Today it’s my turn on the blog tour for Stop Dead. My review is written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the blog tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Thousands of runners
One killer

Icelandic detective-in-training Sigurdís is studying criminal psychology in the USA, but her plans are thrown into disarray when she discovers that her boss and mentor, Garðar, has been put on leave from Reykjavík CID as a result of his investigation into Sigurdís’s father’s death.

Returning to Iceland to deal with the fallout, Sigurdís finds herself pulled into a disturbing case: controversial TV personality Olga Einarsdóttir has been stabbed to death during the Reykjavík Marathon. Struggling to locate a runner wearing bib number 1407, who was seen near the murdered woman during the race, the police soon discover that several masked runners were wearing the same number.

As the mystery deepens, Sigurdís and her fellow detective Unnar soon learn exactly how unpopular Olga was – not just with the interviewees she humiliated on live TV, but with her own son, her business partner, a widower who insists that she had a hand in his wife’s death, and her ex-husband, who died in suspicious circumstances thirty years ago…

As her exploration into Olga’s past becomes ever darker and more harrowing, Sigurdís must also face the truth about her own father, while searching for an attacker who will go to any lengths to cover up their crimes…

Review:

When I read Dead Sweet, I predicted it would be the beginning of an exciting series, so I was looking forward to reading Stop Dead to see what would happen next. Sigurdís is a wonderful character and I loved her determination and her ability to think outside the box. In Dead Sweet, Sigurdis’ methods were often maverick and I could still see elements of this aspect of her personality in this instalment. Sigurdís has a tragic back story, which informs large parts of the plot of Stop Dead. It’s not always easy to read but I was engaged the whole way through. 

The investigation in which Sigurdís is involved is a complex one solving the murder of a well known television personality. Olga is portrayed as loud and selfish, and this means the list of suspects is quite high. It takes the detectives some time to investigate all the different possibilities, but I enjoyed trying to work out who was involved in the Murder. 

There are some shorter chapters in the novel which are told from the perspective of the potential perpetrator and I loved that these gave me more insight into their mindset. As the novel reaches the ending, the tension really escalates and I loved the way all the different threads came together in such an intelligent way. 

Sigurdís still has unfinished business at the end of Stop Dead and I can’t wait to find out how the series continues. 

Stop Dead is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: