Introducing James Thompson: a chilling new voice in crime writing…
As the snow settles and the dark nights draw in, it seems the right time to launch a thrilling new crime writer on the unsuspecting British public.
James Thompson’s debut novel, Snow Angels, offers all the haunting atmospherics you’d expect from the freezing wastelands of Finland. So if Scandinavian noir writing is your thing, then Snow Angels won’t fail to disappoint, and its beginning, set just before Christmas – the bleakest time of year in Lapland – will continue to haunt you long after you’ve read it…
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Amidst the unrelenting darkness of the Arctic Circle, a beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest.
Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime – or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially explosive case out of the national headlines for fear it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.
But the demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his traumatic childhood and failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels when he suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.
As the plot thickens, the investigation draws closer and closer to home for Vaara. Because endless night can drive anyone to murder…
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Born in Kentucky, James has spent the last decade in Helsinki studying Swedish and Finnish and working in any number of jobs. Now a full time writer, his thriller novels are packed with nail-biting suspense.
Snow Angels has been touted by crime writing supremo Michael Connelly as “wonderful…kept me captivated from first to last page”, and here at Killer Reads we whole-heartedly agree. So lock your doors, and settle down with this fantastic UK debut to get you through these chilly, winter nights.
Snow Angels is out now, published by Avon.
ISBN: 978-1-84756-227-2
£6.99
