Blood-Letter #175

Jan 14, 2025 | Blood-Letter, Featured Articles

January 2025

In this issue of The Blood-Letter from Friends of Mystery: Bloody Thursday guest Deb Miller Landau, Scandinavian Crime, awards, and more.

CONTENTS:
BLOODY THURSDAY

On January 23, 2025, Friends of Mystery Welcomes Deb Miller Landau

Deb Miller LandauOur guest speaker, Deb Miller Laudau, is a genre-bending writer who has forged a career as a journalist, memoirist, creative writer and marketing leader.

She is the author of the true crime thriller, A Devil Went Down to Georgia, which details the murder of Black socialite Lita McClinton Sullivan, who was gunned down in broad daylight in Atlanta in 1987; more than a dozen Lonely Planet travel guides and articles covering everything from spawning salmon and fast fashion, to wind turbines and the power of AI. She has taught magazine writing at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism & Communication and was a 2023 Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship winner.

Please join us at TaborSpace, 5441 SE Belmont Street, Portland, Oregon 97215, in person or via Zoom. The event is free and open to the public. A social time begins at 7:00 pm, with the program beginning at 7:30 pm. Free parking is available in the block across from the entrance. Bus line #15 will drop you off right by the door.

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Award Announcements

The winner of the 2024 Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year is A Stranger in the Family, by Jane Casey. The other books in contention for the award were:

  • Witness 8, by Steve Cavanagh
  • Where They Lie, by Claire Coughlan
  • Someone in the Attic, by Andrea Mara
  • Somebody Knows, by Michelle McDonagh
  • When We Were Silent, by Fiona McPhillips.

The award was announced on November 27, 2024.

The 2024 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year was given to Jogvan Isaksen for Dead Men Dancing. Isaksen, 74, lives in the Faroe Islands, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Also, in contention for the award were:

  • The Collector, by Anne Mette Hancock
  • Snow Fall, by Jorn Lier Horst
  • The Girl by the Bridge, by Arnaldur Indridason
  • The Sins of Our Fathers, by Asa Larsson
  • The Prey, by Yrsa Sigurdottir.

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Scandinavian Crime

Now that winter is upon us it’s a good time to get cozy with some books set in a cold climate. Here are some suggestions of authors who have series that you could binge while keeping warm and hydrated.

Jussi Adler-Olsen is a Danish author whose Department Q series is set in Copenhagen. It features Detective Carl Morck who investigates cold cases. There are ten books in the series: The Keeper of Lost Causes, The Absent One, A Conspiracy of Faith, The Purity of Vengeance, The Marco Effect, The Hanging Girl, The Scarred Woman, Victim 2117, The Shadow Murders, and Locked In, the conclusion to the series.

Netflix will have an 8-part series based on The Keeper of Lost Causes premiering in 2025.

Carin Gerhardsen is a mathematician whose work has been translated into 25 languages, selling over three million copies. Her Hammarby series is set in Stockholm and there are four books so far: The Gingerbread House, Cinderella Girl, The Last Lullaby, and The Saint. Her standalone thriller, Black Ice, was selected as one of Publishers Weekly’s best mysteries of the year.

Henning Mankell was a Swedish crime writer, best known for his Kurt Wallander series: Faceless Killers, The Dogs of Riga, The White Lioness, The Man Who Smiled, Sidetracked, The Fifth Woman, One Step Behind, Firewall, Before the Frost, and The Troubled Man. He also wrote novellas in the series: The Pyramid, An Event in Autumn, and Wallander’s First Case.

If that doesn’t keep you busy, you could investigate books by Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridson, and Jo Nesbo, among many others.

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In Other News…

Anthony Horowitz, prolific author and screenwriter, will have a third entry in his Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pund series coming to the United States in May. Marble Hall Murders follows Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan BradleyA feature film, based on Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (a Spotted Owl Award winner), is now filming, entitled “Flavia”.

Series 6 of Strike, adapted from Robert Galbraith’s The Ink Black Heart, is now being broadcast in the UK, with an international release to follow. The series stars Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger. The eighth book in the series, The Hallmarked Man, will be published September 9, 2025.

The final season of Vera is now streaming on Britbox.

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For Your Viewing Pleasure…

By Jeannette Voss

Besides the aforementioned season of Vera, here are several suggestions for winter viewing:

Dalgliesh – Acorn

There are eight episodes of this series based on the books of P.D. James, featuring Inspector Adam Dalgliesh. The episodes are adapted from Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and A Taste for Death. Always good to watch a good English mystery.

Darby and Joan – Acorn

This is the second season for Joan and Jack as they head out on the road in a quest to clear his name. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but what’s not to like about some sunny Australian crime. Three episodes have been released as I write this.

Helsinki Crimes – PBS/Masterpiece

There are eight episodes of this Finnish crime drama with English subtitles. Detective Harjunpaa is solving crimes in a small Finnish town. This is quite dark so be aware if you avoid violent content.

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New and Noteworthy

(Summaries provided by the publishers)

Havoc by Christopher BollenHavoc, by Christopher Bollen

At the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel, under the hot Saharan sun, Maggie Burkhardt has a comfortable suite, a loyal confidant in the hotel manager, Ahmed, and a handful of sympathetic friends, other “long-termers” like herself who understand her deep grief for her late husband, Peter. In this luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile, Maggie is merely the sweet old lady in Room 309.

Maggie has come to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are staying here during the waning days of the pandemic. A compulsive meddler, Maggie may have found herself in hot water at her last hotel in Switzerland and she just might have needed to get out of the country fast…but all that’s behind her.

That is, until one morning when she notices a new arrival at check-in: a somber young American woman named Tess and her impish eight-year-old son, Otto. Eager to help, Maggie invites them into her world. Soon, Maggie realizes that in her longing to be a part of their family, she has let in a cunning enemy who might lead to her undoing. In scrawny Otto, Maggie Burkhardt has finally met her match.

The Saint by Carin GerhardsenThe Saint, Carin Gerhardsen

Local girls’ soccer coach Sven-Gunnar Erlandson is practically a saint in the community, known for his good works and volunteering. So when his body is found in Stockholm’s beautiful Herrang forest, shot at close range in the back of the neck while walking home from a late-night poker game, the police struggle to find a motive. Nothing has been taken from his pockets except his cell phone, and the only other clues left behind are a cryptic handwritten note and a handful of playing cards.

The Hammarby murder squad takes the case, splitting up the leads between their eclectic mix of officers. Each member of the team pursues a different line of investigation and, as they interview Erlandsson’s friends and family, they discover a disturbing web of secrets, including a possible link to the cases of two missing girls. Coud Erlandsson have been less of a saint than everyone thinks?

Dead Men Dancing by Jogvan IsaksenDead Men Dancing, by Jogvan Isaksen

“He realized that he would drown here. Someone had crafted this seat to drown people. To drown him. Terror rushed from his brain to rouse every cell in his body, but there was nothing to be done. He was well and truly tethered. Slowly it dawned on him that he did know why he was sitting here. He’d spent all his life running from this nightmare, and now he’d landed in its clutches!

Dead Men Dancing begins with the discovery of a corpse on the beach, the body of a man who has been shackled to rocks and left to drown. As the journalist Hannis Martinsson investigates, he comes across evidence of more deaths which have been caused in the same way, and starts to realize that they are all linked to a local revolt several decades earlier, which tore a community apart. The repercussions have continued to the present day, and Hannis’ enquiries soon put his own life in danger.

Death and the Old Master by G.M. MallietDeath and the Old Master, by G.M. Malliet

Something is bothering Sir Flyte Rascallian, renowned art expert and Master of Hardwick College at the University of Cambridge. Are the grimy paintings he recently inherited from his aunt as worthless as he claims?

Curator Ambrose Nussknacker believes one of the paintings could be a genuine Rembrandt. Why is Sir Flyte so reluctant to get it authenticated, and so determined to avoid the tributes due to the discovery of one of the world’s great lost treasures?

When Sir Flyte is found murdered in the Master’s Lodge, Detective Chief Inspector Arthur St. Just must unravel his unusual actions to solve the death of the old master. College fellows, staff, and students all agree something was amiss. But as St. Just investigates, he quickly becomes entangled in a web of deception following the trail of priceless artwork people would kill to possess.

As We Forgive Others by Shane PeacockAs We Forgive Others, by Shane Peacock

Hugh Mercer has come to a small town in Ontario, far away from his broken career, broken marriage, and broken life in New York. He’s expecting to take advantage of what he’s sure will be a peaceful place in the middle of winter to begin to make some sense of the situations he’s left behind. Before he has a chance to settle into his rented farmhouse, a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes a startling prediction: Elizabeth Goode, a local, is about to disappear under bizarre circumstances and her life is at risk. Mercer needs further information, but as quickly as she appeared, the stranger is gone.

Within a few days, Elizabeth Goode does indeed vanish from a café in town and all the witnesses have different accounts of the event. Her life now depends on the skills Mercer honed in the New York Police Department as a homicide detective and the down-to-earth abilities of local police officer Alice Morrow. Together they work to solve the mystery of the disappearance and get to Elizabeth before she is murdered; but they, too, are troubled by their own need for forgiveness, their desire for justice, and their passion for each other.

Deadly Animals by Marie TierneyDeadly Animals, by Marie Tierney

Ava Bonney is a compassionate and studious fourteen-year-old girl with a dark secret: she has an obsessive interest in the macabre. She is fascinated by the rate at which dead animals decompose. The highway she lives by regularly offers up gifts of roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava loves nothing more than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den and record her findings.

One night, she stumbles across the body of her classmate and, fearing that her secret ritual could be revealed, makes an anonymous call to the police. But when Detective Seth Delahaye is given the case, Ava won’t step back—not while teenagers continue to go missing.

Racing alongside the police or against them, Ava is determined to figure out who is hunting her classmates before she becomes the next prey. How hard can it be to track a killer?

Member News

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Friends of Mystery is happy to publish news and press releases from our members in our Member News section, with the following considerations:

  • The news must be related to mystery or true crime writing, films, and television, as well as non-fiction examinations of the mystery genre.
  • Friends of Mystery will not be able to edit announcements, and will publish them as provided.
  • Friends of Mystery will include one image with each announcement, if provided.
  • Friends of Mystery is not responsible for the content of news announcements, and we reserve the right to not publish any announcements which we feel will reflect poorly on the organization and do not advance the organization’s mission.

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Buy Books by Friends of Mystery Speakers Online at Annie Bloom’s Books

If you want to order any of our speaker’s books, you can find them at our special Friends of Mystery page at Annie Bloom’s Books!

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Membership Renewal

It’s never too late to consider renewing your membership to Friends of Mystery! Dues are $20.00 annually. FOM is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Dues and additional donations are deductible to the full extent of the law. Please mail your check, made out to Friends of Mystery, to PO Box 8251, Portland, Oregon 97207. Your newsletter will be sent electronically unless otherwise requested.

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Submissions Needed

Members and readers are encouraged to submit book or film reviews, comments on authors, and recommendations for books to read or questions about mysteries, crime fiction and fact. If you have suggestions of mysteries worth sharing, please contact the editor at: jlvoss48@gmail.com.

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Now that you’ve finished reading the newsletter it’s time to read a good mystery!