaining to do. Patrik, keeping a cool head, couldn’t care less about the press and the politicians but he knows that things have to start moving faster. And they do. And it’s exactly then when he comes to realize that these two crimes are somehow connected with some others which took place twenty five years ago. But, how could that be? The prime suspect for those incidents is dead, so it really doesn’t make any sense. Or does it?
     Through the thoughts and the memories of her heroes, and through official and unofficial documents, the author takes us back in time and brings to light some appalling secrets, she talks about religious zealotry and the deceits that go with it, and she points out the fact that some people are simply too weak to escape their past and come to terms with modern day reality.
     This is not so much an action packed thriller as a mystery story. The author simply takes a dive into the minds and souls of these characters in order to present them as they really are; weak, and wicked and full of faults. Everything happens for a reason, she seems to think, and as the story progresses she proves just that, by bringing together the various threads and leading the reader to the grand finale.
     However, she’s not only interested in crime and the darkness of the psyche, but also in love; especially the forbidden love, but also the love which can only reach its peak by following many different and hard travelled paths. Everything is fair in love and war, the saying goes, and the good author seems to agree with that. But she also seems to think that even in love there are some gray areas.
     The Preacher is yet another great crime novel by a Swedish writer.

Book Review: Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Worth Dying For is the first novel by Lee Child that I’ve come to read, but I wouldn’t dare say that this is much of a surprise since there are so many good crime novels out there that no matter how hard you try you’ll never get to read them all.
     Anyway, the author, whose 61 Hours has been awarded the best crime novel of the year prize recently in the U.K., for one more time delivers to the fans an adventure by his famous hero, Jack Reacher. The action takes place during a two day period in an unnamed town in Nebraska. That’s exactly where Reacher arrives on a cold winter night and, as if from a habit, right away he gets involved in a case that has nothing to do with him. He just sits in the bar of the motel, doing nothing in particular, when the guy that sits next to him, a drunk who turns out to be the local doctor, receives a phone call from a woman called Eleanor Dunkan who says that her nose is broken. He refuses to pay her a visit because, to start with, he is bored, but also because he knows that things like that happen to Eleanor all the time, since her husband Seth is known to have a short temper and a long arm. Reacher though, who has no clue about what is really going on, persuades him to go and see the woman. He even offers to drive him there. So, off they go. And thus the adventure begins, as Reacher will soon find himself in the center of a local clan cyclone. The Dunkans, as he’s to find out are the absolute rulers in the region. They are the law. Everyone is afraid of them and they all detest them, but no one ever dares question their authority. Well, that’s about to change as Reacher will attack Seth and break his nose, provoking the wrath of his immediate family, with the exception of the wife of course.
     While the Dunkans will start making plans to take their revenge on him, he will little by little come to learn all there is to know about the infamous family; or just about all, since there’s a secret that no one apart from them knows. Reacher, who was just planning to pass through the town, will decide to stay for a little longer. And the longer he stays the worse the things get for the Dunkans, as he starts taking out one after the other their cronies, and thus making them feel all the more vulnerable, and so breathing hope into the lives of the poor people. The vagabonds sooner or later will come to realize that the more they deal with Reacher, the more casualties they’ll have to suffer. So left with no other option they ask for the help of their Italian brothers in crime, which doesn’t really seem to be such a good idea since a few Lebanese and Iranian guys will decide to drop in as well. What a fine mess! And it’s exactly this mess that Reacher will have to sort out with the help of a handful of people. Maybe taking a break in that town was not such a good idea after all.
     If Reacher reminds me of someone I’d say that would be Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies. Reacher though is a real lone wolf, who doesn’t seem interested in creating tide bonds with people, no matter how much he cares for them. He only cares about the road. The road is his destination he seems to think, even though there’s a different image in his mind’s eye.
     This is a brilliant thriller, written in an almost cinematic way, which will surely offer great reading pleasure to all the fans of the genre.

Book Review: The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The protagonist in The Keeper of Lost Causes, by the greatly acclaimed Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, is detective Carl Mörch. This is one of those characters that once a reader meets he can never forget, because of how they really are: eccentric, moody, peculiar, short-tempered, with issues with authority etc; but on the other hand: faithful to friends, stubborn, all-heartily devoted to what they do, if they are not in a lazy bastardly mood that is.
     And it’s exactly like that, like a lazy annoying bastard, with serious psychological problems that Carl first appears in the eyes of the reader. He’s just come back to work, after surviving a lethal trap with just a wound on the head, while a couple of his buddies haven’t been so lucky. The fist one died on the spot, while the second is hardly alive and is kept at a catatonic state in the hospital. Carl feels responsible in a big way for what happened. If he had drawn out his gun fast enough, if he got a shot on their assailant, things would be different. But he didn’t, and now he has to live with the consequences of his actions; consequences that turn out to be quite hard to bear, since right now he seems to walk through the paths of everyday life utterly alone, something that doesn’t really help him escape his dark thoughts.
     Carl is one of those guys who can more easily create enemies than friends. The people who really like him are just a few, and they get less by the minute, and so it comes as no surprise that some people in the Copenhagen police are looking hard to find a way to get rid of him. They cannot really fire him, since he’s considered a hero, so with no other options left, they give him a promotion and name him head of a new police unit, just created for political reasons, which will have as its sole mission to investigate cold cases. He accepts this so-called promotion half-heartily and in a kind of resigned way, as he thinks that, well, he could just as well spend his time doing absolutely nothing. However, as time goes by, and the cases start piling in his newly created underground office, his mood begins to change. Without allowing his bosses a moment of peace, since he really loves to speak his mind out and stick it in their noses, he slowly starts to find his way into this new world they created for him. And, as it turns out, it’s a more exciting world than he expected. The first case that he decides to re-open, with the valuable help of his idiosyncratic assistant Hafez el-Assad, is the one concerning the suicide of a young and beautiful politician, Merete Lynggaard, from five years before. As a high profile case it attracted a lot of attention both from the police and the media back then, however sooner or later it had to be dropped, since her body has never been discovered. At the time there was talk about her being murdered and Carl thinks that that just might be true. Thus he decides to run an investigation of his own, loosely based on the findings of his colleagues. The more he investigates the more he comes to realize that the job done back in the day was less than perfect; the morons did almost everything wrong. Now it’s up to him to get things right at last. In the meantime, the very same people who blew up that case, are now investigating a murder, and he’s the one, the outsider, who points them to the direction they have to follow, while at the same time he’s also trying to cope with the demands of his estranged wife, a hugely untalented woman who considers herself a painter, and her disobedient son, whom she neglected to take with her when she left.
     This is an extremely well written novel, with a great plot and some amazingly crafted characters, which deserves to be a read by anyone who considers himself a crime fiction fan. The author has created some unique heroes: people with as sense of humor and people who love to hate; with psychological issues and outstanding endurance; with dark secrets and awful unuttered truths; people who struggle to live and who fight to die; everyday people, with their weaknesses and their flaws, with their problems and their unavoidable pettiness.

     The book comes out in the U.S. on the 23rd of August

Book Review: Call Me Princess by Sara Blaedel

Call Me Princess is an astonishing novel is preoccupied with two of the most important issues of our times: online dating and sexual assaults against women.
     The facts in this case take place in modern day Copenhagen. Detective Louise Rick is getting ready to go home after a hard day’s work, when she receives a call that puts her plans for a nice evening with her companion into hold. A woman lies in a hospital bed injured after she’s been battered and raped and she’s willing to testify about who was the person behind the attack. Things though do not turn out to be so simple, since the unfortunate woman, cannot really remember the face of the man, while the name he has given her is not his real one either. Suzanne, who lives in an apartment, just under her own mother’s home, seems to be at a loss. The shock she’s going through is quite severe and she wants badly to get over it and move on with her life, but at the same time she knows that if she doesn’t see that man behind bars she will never have peace of mind again. She also knows that now is the time to move away from her mother and the negative influence she has on her being. Rick, who from the very first moment monitors Suzanne closely, soon comes to realize that the mother is the one who inflicts the most pain on the woman’s psyche, and is determined to help her out any way she can.
     However, while these events take place, the perpetrator hits again, and this time the things get completely out of control, as his new victim, a woman called Christina ends up dead. As the two parallel cases begin to unfold the investigators soon find out that both of the women met their future rapist in some internet dating websites. In a world where people seem to be withdrawing into their own selves all the time and becoming more and more lonely, websites like that are supposed to offer a way out for those seeking their life’s partner, but at the same time they give the opportunity to some twisted souls to make true some of their most danger fantasies; and it’s exactly that world that Rick needs to infiltrate in order to achieve her goals.
     The author is not only preoccupied with the crimes but also with the personal life of her heroine. Rick seems to be a solid, strong woman; however she’s full of small weaknesses and big insecurities. For the past few months she’s been living with her boyfriend, a fact that she likes and dislikes at the same time; every now and then she thinks that she should at last have a kid, especially when she’s hanging out with her best friend’s son, but the idea also scares the shit out of her; and finally she’s trying to have some stability in her life, some set rules and practices, but of course that’s impossible since she’s married with the job. An all and all complex character, hers is.
     The world that Blaedel presents to as is somehow bleak, but not worst from our everyday reality. Right here, in these pages, we meet people trapped in their personal little boxes, sinful souls, women dressed in melancholy. Every single one of them seems to be looking for something to hold on to; either that is a brief love affair, a good old family or just a relationship. Internet for some of them is the solution, for some others the problem. But loneliness remains.
     This is a novel that talks about crime, but also about the undercurrents of society, and as such it can be read by anyone, no matter if he’s a fan of the genre or not. Where are we heading? That seems to be the question in the author’s mind, but the answer is not to be found anywhere in the text, since it lies deep within each one of us.
     Call me Princess is a great story about modern day life, written by a great writer, who seems to be able to look with a clear eye in the darkness that lurks in the heart of man. Well done.
     This book comes out in America next week.Watch a video about the book below: