Today I’m joining the blog tour for Into Thin Air. 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:

Chief Investigator of Nordland Police, Jakob Weber is drawn into a complex case when a teenaged girl goes missing in Northern Norway, and a second woman disappears from a remote island in similar circumstances … FIRST in a compelling, dark new Nordic Noir series.

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When nineteen-year-old Iselin Hanssen disappears during a run in a popular hiking area in Bodø, Northern Norway, suspicion quickly falls on her boyfriend. For investigator Jakob Weber, the case seems clear-cut, almost unexceptional, even though there is some suggestion that Iselin lived parts of her life beneath the radar of both family and friends.

But events take a dramatic turn when another woman disappears in similar circumstances – this time on the island of Røst, hundreds of miles off the coast, in the wild ocean.

Rumours that a killer is on the loose begin to spread, terrifying the local population and leading to wild conspiracies. But then Jakob discovers that this isn’t the first time that young women have vanished without a trace in the region, and it becomes clear that someone is hiding something … and another murderous spree may have just begun…

Review:

I am a huge fan of Nordic noir and I’m delighted to have been introduced to a new voice in the genre. Ørjan Karlsson is a wonderfully talented author who writes in great detail and I was drawn into the lives of his characters straight away. I must credit the translator with doing an incredible job of ensuring the impact of the author’s words is felt fully on the page.

Each chapter is written from the perspective of a different character, including the killer. It did take me some time to get my head around the different characters, but once I did, I loved this technique as it really gave me insight into their personalities and the issues that they faced in their domestic life as well as at work. Ørjan Karlsson explores a number of issues that resonated with me through the central characters and I am looking forward to seeing how their situations develop over the course of the series. I also enjoyed the partnership between Jacob and Noora and I’m interested to see how this grows too.

The crimes in Into Thin Air are quite brutal and to see them described on the page made me more determined to find who the killer was. There are several tense moments and these kept me gripped the whole way through. I did think I had guessed who the killer was but I was proved totally wrong.

I can’t wait to read more by this author!

Into Thin Air is available from Amazon.

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