Barbara Clark

Forty Days without Shadow, by French journalist Olivier Truc, is set in the remote Lapland of northern Norway, where reindeer are the only livelihood for indigenous Sami herders who brave the dark, Arctic winters to keep vigil over their animals, and where the old ways—even ritualized murder—can still hold sway.

Truc’s chilling debut won 15 international awards after its publication in 2012, and it is now available in English, thanks to a compelling translation by Louise Rogers Lalaurie. Translations sometimes have an awkward feel to them at the outset of a book, but as readers continue on, the unusual sentence structure develops a cadence of its own and becomes an integral part of the narrative. Lalaurie’s translation creates a chilling mood that mimics the haunting green glimmer of the Northern Lights.

Senior Sami police officer Klemet Nango and his freshman deputy, Nina Nansen, investigate two crimes: the theft of a unique Sami drum once used by the region’s shamans, whose rituals can be traced back to the area’s oldest mythology; and the brutal murder of an old reindeer herder. The detective team’s radically different backgrounds and approaches to the murder scene, in a setting full of omens and danger, make for a fascinating juxtaposition of old and new ways. Old practices clash with conservative Lutheran groups and geologists who are out to exploit the region’s vast mineral reserves for plunder and profit.

The book’s title describes a seminal moment in far northern Lapland, as 40 days without any sunlight to cast a shadow slowly give way to a magical, goose pimple-raising sequence when the community gathers to watch the sun appear once more over the horizon: “Everyone fixed their gaze on the horizon. The magnificent gleam intensified, reflecting more and more brightly. . . . Now, a bright, trembling halo of light blurred the point on the horizon at which everyone was gazing. . . . The sun had kept its word.”

A dramatic snowbound setting mixes with unexpected touches of humor to make this book one of the most riveting of the season.

It’s impossible! The body of a young woman, dead only a few hours, is discovered in a pose that suggests she was trying to claw her way out of her own grave. To add an even more macabre touch, the gravesite is that of a woman who has been dead for two years.

Magic and murder make a spectacular entrance in Angel Killer, an intricate thriller with techno overtones written by illusionist Andrew Mayne. Originally self-published as a best-selling eBook, the novel now appears in a newly revised version from Bourbon Street Books. This is good news for jaded mystery fans who believe every possible character type has been imagined and brought to life. Nope! Jessica Blackwood grew up in a family of magic purveyors; her father, grandfather and great-grandfather formed a dynasty of famous illusionists, and Jessica joined the family business, making a name for herself as a clever young female magician.

For Jessica, however, there was one trick too many, and fallout from a fateful experience led her to abandon magic and her famous family for a career in law enforcement. Now an FBI agent, she puts her former skills to use when she becomes an advisor to a team studying the graveside crime, which appears to be a feat of incredible, gruesome magic. She’s called upon to think outside the box—or grave, as it were—and discover how the horrendous illusion was perpetrated. The “trick” horrifies but becomes a public sensation and a perfect prelude to more spectacular and deadly events.

The trick for Jessica and the FBI team is to ensure that the public recognizes that there is an evil, and very mortal, killer behind the “magical” and deadly crimes. Jessica’s elusive and mysterious former lover, Damian, watches her from the shadows, adding a frisson of further excitement to the scene.

Angel Killer is both addictive and at times ludicrous, as when the FBI misses clues simple enough for a child in grade school. But the whole book is one big glittery magic trick, guaranteed to ensnare readers who love a great illusion, with a lot of authentic tricks of the magic trade thrown in. This story magnifies the creepy possibilities of social media and its own very great illusions. So, “Like” fans, beware! It’s all smoke and mirrors in the virtual world, sometimes with lethal consequences.

For crime aficionados, New York Times best-selling author Marcia Muller is always a welcome name, one to rely on when you want a sure thing—a book that captures the imagination and might even make you wish you’d cancelled your evening plans so you could just go on reading. Her latest, The Night Searchers—to be exact, number 31 in her San Francisco-based Sharon McCone series—promises to be that kind of book.

Muller is quick out of the gate with a catchy plot hook: A weird couple seeks help from PI McCone’s detective agency because the wife is “seeing things.” As husband Jay rolls his eyes and pats her shoulder, wife Camilla describes witnessing devil worshippers operating from the basement hole of a city excavation, possibly conducting a human sacrifice. The canny, pragmatic McCone intuits that something more than mental instability is at work here, and sure enough, the unlikely scenario soon begins to tie into an investigation underway by RI International, the firm run by McCone’s husband, Hy, a high-level hostage negotiator. McCone and Hy discover a non-Satanic connection between Camilla’s sighting and the titular Searchers, a shadowy bunch of treasure hunters prowling the ’Frisco streets, and with the kidnapping of the director of a political policy forum.

Hy and McCone dispatch researchers and operatives from their companies to connect the dots and discover what, besides treasure, the mysterious Searchers may be hunting, and how it may tie in with kidnappings and devilish conclaves. McCone becomes the suspect in a supposed murder attempt and hides out for a while in a safe house aptly called Cockroach Haven while directing the investigation. The story sports Muller’s usual mix of eccentric characters, not least the Searchers themselves, all with fake names containing the letter “Z.”

The McCone and RI agencies seem to have the power to do almost anything, from calling up the troops to calling off the troops, and the action never stalls. But this time around, Muller’s narrative has a choppy feel to it, jumping from one thing to another and occasionally losing its focus and our attention. The couple’s too-spiffy upscale lifestyle has also become a bit wearing, and readers will miss the old days when McCone operated out of the All Souls Legal Co-op and scavenged around for her daily bread. We are amply compensated, however, by the captivating tour of San Francisco sights and sounds that’s woven throughout the book.

Certain words tend to get overused in book reviews, such as “riveting.” Sorry, but Invisible City, Julia Dahl’s debut novel, is riveting. I couldn’t put it down without thinking about when I might be able to pick it up again, and it was finished all too soon for my taste. This story developed a life of its own, and the cast of characters began to walk off the pages into real life.

Dahl, a journalist herself, has painted the world of reporting and newsrooms with a welcome realism often absent from books that attempt to capture this rapidly changing profession. She is remarkable in her ability to portray the life of a tabloid journalist in today’s New York City, and then she adds another layer by setting the rush and tumble of the city against Brooklyn’s insular Hasidic Jewish community.

Rebekah Roberts, the daughter of a Hasidic mother who abandoned her and her non-Jewish father when Rebekah was a baby, becomes heavily involved in this world when she’s called to a murder scene linked to the Hasidim, as well as to people who may know of her mother’s current whereabouts. Rebekah’s narrative yields a surprising and uncompromising look at the individuals in this multilayered community, with its stalwarts and pariahs, its avid followers and secretive doubters. The reins of power wielded by law enforcement are often compromised by those of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and it’s entirely possible that the murderer may escape into the depths of this society bound by tradition and longstanding fear.

No character in Dahl’s tale escapes scrutiny, and each one is drawn with an exacting brush to the author’s high standards. Each character becomes a surprise as the story unfolds, including several who straddle the line that separates a host of often-conflicting religious and civil constraints.

Rebekah must find her own entry into this tight-knit community, as she travels from the dark and closed homes of powerful Hasidic leaders to the shabby headquarters of a group that welcomes those who’ve come to question whether their strict religion holds all the answers. This is riveting stuff indeed, and Dahl is a major talent I am eager to revisit in the future.