Till offer åt Molok (The Sacrifice to Molok) by Åsa Larsson

I’m about to finish reading Åsa Larsson’s Until Thy Wrath be Past, and my review will be coming in due course. Stay tuned. Meanwhile I would like to share with you the following information:

Åsa Larsson’s Till offer åt Molok (The Sacrifice to Moloch), the fifth novel in Larsson’s series of Rebecca Martinsson/Anna Maria-Mella investigations, was released in Sweden on 3 April 2012. For additional information click at Bonnier Group Agency. So far the complete series has the following titles: 

• 2003 – Solstorm; English translation: Sun Storm (USA), The Savage Altar (UK), 2006;  Aurora boreal, Seix Barral, 2009, Trad.: Mayte Giménez Giménez y Pontus Sánchez Giménez
• 2004 – Det blod som spillts; English translation: The Blood Spilt, 2007; Sangre derramada, Seix Barral, 2010, Trad.: Mayte Giménez Giménez y Pontus Sánchez Giménez
• 2006 – Svart stig; English translation: The Black Path, 2008; La senda oscura, Seix Barral, 2011, Trad.: Mayte Giménez Giménez y Pontus Sánchez Giménez;
• 2008 – Till dess din vrede upphör; English translation: Until Thy Wrath be Past, 2011;  Cuando pase tu ira, Seix Barral, 2012, Trad.: Mayte Giménez Giménez y Pontus Sánchez Giménez
• 2012 – Till offer åt Molok (The Sacrifice to Molok).

Reseña: El verano de los juguetes muertos de Tony Hill

This post is bilingual, scroll down to find the English language version

Versión Kindle. 569 KB. 368 páginas. Debolsillo 1ª Edición (1 de julio de 2011). ASIN: B0062XCKIY.

La historia transcurre en Barcelona durante un período de tiempo de cinco días. Estamos a finales del mes de junio y el inspector Héctor Salgado acaba de regresar de su Argentina natal. Se ha visto obligado a tomar un permiso forzoso después de atacar a un sospechoso en un caso de tráfico de seres humanos. El sospechoso iba a retirar los cargos contra él, pero ahora este sospechoso ha desaparecido y su caso continúa bajo investigación. Por esta razón, se le asigna, extraoficialmente, a una investigación sencilla, la muerte accidental de un adolescente. En esta investigación Salgado tiene que formar equipo con una agente novata, Leire Castro, mientras que su antigua compañera Martina Andreu continúa llevando la investigación de su ataque. Los dos casos se desarrollan en paralelo.

Ambas historias están muy bien elaboradas, y la novela resulta muy entretenida y fácil de leer. Tal vez tenga un número excesivo de personajes y subtramas, y el lector debe prestar atención para no confundirse, pero vale la pena el esfuerzo. He disfrutado mucho este libro, ya que capta muy bien el ambiente en que se desarrollan los acontecimientos, sus personajes principales son de carne y hueso y la trama tiene varios giros. Una sorpresa final sugiere que este es el primero de una serie y estoy esperando con interés la próxima entrega.

Toni Hill (Barcelona, 1966) es un traductor y escritor español que vive en Barcelona. El verano de los juguetes muertos, su primera novela, se publicó con gran éxito en Julio de 2011. Para mi ha sido un agradable descubrimiento.

Mi calificación: 4/5.

Ver reseñas de El verano de los juguetes muertos en Culturalia, Calibre 38, Golem – memorias de lecturas, Me gustan los libros, Opiniones de clientes en Amazon.es,

• Random House
• De Bolsillo

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The Summer of Dead Toys by Antonio Hill

The story takes place in Barcelona within a five days time period. It’s end of June and Inspector Hector Salgado has just returned from his native Argentina. He has been forced to take a leave of absence after attacking a suspect in a human trafficking case. The suspect was going to withdraw the charges against him, but now the suspect has disappeared and his case remains under investigation. For this reason, he is unofficially assigned to a simple investigation, the accidental death of a teenager. In this investigation, Salgado must team with a rookie agent, Leire Castro, while his former partner Martina Andreu continues to lead the investigation of his attack. The two cases unfold in parallel.

Both stories are nicely developed, and the novel is very entertaining and easy to read. Perhaps it has an excessive number of characters and subplots and the reader must pay attention not to get confused, but it’s worth the effort. I enjoyed this book very much since it nicely captures the atmosphere in which the events unfold, it’s main characters are flesh and blood and the plot has several twists and turns. A final surprise suggests this is the first in a series and I’m looking forward to the next instalment. 

Antonio Hill (Barcelona, ​​1966) is a Spanish translator and a writer who lives in Barcelona. The Summer of Dead Toys, his first novel, was published in July 2011 and was a great success. For me it has been a pleasant finding.

My rating: 4/5.

The Summer of Dead Toys has been reviewed by Lynn Harvey at Euro Crime, at Shotsmag, and Amazon.co.uk Customers Reviews, among others.

• The Random House Group

2012 Crime Fiction Alphabet: B is for Bolaño

Lack of time prevents me from writing a more personal post as my contribution to the Crime Fiction Alphabet this week, but I do not want to miss this opportunity without mentioning one of the main XXI century writers in Spanish language, Roberto Bolaño. Roberto Bolaño‘s novels are available in English and you may classify some of his books as crime fiction in a very broad sense. ‘However, he was a literary and marketing phenomenon that far exceeded any category.’ (Teaching college – level Spanish, and others issues).

Born in Santiago, Chile, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973, just a month before Pinochet seized power, and was arrested. After his release he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then Barcelona. He wrote ten novels and two collections of short stories as well as poetry before he died at the age of fifty, on 15 July 2003. (Words without Borders).

A Bolaño Syllabus

Roberto Bolaño at The Complete Review

I look forward to reading The Savage Detectives, but I might start with, the shorter and more accessible, The Skating Rink, first. Stay tuned.

A spellbinding, sui generis, detective fiction focusing on the swirling vortex of sex, death, and intrigue surrounding a beautiful Spanish figure skating champion

Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy and frustrated passion, The Skating Rink is a darkly atmospheric chronicle of one summer season in the seaside town of Z, on the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona.

The story revolves around the beautiful figure-skating champion Nuria Marti. When she is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of town. What he doesn’t tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds; but such a betrayal is only the beginning and the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene…

Told in short suspenseful chapters by three alternating male narrators – a corrupt and pompous civil servant, a beleaguered, yet still romantic, itinerant poet, and a duplicitous local entrepreneur – The Skating Rink is a wholly engrossing tale of murder and its motives. (Pan Macmillan Australia)

New Year’s Eve, 1975: Arturo Bolano and Ulises Lima, poets and leaders of a movement they call visceral realism, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their mission: to track down the poet Cesarea Tinajero, who disappeared into the Sonora Desert (and into obscurity) decades before. But the detectives are themselves hunted men, and their search for the past will end in violence, flight, and permanent exile.

In this dazzling novel, the book that established Roberto Bolano’s international reputation, he tells the story of two modern-day Quixotes – the last survivors of an underground literary movement, perhaps of literature itself – on a tragicomic quest through a darkening, entropic universe: our own. The Savage Detectives is, in the words of El Pais, “the kind of novel Borges would have written… An original and magnificent book: funny, moving, important”. (Pan Macmillan Australia)

The Crime Fiction Alphabet 2012 is a Community Meme hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week. Click HERE to visit the contribution of other participants.  

Celebrating Reginald Hill

Rhian Davies (aka crimeficreader) of It’s a crime! (Or a mystery…) is co-hosting together with Margot Kinberg of Confessions of a Mystery Novelist a new site to celebrate the life and works of Reginald Hill.  It’s called Celebrating Reginald Hill and clicking on that link will take you there for a preview of what’s to come from 1 June.

A pleasant surprise in the mail today

The lovely people at Hersilia Press have sent me a copy of I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio De Giovanni which I received just today. I hope to start reading it immediately, once finished the book I have now in hand: Until Thy Wrath Be Past by Asa Larsson. Stay tuned. Thank you very much Ilaria.