“Midwinter Blood” by Mons Kallentoft, published by Emily Bestler Books.Category – Mystery/ThrillerThis is another mystery/thriller coming out of Sweden. “Midwinter Blood” has been a bestseller and sold over 300,000 copies in Sweden alone.Malin Fors is a crime investigator and is balancing her career with her home life. She is divorced and has a teenage daughter.Malin is called out on a cold and wintery morning to the scene of a gruesome crime. A young man, who has been bullied and looked down up...

I'm still slogging through this book, but I'm having a time of it. The problem could be due partly to me suffering from Whodunit Fatigue. I've been reading so many murder mystery/police procedural novels lately and they're all beginning to merge in my mind. Hardly the fault of the books themselves, but it would be nice if there was something fresh and new to read. While I like that the personal lives of the characters are woven throughout, it would be nice if there was a bit more to them than si...

Probably actually a 3.5 star book for me. It’s getting much harder to fool me, now that I’ve read a fair number of Nordic mysteries and I really treasure the books that do manage to pull the wool over my eyes. Midwinter Sacrifice managed to keep me guessing until the last chapters, when it just kind of stuttered to the end.I liked Malin Fors, the female detective main character. I could appreciate her ambition and determination to solve a case. There was a little too much emphasis on her “femini...

This book took me a little by surprise. I expected a straight-forward thriller, but instead got a beautifully written, almost literary mystery.The atmosphere the author creates in this book is fantastic. The cold winter landscape seeps into every page, into every character’s consciousness, making it almost another character itself. Malin Fors, the protagonist, is an interesting one. Thankfully, she is not a walking cliché of dysfunction, as many of the cops or detectives in thrillers tend to be,...

This book gets off to a slower start, but it will reward the patient reader. By the last third of the book I simply couldn't put it down!! And the beginning is definitely well-written too, but it feels like the author is finding his footing with the story for the first 150ish pages. Once he does, it's absolutely fantastic. If you're looking for a police procedural with a contemplative angle, and are open to a writing style that is intentionally a bit choppy and unique, you will enjoy this book a...

[3.5] If you've decided to call your novel Midvinterblod, it's a little odd to set it in February. (I'd saved this to read last December, then left it when I saw the dates on the chapter headings.) There's a possible reason in the plot for the discrepancy, but it still doesn't work very well. (view spoiler)[the killer is someone who's become completely unhinged; possibly the record-breaking cold weather made him think it was midwinter... Still would have worked better with the title if it actual...

I quite enjoyed this swedish crime novel, but read it in small chunks and think it is the kind of book you should read in a big gulp! My reason for this is because the writing style comes across as a stream of consciousness at times which is unique and enjoyable but requires a bit of concentration.

Comparing Mr. Mons to Stieg Larsson is quite a little blasphemy. Larsson had class, his books were lively, his characters created emphaty. Kallentoft's offer: a lot of mess, patibular characters dragging themselves to the periphery of society, dead people talking and an unfinished story.BTW, I've read recently more than a dozen novels by Swedish auhors, and, as they describe their country, this is probably the ugliest place on Earth to live: mud or rain, freeze and cold, a lot of drunkards and w...

In Linkoping, Sweden, Malin Fors is a young, superintendent of the police force with a teenage daughter. Malin is called to a murder scene where she sees an obese man who had been tortured and murdered. He is hanging from a tree.The victim, Bengt Andersson was a man who was ignored by most people and bullied by others due to his weight and shyness. He lived in an area Malin describes as including "...scared kids, teased kids, never go to school kids. Alcoholic's kids."His father was cruel and ab...

A solid 3.5 opener of a mystery series. If you'd like a longer review, click on through; otherwise, here's a brief look.While some of the plot was easy to figure out, the writing, the characters, and the exploration of small-town life and its secrets that permeates this solid police procedural drew me in and kept me there. Above all, though, Kallentoft is very good at creating atmosphere and maintaining it through the end -- a quality that I greatly admire in an author.Detective Malin Fors live...

Magnus Utvik[1] is quoted as saying “Don’t Bother with Stig Larsson, Kallentoft is better”. Now while I wince at the promotion of one author at the expense of another Utvik is right about the quality of Kallentoft’s Midwinter Sacrifice. Kallentoft with help from translator Neil Smith delivers a distinct impression of place, of Swedish culture, along with a chilling tale of murder and the dark underside of family relations. The StoryA man is found beaten, tortured and hung in a tree. A midwinter

In the depths of a bitterly cold winter, in a field near the Swedish town of Linköping, the mutilated corpse of a society outcast is found hanging from a tree. For Detective Malin Fors and her colleagues in the Linköping PD it's another murder case to solve . . .Well, so far, so good: none too original a setup, but originality isn't always what you seek or expect in crime fiction, so long as you're getting a ripsnortingly good tale. Alas, though, I had difficulties with the actual telling of the...

The opening is striking.A man’s body, naked and mutilated, was found hanging from a tree on a frozen plane.It was midwinter and snow had been falling heavily, obliterating evidence.Malin Fors was first on the scene, and she would lead the investigation. She was a bright and capable detective, but she was struggling with life as the single mother of a teenage daughter. I liked her from the start.The story moved slowly as the investigation moved forward.It took time to identify the dead man. He ha...

I have to admit I slogged my way through three quarters of this book and considered abandoning it several times. I didn't for several reasons, one being that this was a Netgalley request, the second because two reviewers I respect gave it a 4 star rating and thirdly because I admired several elements of the novel.Midwinter Blood is a part crime/part police procedural in the style of what has been labeled 'Scandinavian Crime', not only for the author's origin and the setting but also distinguishe...

Bettie's Books

Really struggled to get on with this book. The style of writing meant that the story felt disjointed and at times baffling. I wasn't sure if this was the way the book had been translated but having read other translated books and not found them hard to follow I'm fairly certain that this wasn't the case. The choppy style made me feel like something big was going to happen and I think if the story had been fast paced then I would have felt the style was justified however the story was in fact ver...

3.5 This is a very unusual Nordic mystery in that it almost reads like a stream of consciousness novel. Took some getting used to because the prose is anything but direct. Switches from third to first person consistently and the dead body has thoughts of its own. Yet I liked it quite a bit, the detective is an interesting character, her daughter has problems and she is still mourning the loss of her marriage. The storyline is brilliant, actually quite sad and the novel has many twists and turns

A good detective story with enough twists and turns to keep you interested throughout. I enjoyed the style of the writing with the murder victim's thought being added at points throughout. The characters are both believable and likeable adding depth to the story. Another good Scandinavian mystery, I will be sure to read the next in the series.

Why did I read it? I have been enjoying Scandinavian and Nordic fiction of late; something about it resonates with me, and this came up in recommendations somewhere, and as the reviews weren’t bad I decided to delve in.What’s it about? A man is found hanging, seemingly sacrificed, in the woods outside Linköping, Sweden, during a bitterly cold, winter’s night. Malin Fors, a police detective and single mother, investigates, trying to find the victim, the perpetrator and her own way in life."An inv...

Initially, I really quite enjoyed it - the characters were interesting and believable (and the borderline alcoholic female detective protagonist didn't turn into a badly written walking stereotype of a troubled cop or a pathetic over-introspective fawning woman), the quality of the description was high quality, the sharp/abrupt style involving, and the plot went off with shock and drama.Alas the longer it went on, the more it started to feel like three or four separate stories had been cut up an...