Today I am joining the blog tour for Thirty Days Of Darkness. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that she’s doing something wrong.

When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjöður – a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colorful local characters – for inspiration.

But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah…

Atmospheric, dramatic and full of nerve-jangling twists and turns, Thirty Days of Darkness is a darkly funny, unsettling debut Nordic Noir thriller that marks the start of a breath-taking new series.

Review:

I’ve been eagerly awaiting this title so I was thrilled to be invited to join the blog tour. Thirty Days Of Darkness is a debut novel that introduces us not only to Hannah as a character, but to a new talented author on the Scandi-crime scene. Jenny Lund Madsen sets the scene really well and I felt like I was a visitor alongside Hannah, exploring the area and slowly getting the lay of the land: who was who and the parts they all played in the village. 

The protagonist, Hannah is brilliantly drawn and developed over the course of the novel. She’s quite abrasive and outspoken, and her alcoholism makes her behaviour quite selfish, so I found her quite hard to like at first. However, as she settles into life in Iceland and learns more about the residents’ stories, she begins to soften and I began to warm to her more. 

It is Hannah’s stubbornness and determination that comes to the fore as the plot becomes more tense and the sense of danger is greater. The investigation in Thirty Days Of Darkness is far from straightforward and in such a small neighbourhood, anyone can be a suspect. I loved following all the different leads and cues and trying to guess what had happened to Thor and what the motives might be. 

I am definitely hoping there is more to come from Hannah as I thoroughly enjoyed this novel!

Thirty Days Of Darkness is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: