The inspiration behind Cabin Fever – Scandi Noir at its most chilling by Alex Dahl

 

Cabin Fever tells the story of experienced psychotherapist, Kristina Moss, and her troubled client, Leah Iverson, a novelist, whose lives collide with devastating consequences, making them both come entirely undone.

Kristina almost has it all- a highly successful career in spite of a tragic past, a doting, impressive husband- prime minister candidate Eirik, and a lovely home in Oslo’s most exclusive neighborhood. Still, she yearns for children and struggles with the aftermath of several failed fertility treatments. She is also grieving the death of her best friend, Elisabeth, who overdosed on heroin months before, in spite of Kristina’s continued efforts to save her over several years. 

Leah Iverson lives a darker life, though she has found success as a novelist. Her book, Nobody, was a big bestseller, and chronicled Leah’s abusive and violent marriage and subsequent fight for survival and a life worth living. To fight her demons, which include self-harming and depression, Leah seeks therapy with Dr. Moss, and a strong therapeutic bond is formed. Leah makes substantial progress in therapy, but simultaneously develops a deep fascination, and ultimately obsession, with controlled, enigmatic Kristina… 

When Leah shows up to their Friday afternoon session bruised and hysterical, begging Kristina to come to her cabin so she can tell her the truth, Kristina comes up against a hard professional boundary- the therapy room is the only space therapists and clients meet. But when Leah fails to turn up to their next session and Kristina discovers that Leah is 13 weeks pregnant, she goes to Leah’s apartment, where she surprisingly encounters her violent ex-husband, Anton. Could it be that Leah has lied to her? Or is she in grave danger? 

Heartbroken, hurt and lonely, Leah has retreated to her remote cabin in Telemark’s dense forests where, unable to write her anticipated follow-up to Nobody, Leah begins to write to Kristina, and that’s when the words finally begin to flow…

When the police refuse to go to Telemark to make sure Leah is okay, Kristina goes to find her client, but the cabin is empty and Kristina sustains a terrible injury which leads to her being trapped in the primitive cabin, with nothing but Leah’s written confession for company. 

I’m a big believer in therapy. Huge, in fact. Who wouldn’t benefit from developing the insight into one’s own psyche? The more aware we become, the more a world of choice opens up. Goodbye knee-jerk reactions, goodbye repeat and destructive patterns, goodbye ego consciousness, goodbye lack of boundaries. It feels amazing to develop awareness around who we are, and why, as well as the tools to make active choices in our relationships and lives. I came to therapy because I had no choice. Floored by panic attacks and depression, I sensed that this was serious and not something I could solve with my usual methods of talking things through with some girlfriends with wine. Things I’d carried for a long time, had suddenly become too heavy and erupted to the surface with explosive force. The life I’d built, which on the surface might have looked fabulous, felt like it crumbled to pieces. 

My therapist, randomly found on a Google search, turned out to be deeply empathetic and able to hold the mirror into which I finally had to look, with the steadiest of hands. We developed a strong therapeutic bond and it took me some time to realize that it was within this bond itself that the true healing began. It wasn’t what I said, it was that I could say anything at all, no matter how dark or scary or difficult, and she could take it, and hold it, that made a difference. 

And yet, as a writer of psychological thrillers, one can’t turn off the part of the brain that scours absolutely everything in life for potential inspiration for a thriller. Everything- even therapy. Especially therapy. How wonderfully disturbing, really, to think about how we hand over the most vulnerable and precious parts of ourselves- our minds- to the care of someone about whom we know essentially nothing. So, what if they were unhinged and profoundly disturbed themselves? Or kept dangerous secrets or harbored repressed traumas that may affect their professional abilities? Thus Cabin Fever was born.

I created Dr Kristina Moss as a controlled, successful woman with a tragic past, and Leah Iverson as the catalyst for bringing everything to the surface. I used the analogy of the supernova, the celestial phenomenon of one star stealing energy from another, bringing spectacular destruction to both. Cabin Fever chronicles the devastating aftermath of trauma, and explores core themes such as obsession and betrayal.

“You have told me nothing about yourself, and yet I know- dare I say- everything. Even things you yourself don’t know.

‘Cabin Fever’ by Alex Dahl is published by Head of Zeus on 8th July at £18.99

Alone and isolated in a vast Scandinavian forest, a therapist begins to read her client's novel manuscript, only to discover the main character is terrifyingly familiar...  You are her therapist. Kristina is a successful therapist in central Oslo. She spends her days helping clients navigate their lives with a cool professionalism that has got her to the top.She is your client. But when her client Leah, a successful novelist, arrives at her office clearly distressed, begging Kristina to come to her remote cabin in the woods, she feels the balance begin to slip.But out here in the woods. When Leah fails to turn up to her next two sessions, Kristina reluctantly heads out into the wilderness to find her.Nothing is as it seems. Alone and isolated, Kristina finds Leah's unfinished manuscript, and as she reads she realises the main character is terrifyingly familiar...

You can find her on Twitter @alexdahlauthor

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

 July 2021

Cabin Fever is by Alex Dahl. Alone and isolated in a vast Scandinavian forest, a therapist begins to read her client's novel manuscript, only to discover the main character is terrifyingly familiar... You are her therapist. Kristina is a successful therapist in central Oslo. She spends her days helping clients navigate their lives with a cool professionalism that has got her to the top.She is your client. But when her client Leah, a successful novelist, arrives at her office clearly distressed, begging Kristina to come to her remote cabin in the woods, she feels the balance begin to slip.But out here in the woods. When Leah fails to turn up to her next two sessions, Kristina reluctantly heads out into the wilderness to find her.Nothing is as it seems. Alone and isolated, Kristina finds Leah's unfinished manuscript, and as she reads she realises the main character is terrifyingly familiar...

A blockbuster thriller set against one of the most horrific scenes in the Second World War. On Sunday 22nd June 1941 at 03.05, three-and-a-half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way. Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence. Amid his cadre of trusted personnel is British defector Bella Menzies, once with MI5, now with the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. With the fall of the city inevitable, the Soviets plan a bloody war of terror that will extort a higher toll on the city's inhabitants than the invaders. As the noose tightens, Bella finds herself trapped, hunted by both the Russians and the Germans. Kyiv is by Graham Hurley.

Robert Ludlum's ™ The Bourne Treachery is by Brian Freeman. Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia with his partner and lover, a fiery Treadstone agent codenamed Nova. Their job was to rescue a Russian double agent, recently been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt. They failed. Their charge died at the hands of a shadowy assassin. Now, three years later, everything has changed. Nova is gone, killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bourne is a lone operative working in the shadows for Treadstone. He's awaiting his next assignment when his handler bring him shocking news.The Estonian mission was a set up. The double agent is still alive, deep in hiding from the Russian State Intelligence Agency. In order to find her, Bourne will have to come face to face with the errors of his past - and the death of the woman he love. And with the body count rising. he comes to an invevitable conclusion: Some secrets should stay buried.

Lone wolf Evan Ryder works for a clandestine, black-ops arm of the Department of Defence, dedicated to protecting America and its people. Or at least, she did. Having thwarted the international fascist syndicate known as Nemesis, Evan has returned to Washington D.C. to discover her division shut down, and her dead sister's children missing. Among the supporters of Nemesis were a cabal of American billionaires, whose influence reaches to the highest office in the country: the President of the United States. If Evan is to take them on and hunt down her family's kidnappers, she will have to learn to work with her former boss Ben Butler, and navigate their tricky past. The search will take them from the ports of Istanbul to an ancient church deep within the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. And all the while, an unimaginable enemy stalks in the shadows, an adversary whose secretive past will upend Evan's entire world - and might just annihilate her. The Kobalt Dossier is by Eric Van Lustbader.

August 2021

The Soul Breaker is by Sebastien Fitzek. The Soul Breaker destroys his victims. He doesn't kill them, or mutilate them. But he leaves them completely dead inside, paralysed and catatonic. His only trace a note left in their hands. There are three known victims when suddenly the abductions stop. The Soul Breaker has tired of his game, it seems. Meanwhile, a man has been found in the snow outside an exclusive psychiatric clinic. He has no recollection of who he is, or why he is there. Unable to match him to any of the police's missing people, the nurses call him Casper. Casper makes little progress regaining his memory, but he grows restless and wants to leave the clinic to piece together the few clues to his life. But the weather has taken a turn for the worse, and the clinic becomes completely cut off to the world outside. No one is able to reach the clinic, and its staff and patients cannot leave. So when the head psychiatrist is found trembling, naked and distraught, with a slip of paper clasped in her hands, it seems somehow the Soul Breaker has returned...

September 2021

The Man on Hackpen Hill is by J S Monroe. It isn't unusual for crop circles to appear overnight on Hackpen Hill. In this part of Wiltshire, where golden wheat fields stretch for miles, the locals have got used to discovering strange mathematical patterns stamped into the earth. But this time, it's different. Not only because this particular design of dramatic spiralling hexagons has never been seen before. But because of the dead body positioned precisely in the centre of the circle. DI Silas Hart, of Swindon Police, is at a loss. Only Jim, a scientist at secretive government laboratory Porton Down, knows the chilling truth about the man on Hackpen Hill. And he wants Bella, a trainee journalist on her first ever story, to tell the world. But Silas has other ideas - and a boss intent on a cover up. As Bella and Jim race against time, dark forces conspire against them, leading them to confront the reality of their own past and a world in which nothing is as it seems.

October 2021

Lemon is by Kwon Yeo-sun. In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold. Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she's lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened. Told at different points in time from the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates, Lemon is a piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel.

November 2021

'Good morning. It's 7.35 AM. And you're listening to your biggest nightmare.' This morning a dangerous psychopath is playing an old game with new rules. He's taken six people hostage at Berlin's leading radio station. Every hour, a telephone will ring somewhere in Berlin. Maybe it will be in your house. Or your office. And if you pick up and answer with the new slogan, then a hostage will be set free. Sounds fair, doesn't it? Police psychologist Ira Samin is rushed to the scene, where she must negotiate live on air. With the nation listening, the kidnapper makes an impossible demand. Can she give him what he wants? And all the while, somewhere in the city... a telephone is ringing. Amok is by Sebastien Fitzek.

Dohany Street is by Adam Lebor. Budapest, January 2016. The Danube is grey and half-frozen, covered with ice, and the city seems to have gone into hibernation. But not for Detective Balthazar Kovacs. He has been called out to investigate the disappearance of a young Israeli historian, Elad Harari. Harari was working in the archives of the city's Jewish museum, researching what happened to the assets of the Hungarian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. His work could bring justice to the families of those who died, but it seems not everyone welcomed his probing into the country's darkest period. Balthazar soon finds that there are powerful forces out to sabotage his investigation, as bizarre warnings escalate to violent attacks. When they finally make their demand, Balthazar will be forced to make an impossible decision: give up real evidence of horrific wrongdoing in Hungary's past, or see the young historian die.

Good Baddies by Alex Dahl

Like people in real life, characters in books aren’t black and white. Or shouldn’t be, anyway. For the thriller writer, there’s a challenge in creating perpetrators, sometimes of heinous crimes, that in spite of their wrongdoings remain human. Basically, the baddies can’t be all bad, and the goodies can’t be all good. 

My new novel, Playdate, tells the story of seven-year-old Lucia Blix who is abducted from a sleepover by a seemingly normal mother in an affluent Norwegian town. The question in the book is never who did it, but why? What could possibly make a woman take another woman’s child, and how would she justify such an act to herself? These were the questions I attempted to answer as I set out to write Playdate. I wanted my abductor to be not the stereotypical ‘evil psychopath child abductor’, but a normal person driven to commit a shocking crime, and I wanted to rouse empathy in my readers. 

In the initial stages of constructing the novel, I conducted a lot of research into child abductions and motives. I discovered that most attempted abductions are unsuccessful, and that most successful abductions are by family members, most commonly in custody disputes. Of the small number of children snatched by strangers, girls are overrepresented and more likely than boys to be abducted for sexual exploitation. It was important to me as I set out to write Playdate, that my child protagonist didn’t suffer greatly, and that she didn’t encounter serious abuse or violence. I don’t wish to write stories in which children are exploited or come to serious harm, but rather where the potential threat to their innocent lives drives the action. 

I needed the abduction story to feel fresh and plausible, and the theme I kept returning to when working out the motives was revenge. It was the one motive that I could imagine could turn a normal, functioning human being into a criminal capable of going to the lengths of taking someone else’s child. It just had to be an eye for an eye kind of crime… 

The next area of focus when it came to constructing the abduction in the novel, was the logistics. I discovered that most ‘stranger abductions’ involve a man in a vehicle, taking a kid off the street. The problem with this in Playdate was the fact that I absolutely needed my ‘villain’, Jacqueline, to get little Lucia Blix to her remote mountain farm in the French Pyrenees without being detected, and thus the seemingly innocent playdate-turned-sleepover was born. As I started writing, I realized that the playdate itself added to the suspense- after all, what parent hasn’t sent their child off to play at someone’s house without necessarily knowing that much about the other parents?

Lucia is taken from her sleepover in the middle of the night and has already crossed several international borders by the time her parents even realize she’s gone. By the time the police get on the case and Lucia’s image is widely circulated across Europe, the little girl is installed in her new life as Jacqueline’s daughter and Josiane’s twin, at a beautiful but terribly remote farm with no neighbors within walking or shouting distance. Jacqueline proceeds to care for Lucia as her own, teaching her French and manipulating her into believing she never was someone else’s daughter. 

As I wrote the novel, I felt my empathy shift from the bereaved mother, Elisa Blix, to the abductor, Jacqueline Thibault, and back again, repeatedly, as the plot progressed. Lucia’s mother has her own skeletons in the closet, secrets big enough to compromise the reader’s sympathy for her, but surely nobody deserves to have their child snatched? And Jacqueline emerges as a competent, loving parent whose past history succeeded in making me truly understand why she does what she does. 

I loved writing characters who initially come off as ‘good’ and as victims, who turn out to have rather more than just a dash of bad in them, and equally- villains who possess qualities than make them undeniably deserving of sympathy. 

Ultimately, I chose child abduction as the main theme in Playdate as over the years, like so many of us, I have followed several high profile child abductions in the media and felt very affected by the families’ and children’s plights, perhaps especially as a mother of three young children myself. I wanted to imagine a scenario in which the child itself didn’t come to harm, and in which interesting questions around karma and vengeance could be raised. 

Playdate by Alex Dahl (Published by Head of Zeus)

It was meant to be your daughter's first sleepover. Now it's an abduction. Lucia Blix went home from school for a playdate with her new friend Josie. Later that evening, her mother Elisa dropped her overnight things round and shared a glass of wine with Josie's mother. Then she kissed her little girl goodnight and drove home. That was the last time she saw her daughter. The next morning, when Lucia's dad arrived to pick her up, the house was empty. No furniture, no family, no Lucia. Who has taken their daughter, and why? 

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

July 2020

The Englishman is by David Gilman.  A clandestine war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria; murder and kidnap on the suburban streets of West London; a Moscow CID police inspector investigating the assassination of four of her fellow officers by the Russian mafia; a young MI6 officer facing the possibility that a long-running operation has been fatally compromised: connecting them all is the Englishman - Dan Raglan, outsider, exile, one-time member of the French Foreign Legion, fully trained killer. Raglan's quest for answers will become a quest for vengeance. It will lead him to the winter-ravaged wasteland of the Sverdlovskaya Oblast and Penal Code #74, a place that holds Russia's most brutal murderers. A place of death and retribution. How will he get in? More importantly, how will he get out?

Have you seen Lucia Blix? Lucia went home from school for a playdate with her new friend Josie. Later that evening, Lucia's mother Elisa dropped her overnight things round and kissed her little girl goodnight. That was the last time she saw daughter. The next morning, when Lucia's dad arrived to pick her up, the house was empty. No furniture, no family, no Lucia. Playdate by Alex Dahl puts a microscope on a seemingly average, seemingly happy family plunged into a life-altering situation. Who has taken their daughter, and why?

Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Evolution is by Brian Freeman.  After the death of his wife in a

mass shooting, secret agent Jason Bourne is convinced that there is more to her murder than it seems. Worse, he believes that the agency that trained him is behind the killing. Bourne goes rogue, leaving Treadstone behind and taking on a new mission to infiltrate and expose an anarchist group, Medusa. But when a congresswoman is assassinated in New York, Bourne is framed for the crime, and he finds himself alone and on the run. In his quest to stay one step ahead of his enemies, Bourne teams up with a journalist, Abbey Laurent, to figure out who was behind the frame-up, and to learn as much as he can about the ever-growing threat of the mysterious Medusa group. As more and more enemies begin to hunt Bourne, it's a race against the clock to discover who led him into a trap... and what their next move may be.

Hunter Killer is by Brad Taylor.  They're one step ahead. They're killing his team. He's coming for them. The Taskforce were once apex predators, an unrivalled hunting machine that decimated those out to harm the USA, but they may have met their match. While Pike is preparing to join the team on a counter-terrorist mission in South America, a friend is killed in South Carolina. The authorities believe it was an accident, but Pike suspects the attack was meant as a message to him.   When he loses contact with the team in South America, Pike becomes convinced the Taskforce is under attack. His men are the closest thing to family he has, which means he will do anything - even ignore direct orders to stand down - to find them.

August 2020

The Package is by Sebastien Fitzek.  All you've done is taken in a parcel for a neighbour. You have no idea what you've let into your home.  Emma's the one that got away. The only survivor of a killer known in the tabloids as 'the barber' - because of the trophies he takes from his victims. Or she thinks she was. The police aren't convinced. Nor is her husband. She never even saw her tormentor properly, but now she recognises him in every man. Questioning her sanity, she gives up her job as a doctor in the local hospital and retreats from the world. It is better to stay at home. Quiet. Anonymous. Safe. He won't find her here. And all she did was take a parcel for a neighbour. She has no idea what she's let into her home.

September 2020

The Night of the Flood is by Zoe Somerville.  An atmospheric literary thriller set in north Norfolk in the shadow of the Cold War, in which a love triangle turns murderous. Summer, 1952. Verity Frost, stranded on her family farm on the Norfolk coast, is caught between two worlds: the devotion of her childhood friend Arthur, just returned from National Service, and a strange new desire to escape it all. Arthur longs to escape too, but only with Verity by his side. Into their world steps Jack, a charismatic American pilot flying secret reconnaissance missions off the North Sea coast. But where Verity sees adventure and glamour, Arthur sees only deception. As the water levels rise to breaking point, this tangled web of secrets, lies and passion will bring about a crime that will change all their lives.

'Danny ‘Abs’ Cruikshank was the biggest reality star in the UK – the lovable star of hit reality show Laid In Essex! But during a weekend break, Abs and his friends were questioned by police after they were the last people to see a missing girl alive. Three years later, the man who captured the hearts of millions of TV viewers is reduced to opening a Quid Store on the high street. And when one of Abs’s mates is murdered, it’s clear someone is targeting him and his friends. DI Sasha Dawson and her team must race against the clock to find the killer before they strike again, and discover what happened to Rhiannon Jenkins on the night she vanished… The truth may save Abs - or bury him. The Woman in the Wood is by M.K. Hill.'

Fate: Death Notice 2 is by Zhou Haohui.  After the death of 'Eumenides', a former police student who was sending 'death notices' to unpunished criminals before brutally murdering them, the Chengdu Police Department assumed that the killing spree would stop. But the murders continue, leading the 4/18 task force to the terrifying truth: Eumenides had a protege. Captain Pei Tao and his task force redouble their efforts to catch this new opponent, but relationships become fraught. Can they trust each other?

October 2020

Marry in haste... Murder at leisure? London, 1888: Susannah rushes into marriage to a young and wealthy surgeon. After a passionate honeymoon, she returns home with her new husband wrapped around her little finger. But then everything changes. Thomas's behaviour becomes increasingly volatile and violent. He stays out all night, returning home bloodied and full of secrets. The gentle caresses she enjoyed on her wedding night are now just a honeyed memory. When the first woman is murdered in Whitechapel, Susannah's interest is piqued. But as she follows the reports of the ongoing hunt for the killer, her mind takes her down the darkest path imaginable. Every time Thomas stays out late, another victim is found dead. Is it coincidence? Or is her husband the man they call Jack the Ripper?  People of Abandoned Character is by Clare Whitfield.

November 2020

Passenger 23 is by Sebastien Fitzek.  On average 23 people a year disappear from the world's cruise ships. They are written off as accidents or suicides. But what if they're not?   Five years ago Martin Schwarz, a police psychologist, lost his wife and son. They were holidaying on a cruise ship when they simply vanished. A lacklustre investigation was unable to shed any light on what happened - murder-suicide being the coroner's verdict. It is a verdict that has haunted Martin ever since, blighting his life. But then he is contacted by an elderly woman, a writer, who claims to have information regarding their fate and wants him to come on board The Sultan of the Seas immediately.   She explains that his wife and son are not the only mother and child pair to have disappeared. Only a few months ago another mother and daughter also vanished. She believes there may be a serial killer on board.   But when the missing daughter reappears - carrying the teddy bear of Martin's missing son - it becomes apparent that the truth could be much, much worse...

A Galway Epiphany is by Ken Bruen.  Jack Taylor. He's the world's worst detective. Cases get solved not because of him, but despite him. He's an alcoholic, an addict, rude, obnoxious. And in very bad shape. And yet... He gets the job done... somehow, and he desperately wants to connect even though he'd never admit it. But now, He's getting old. Losing his hearing. Has a limp. You ask, Jesus, how much longer can he go on? Indeed.

Eleven guests. Three nights. One murderer...In a crumbling old mansion in the English countryside, eleven people gather, each one famous in their field. They have been invited for a three-day house party, to celebrate the launch of a ground breaking virtual reality game that promises to unite the worlds of technology, politics and the environment. DCI Marten Jansen has been summoned to join the house party. His instructions are to offer police protection in case of an outside attack. Instead, he finds simmering tensions, long-buried secrets - and a murderer in their midst...  Into the Fire is by Rachael Blok

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

July 2019

The Heart Keeper is by Alex Dahl.  How do you mend a broken heart? It's been three months since Alison Miller-Juul's world fell apart when her six-year-old daughter, Amalie, died in an accident. Three months of sympathy cards, grief counselling and gritting her teeth, but it's still only the vodka and pills that seem to help. Across town, Iselin Berg's life is finally looking up. Her seven-year-old daughter, Kaia, has survived a life-changing operation. After years of doctors, medication and hope, they can now start thinking about the future. When Alison uncovers a dangerous secret, she is left in turmoil. She can now see a way to heal her broken heart, but will she risk everything to do so?

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There's the elderly Mr Fern who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin's thirteenth birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.  When a bomb is dropped on a residential street, both peace and quiet are broken and it seems the war has finally reached Sackwater. But Betty cannot stop the Hun, however hard she tries. So when the body of one of the bomb victims is found stretched out like an angel on Sackwater's beach, Betty concentrates on finding the enemy much closer to home...  A Room of the Dead is by M R C Kasasian

August 2019

There's power in stories and this is a story of power. Dead bodies aren't unusual in the alleyways of Fenest. Muggings, brawls gone bad, debts collected - Detective Cora Gorderheim has seen it all. Until she finds a Wayward man with his mouth sewn shut. As

Cora pieces together the dead man's story, she's drawn into the most dangerous story in the Union of Realms: the election. All she wants is to catch the killer, but nothing is that simple in an election year. Dark forces conspire against the Union and soon she finds herself at the rotten core of it all. Cora will find the killer, but at what cost? Widow”s Welcome is by D K Fields

Bitterroots is by CJ Box. Former police officer Cassie Dewell is trying to start over with her own private investigation firm. Guilty about not seeing her son and exhausted by the nights on stakeout, Cassie is nontheless managing... until an old friend calls in a favor: she wants Cassie to help exonerate a man accused of assaulting a young girl from an influential family. Against her own better judgment, Cassie agrees. But out in the Big Sky Country of Montana, twisted family loyalty runs as deep as the ties to the land, and there's always something more to the story. As Cassie attempts to uncover the truth, she must fight against the ghosts of her own past that threaten to pull her back under. 

September 2019

The newspapers called it The Bad Place. A remote farm out on the Thames estuary, where six children were held captive for two weeks. Five of them got out alive.  That was twenty years ago. Now adults, they meet up annually to hold a candlelit vigil for their friend who died. The only rule is that no-one can talk about what happened the night they escaped. But at this year's event, one of them witnesses a kidnapping. A young girl, Sammi, is bundled into a van in front of their eyes. Is history repeating itself? Is one of them responsible? Or is someone sending them a twisted message? DI Sasha Dawson, of Essex Police, is certain that the key to finding Sammi lies in finding out the truth about The Bad Place. But she also knows that with every second she spends trying to unlock the past, the clock ticks down for the missing girl...  The Bad Place is by M K Hill.

November 2019

No Fixed Line is by Dana Stabenow... though there is no fixed line between wrong and right. There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed. It is New Year's Eve, nearly six weeks into an off-and-on blizzard that has locked Alaska down, effectively cutting it off from the outside world. But now there are reports of a plane down in the Quilak mountains. With the National Transportation Safety Board unable to reach the crash site, ex-Trooper Jim Chopin is pulled out of retirement to try to identify the aircraft, collect the corpses, and determine why no flight has been reported missing. But Jim discovers survivors: two children who don't speak a word of English. Meanwhile, PI Kate Shugak receives an unexpected and unwelcome accusation from beyond 

Who really killed Leo Fenton? Two years ago, Ben Fenton went camping with his brother Leo. It was the last time they ever saw each other. By the end of that fateful trip, Leo had disappeared, and Ben had been arrested for his murder. Ben's wife Ana has always protested his innocence. Now, on the hottest day of 2018's sweltering heat wave, she receives a phone call from the police. Leo's body has been found, in a freshly dug grave in her own local churchyard. How did it get there? Who really killed him? St Albans police, led by DCI Jansen, are soon unpicking a web of lies that shimmers beneath the surface of Ana's well-kept village. But as tensions mount, and the tight-knit community begins to unravel, Ana realises that if she wants to absolve her husband, she must unearth the truth alone.  The Scorched Earth is by Rachel Blok.

December 2019

Tobias Hawke was the tech genius boss of the British Institute for Deep Learning. Now his body has been found in his lab: he has been brutally murdered. Hawke was on the brink of an astonishing breakthrough in the field of Artificial Intelligence. His creation, 'Syd', a machine-learning device that mimics human thought, promised to change the face of humanity forever. But, in the wake of her creator's murder, Syd has gone into emergency

shutdown procedure. What secrets are her neural networks hiding? 

Michael North, ex-assassin and spy-for-hire, is the man to find out. But he can't work alone. Teenage hacker Fangfang, and Hawke's widow, a prize-winning ethicist, have their own reasons to solve the murder. But can they uncover the truth before it's too late?  Curse the Day is by Judith O’Reilly.

In the Net is by Chan Ho-Kei. Natasha, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her fifteen-year-old sister Anastasia. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Natasha comes home to find her teenage sister has jumped to her death. Was it suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip on the Hong Kong subway which left Anastasia silent and withdrawn? Natasha cannot rest until she knows the truth about her sister - even if that means tracking down her sister's friends one by one and making them confess. Part detective novel, part revenge thriller, In the Net explores themes of sexual harassment, internet bullying and teenage suicide - and vividly captures the zeitgeist of Hong Kong today.

Blood Ties is by Helen Burnside.  Adele Robinson is behind bars. Having been convicted for the murder of her abusive father, she quickly realises that she’ll have to play it tough if she’s going to survive. Meanwhile, her brother Peter is building his criminal empire on the outside. But he soon comes to the attention of Manchester’s rival gangs, and a turf war breaks out. And when things start to get bloody, only Adele can step in to protect the family business. Will she get out in time to save Peter? After all, blood is thicker than water, and when family’s in trouble you can’t look the other way. 

Books to Look Forward to from Head of Zeus

July 2018

What would you do for the perfect life? Would you LIE? Would you CHEAT? Would you KILL? Cecilia Wilborg has THE PERFECT LIFE. A handsome husband, two beautiful daughters and a luxurious house in the picture-postcard town of Sandefjord.  But Cecilia also has A DARK SECRET. A secret so damaging it can never be brought to light.  Then Tobias enters her life. He is a small, friendless eight-year-old boy who just wants to find a home. But he threatens to bring Cecilia's world crashing down. The Boy at The Door is by Alex Dahl.

The End of Days has been predicted for the last two thousand years, but now it is upon us.  A secret war was raged for millennia, a bitter conflict as old as time itself: the battle between Good and Evil. Brother and sister Emma and Bravo Shaw now stand at the epicentre of the confrontation, for they possess the only copy of The Book of Deathly Things - the fallen Archangel Lucifer's first and last Testament.  While Emma and Bravo struggle to decipher the book's dreadful secrets, Lucifer's advance guard, the Fallen, are awakening. Should they can reclaim the Testament, Humankind will be irrevocably enslaved by the forces of evil. Time is running out, leviathan is coming, the apocalypse is nigh.  Four Dominions is by Eric Van Lustbader.

September 1939. A new day dawns in Sackwater, not that this sleepy backwater is taking much notice...  Inspector Betty Church - one of the few female officers on the force - has arrived from London to fill a vacancy at Sackwater police station. But Betty isn't new here. This is the place she grew up. The place she thought she'd left behind for good.  Time ticks slowly in Sackwater, and crime is of a decidedly lighter shade. Having solved the case of the missing buttons, Betty's called to the train station to investigate a missing bench. But though there's no bench, there is a body. A smartly dressed man, murdered in broad daylight, with two distinctive puncture wounds in his throat. While the locals gossip about the Suffolk Vampire, Betty Church readies herself to hunt a dangerous killer. Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire is by M R C Kasasian.

August 2018

In southeast London, a young mother has been accused of an unthinkable crime: poisoning her own child - and then leaving him to die.  The mother, Ellie, is secretive and challenging - she's had a troubled upbringing - but does that mean she's capable of murder?  Balancing the case with raising her disabled five-year-old son, criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman sets out in desperate pursuit of the truth. But when her own child becomes unwell, Sarah realises she's been drawn into a dangerous game.  In The Blood is by Ruth Mancini.

You have to know when to say no. That's one of the first things they tell you. But from the first day I arrived in Los Angeles, I said yes. Jessica Harris is a struggling Hollywood reporter hungry for her big break. When her editor asks her to profile movie star Clark Conrad, Jessica is sure her luck is on the turn. Clark is an A-lister with access to everyone. If Jessica can impress him, she's made it.  When she arrives at Clark's mansion in the Hollywood Hills, he is just as she always imagined. Charming, handsome yet disarmingly vulnerable. But then things take a darker turn. Clark's world is not as straightforward as it seems and Jessica's puff piece soon becomes something much more delicate - and dangerous. As Jessica draws herself deeper into Clark's inner circle, events begin to spiral out of her control.  Transfixing, insightful and unsettling, Through His Eyes drops is by Emma Dibdin and drops you into the mind of a young woman with everything to play for - and everything to lose...

The Psychology of Time Travel is a time travel murder mystery by Kate Mascarenhas.  1967: Four female scientists invent a time travel machine. They are on the cusp of fame: the pioneers who opened the world to new possibilities. But then one of them suffers a breakdown and puts the whole project in peril...  2017: Ruby knows her beloved Granny Bee was a pioneer, but they never talk about the past. Though time travel is now big business, Bee has never been part of it. Then they receive a message from the future - a newspaper clipping reporting the mysterious death of an elderly lady... 2018: When Odette discovered the body she went into shock. Blood everywhere, bullet wounds, that strong reek of sulpher. But when the inquest fails to find any answers, she is frustrated. Who is this dead woman that haunts her dreams? And why is everyone determined to cover up her murder?

Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and a best friend from Catholic school who happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi.  FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest.  Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a non-stop plot that goes from back-road gun running to high-stakes perfume heist, and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipulations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale. The Bouncer is by David Gordon.

September 2018

Gallows Court is by Martin Edwards.  LONDON, 1930.  Sooty, sulphurous, and malign: no woman should be out on a night like this. A spate of violent deaths - the details too foul to print - has horrified the capital and the smog-bound streets are deserted. But Rachel Savernake - the enigmatic daughter of a notorious hanging judge - is no ordinary woman. To Scotland Yard's embarrassment, she solved the Chorus Girl Murder, and now she's on the trail of another killer.  Jacob Flint, a young newspaperman temporarily manning The Clarion's crime desk, is looking for the scoop that will make his name. He's certain there is more to the Miss Savernake's amateur sleuthing than meets the eye. He's not the only one. His predecessor on the crime desk was of a similar mind - not that Mr Betts is ever expected to regain consciousness after that unfortunate accident...Flint's pursuit of Rachel Savernake will draw him ever-deeper into a labyrinth of deception and corruption. Murder-by-murder, he'll be swept ever-closer to its dark heart - to that ancient place of execution, where it all began and where it will finally end: Gallows Court.

In Kossuth square, Lajos Kolompar, a local politican is found dead, face down in a pond in front of Parliament. With his blood alcohol nudging fatal levels, he's believed to have fallen and drowned Gypsy cop Balthazar Kovacs of the Budapest murder squad reads of Kolompar's death in the news. It stays in the back of his mind until his old girlfriend, journalist Eniko Szalay, receives a tip-off from the coroner's office that Kolompar's autopsy results were tampered with.  And his body accidentally cremated.  Soon, Kovacs is drawn into the Budapest underworld of people smuggling, blackmail and violent political tensions - always caught between the two worlds of the Gypsy and the non-Gypsy, of the law and family loyalty.  Kossuth Square is by Adam Lebor.

The Accusation is by Zosia Wand.  Eve and Neil live in the beautiful Cumbrian town of Tarnside. After years of trying for a baby, they are in the final stages of adopting four-year-old Milly.  They just have to pass the 'settling in' period - three months of living together as a family under watchful eyes - and then they can make it official.  For Eve, her heartbreak is nearly at an end. She now has this perfect little girl in her life, a little girl who calls her mummy.  But Eve's dream of a happy family is fragile. Any hint of trouble and the adoption could collapse. One misunderstanding, one rumour, one accusation, could smash Eve's family to pieces.

October 2018

She arrived into Heathrow after a difficult week at work. Her bag had been stolen. Her whole life was in there - passport, wallet, house key. When she tried to report the theft, she couldn't remember her own name. All she knew was her own address.  Now she is at the door of Tony and Laura, a young couple living in Wiltshire. She says she lives in their home. They say they have never met her before.  One of them is lying. But which one?  Forget my Name is by J S Munroe.

Christmas whodunits starring Poirot, Marple, Rebus, More, Rumpole, Sherlock, Cadfael and many many more. Festive felonies, unscrupulous santas, deadly puddings, and misdemeanors under the mistletoe...  From Victorian detective stories to modern mysteries, police procedurals to pulp fiction, comic gems to cozy crime, there's something for every festive mood in this must-read collection starring sixty of the world's favourite detectives.  Featuring an all-star cast of authors including Isaac Asimov, Mary Higgins Clark, Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Colin Dexter, Thomas Hardy, H.R.F. Keating, Ngaio Marsh, John Mortimer, Ellis Peters, Sara Paretsky, Robert Louis Stevenson and - of course - Agatha Christie, this is the biggest and best Christmas crime anthology in print today.  The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries is edited by Otto Penzler.

November 2018

Imagine inheriting two billion dollars. Then imagine the money is left to you by your mortal enemy...  Blind Special Ops agent Jenny Aaron has just survived the worst thirty-six hours of her life. She has a standing offer to re-join the Department, the secret elite unit she used to belong to before she lost her sight. But first she must rest, and think.  Then Aaron receives a message that changes everything. The man she hates most in the world has left her an enormous fortune. The money is life-changing - but why is it in her hands?  A Shadow Falls is by Andreas Pflüger.

After much tragedy and violence, Jack Taylor has at long last found contentment. Of course, he still knocks back too much Jameson and dabbles in uppers, but he has a new woman in his life, a freshly bought apartment, and little sign of trouble on the horizon.  But once again, trouble comes to him, this time in the form of a wealthy Frenchman who wants Jack to investigate the double-murder of his twin sons. Jack is meanwhile roped into looking  after his girlfriend's nine-year-old son, and is in for a shock with the appearance of a character from his past.The plot is a chess game and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious player: a vigilante called 'Silence', because he's the last thing his victims will ever hear.  In The Galway Silence is by Ken Bruen.

Swords in the East is by P F Chisholm.  1592. Courtier Sir Robert Carey and Carey's surly, larcenous, and loyal henchman Henry Dodd, Land Sergeant of Gilsland, are back in Carlisle and the Debateable Lands.  As Carey struggles to solve the murder of a local minister, he battles with his deep adoration for Lady Elizabeth Widdrington, while despising her elderly, abusive husband - will the man never die?  Plunging readers straight into the raucous world of late-sixteenth century border reivers and unfettered Elizabethan intrigue, Swords in the East, the third chronicle of Sir Robert Carey's adventures, collects the novels A Chorus of Innocents and A Clash of Spheres under one volume.