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Coming  February 2014 from St Martins Press

Thank you to the author and publisher for the review copy via netgalley

A murder at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, bears a close resemblance to one in Trondheim, Norway. The corpse of the museum curator in Virginia is found flayed in his office by the cleaning staff; the corpse of an archivist at the library in Norway, is found inside a locked vault used to store delicate and rare books.

My latest foray into the world of Scandinavian Crime brought me here to “Where Monsters Dwell” a dark and terrifying tale of murder and madness. Cleverly written and intense this one held my attention from the start – it has been a while coming to the UK, but I had been aware of it from some time.

It does have a fairly complicated start in that we do a lot of jumping around from location to location, between past and present, and the author presents us with a fair bit of information all in the early pages – but the richness of the writing style and the intensity of the plot draw you in none the less and soon you will have it all straight in your head. This is the kind of crime novel I love – where the author assumes the intelligence of the reader and does not feel the need to explain the obvious. It IS violent in places, perhaps not for the faint hearted, but it is all directly related to the plot and in no way gratuitous.

Two murders, continents apart but with eerie similarities – this is the premise from which the entire story unfolds and it is a compelling one. American Detective Felicia Stone and Norwegian detective Odd Singsaker work together to try and uncover the clues – they were both great characters if a little light on detailed personality at this stage – I believe this is going to be a series and that is exactly how it felt..their relationship is in its infancy here and needs to develop. Having said that, in this particular case its the story that is the key, a twisty turny whale of a tale set in two timelines, present day and the 1500′s.  We jump from one to another as we start to learn how the past is affecting the now..the juxtaposition of the two periods of time is extremely well done and utterly fascinating.

Overall highly enjoyable, well translated and if you love serial killers, dark and dastardly goings on and a fair bit of wonderful gruesomeness then this one is definitely for you. I look forward to the next instalment.

Happy Reading Folks!