Teresa Solana on Black Storms

“Black storms shake the sky/ Dark clouds blind our eyes…” are the opening lines of The Varsovian, a song of Polish origins the Spanish anarchist movement adopted as an anthem at the end of the nineteenth century. The novel’s title refers to the first line of this song that is entitled To the barricades in Catalan and Spanish.

At the start of the twentieth century, the Basque Country and Catalonia were the only territories in Spain that had experienced an industrial revolution that created a wealthy bourgeoise and an organized working-class. The development of the Catalan textile industry meant the workers’ movement became influential, and it was divided as it was in the rest of Europe: at a time when workers faced quasi-slave conditions in factories with long, exhausting days and wages that condemned them to extreme poverty; socialists, communists and anarchist couldn’t agree on how to achieve a better, more just society, and what should be the role of the state. 

The anarchists were prominent in workers’ struggles in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century and during the Civil War (1936-1939). Many of them, like the grandfather of Norma Forester, the detective at the centre of the novel, were young idealists who rejected the Stalinist model that had triumphed in the Soviet Union and who, when war broke out, came to Spain from different parts of Europe to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades. Black Storms isn’t a historical novel, but it does focus on the open wounds of a war that ended with a dictatorship that lasted forty years and allowed a dictator to die in his bed without being tried for any of his crimes.

In July 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a military coup with a view to overthrowing the Republican government that had been legally elected to power. The war, that Franco extended unnecessarily in order to physically exterminate the Republicans, as pointed out by historians like Paul Preston, lasted three very long years and opened the way to a dictatorship and one-party state. They were grim years, presided over by the khaki uniforms of the military and the black soutanes of priests, while the Europe that had defeated Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, fearful of the advance of communism, looked the other way and left the population of Spain to suffer the atrocities wrought by the fascists.

After the dictator’s death in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, based on an agreement to re-establish democracy reached by those who had been committed to the dictatorship and a good number of the parties and organisations that had fought against it. The Transition implied a peaceful transfer of power in exchange for letting the crimes of the Franco regime go unpunished; it pretended to heal a wound that has remained open ever since. In 2007, pressure from the Associations for the Victims of Francoism and the need to bring justice for all those who suffered persecution or violence during and after the civil war led to the passing of a law in Spain that is popularly known as the Law of Historical Memory, a law that at the same time helped to bring to light the crimes committed by Franco’s regime.

This is the context in which Black Storms unfolds, a novel that begins with the murder of a professor of contemporary history and specialist in the civil war. The investigation of the murder, led by a detective who happens to be the granddaughter of a man from Manchester who fought with the International Brigades and was executed in Barcelona at the end of the civil war, takes place in years when Spanish society was debating whether it would be better to forget the past and turn the page, or whether it was necessary to revisit that past, however painful that may be, in order to bring justice to the victims and call to account and name their executioners. It is a debate that remains open in a Spain, where many families are still looking for their dead in unnamed mass graves by roadsides and where streets and squares still carry the names of the fascists who murdered them. And it is a debate that is more necessary than ever in Europe at a time when the black clouds of fascism are returning to haunt the continent. “Black storms shake the sky/ Dark clouds blind our eyes…” are the opening lines of The Varsovian, a song of Polish origins the Spanish anarchist movement adopted as an anthem at the end of the nineteenth century. The novel’s title refers to the first line of this song that is entitled To the barricades in Catalan and Spanish.

At the start of the twentieth century, the Basque Country and Catalonia were the only territories in Spain that had experienced an industrial revolution that created a wealthy bourgeoise and an organized working-class. The development of the Catalan textile industry meant the workers’ movement became influential, and it was divided as it was in the rest of Europe: at a time when workers faced quasi-slave conditions in factories with long, exhausting days and wages that condemned them to extreme poverty; socialists, communists and anarchist couldn’t agree on how to achieve a better, more just society, and what should be the role of the state. 

The anarchists were prominent in workers’ struggles in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century and during the Civil War (1936-1939). Many of them, like the grandfather of Norma Forester, the detective at the centre of the novel, were young idealists who rejected the Stalinist model that had triumphed in the Soviet Union and who, when war broke out, came to Spain from different parts of Europe to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades. Black Storms isn’t a historical novel, but it does focus on the open wounds of a war that ended with a dictatorship that lasted forty years and allowed a dictator to die in his bed without being tried for any of his crimes.

In July 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a military coup with a view to overthrowing the Republican government that had been legally elected to power. The war, that Franco extended unnecessarily in order to physically exterminate the Republicans, as pointed out by historians like Paul Preston, lasted three very long years and opened the way to a dictatorship and one-party state. They were grim years, presided over by the khaki uniforms of the military and the black soutanes of priests, while the Europe that had defeated Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, fearful of the advance of communism, looked the other way and left the population of Spain to suffer the atrocities wrought by the fascists.

After the dictator’s death in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, based on an agreement to re-establish democracy reached by those who had been committed to the dictatorship and a good number of the parties and organisations that had fought against it. The Transition implied a peaceful transfer of power in exchange for letting the crimes of the Franco regime go unpunished; it pretended to heal a wound that has remained open ever since. In 2007, pressure from the Associations for the Victims of Francoism and the need to bring justice for all those who suffered persecution or violence during and after the civil war led to the passing of a law in Spain that is popularly known as the Law of Historical Memory, a law that at the same time helped to bring to light the crimes committed by Franco’s regime.

This is the context in which Black Storms unfolds, a novel that begins with the murder of a professor of contemporary history and specialist in the civil war. The investigation of the murder, led by a detective who happens to be the granddaughter of a man from Manchester who fought with the International Brigades and was executed in Barcelona at the end of the civil war, takes place in years when Spanish society was debating whether it would be better to forget the past and turn the page, or whether it was necessary to revisit that past, however painful that may be, in order to bring justice to the victims and call to account and name their executioners. It is a debate that remains open in a Spain, where many families are still looking for their dead in unnamed mass graves by roadsides and where streets and squares still carry the names of the fascists who murdered them. And it is a debate that is more necessary than ever in Europe at a time when the black clouds of fascism are returning to haunt the continent. “Black storms shake the sky/ Dark clouds blind our eyes…” are the opening lines of The Varsovian, a song of Polish origins the Spanish anarchist movement adopted as an anthem at the end of the nineteenth century. The novel’s title refers to the first line of this song that is entitled To the barricades in Catalan and Spanish.

At the start of the twentieth century, the Basque Country and Catalonia were the only territories in Spain that had experienced an industrial revolution that created a wealthy bourgeoise and an organized working-class. The development of the Catalan textile industry meant the workers’ movement became influential, and it was divided as it was in the rest of Europe: at a time when workers faced quasi-slave conditions in factories with long, exhausting days and wages that condemned them to extreme poverty; socialists, communists and anarchist couldn’t agree on how to achieve a better, more just society, and what should be the role of the state. 

The anarchists were prominent in workers’ struggles in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century and during the Civil War (1936-1939). Many of them, like the grandfather of Norma Forester, the detective at the centre of the novel, were young idealists who rejected the Stalinist model that had triumphed in the Soviet Union and who, when war broke out, came to Spain from different parts of Europe to fight for the Republic in the International Brigades. Black Storms isn’t a historical novel, but it does focus on the open wounds of a war that ended with a dictatorship that lasted forty years and allowed a dictator to die in his bed without being tried for any of his crimes.

In July 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a military coup with a view to overthrowing the Republican government that had been legally elected to power. The war, that Franco extended unnecessarily in order to physically exterminate the Republicans, as pointed out by historians like Paul Preston, lasted three very long years and opened the way to a dictatorship and one-party state. They were grim years, presided over by the khaki uniforms of the military and the black soutanes of priests, while the Europe that had defeated Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, fearful of the advance of communism, looked the other way and left the population of Spain to suffer the atrocities wrought by the fascists.

After the dictator’s death in 1975, the period known as the Transition began, based on an agreement to re-establish democracy reached by those who had been committed to the dictatorship and a good number of the parties and organisations that had fought against it. The Transition implied a peaceful transfer of power in exchange for letting the crimes of the Franco regime go unpunished; it pretended to heal a wound that has remained open ever since. In 2007, pressure from the Associations for the Victims of Francoism and the need to bring justice for all those who suffered persecution or violence during and after the civil war led to the passing of a law in Spain that is popularly known as the Law of Historical Memory, a law that at the same time helped to bring to light the crimes committed by Franco’s regime.

This is the context in which Black Storms unfolds, a novel that begins with the murder of a professor of contemporary history and specialist in the civil war. The investigation of the murder, led by a detective who happens to be the granddaughter of a man from Manchester who fought with the International Brigades and was executed in Barcelona at the end of the civil war, takes place in years when Spanish society was debating whether it would be better to forget the past and turn the page, or whether it was necessary to revisit that past, however painful that may be, in order to bring justice to the victims and call to account and name their executioners. It is a debate that remains open in a Spain, where many families are still looking for their dead in unnamed mass graves by roadsides and where streets and squares still carry the names of the fascists who murdered them. And it is a debate that is more necessary than ever in Europe at a time when the black clouds of fascism are returning to haunt the continent. 

Black Storms by Teresa Solana (Corylus Books) Out 25th October 2024

A country that doesn't acknowledge its past is destined to repeat its mistakes. Why murder a sick old man nearing retirement? An investigation into the death of a professor at the University of Barcelona seems particularly baffling for Deputy Inspector Norma Forester of the Catalan police, as word from the top confirms she's the one to lead this case. The granddaughter of an English member of the International Brigades, Norma has a colourful family life, with a forensic doctor husband, a hippy mother, a squatter daughter and an aunt, a nun in an enclosed order, who operates as a hacker from her austere convent cell. This blended family sometimes helps and often hinders Norma's investigations. It seems the spectres of the past have not yet been laid to rest, and there are people who can neither forgive nor forget the cruelties of the Spanish Civil War and all that followed.

Bringing Shrouded to life by Sólveig Pálsdóttir,

I’ll admit that I don’t push myself hard to start something new and normally take a break between books. I like to see a book find its feet before starting the next one. I’m convinced that the imagination needs nourishment so it can work, and I need to take a deep breath of what society is doing around me – because I have to have something to say and I’m not interested in repeating myself. Otherwise I don’t see the point in writing.

Shrouded, which was originally published in Iceland as Miðillinn in 2023, is the seventh in the series featuring Guðgeir, and when I sat down to write, I wasn’t even sure that this was going to be a crime story. I had a mental image of an elderly lady sitting at her kitchen table, reading a newspaper ad asking for geniuses, as she mutters to herself, polishes her glasses and sips her milky coffee.

To me this woman seemed to be a loner with an intriguing back story. I knew she lived in a house with red steel cladding in the old town in the western part of Reykjavík, that she had a disabled daughter and I saw her walking through the Hólavellir cemetery that’s close to the centre of the city. I wrote every day as the weeks passed. The story began to take shape but something seemed to be missing.

The deadline was looming for the book my publishers wanted, when I heard that the French Embassy in Iceland and the Writers’ Union of Iceland were offering the opportunity of a month-long writing residency in La Rochelle. I applied, and was chosen. In the spring I set off for France, looking forward to being able to write in peace and quiet. If I had known what was to come, I wouldn’t have gone. But now I’m thankful for what ensued, as the experience added the emotional edge that was missing from the manuscript, and I started making changes.

I stayed in a pretty little house located in a large and beautiful public park that was dark and deserted at night. Also supposed to be staying in this house was a French lady who was a playwright. To cut a long story short, I only saw the playwright when she came to collect her belongings, as she couldn’t bear to be there any longer after having spent two days and nights alone in the house. The reason was a seriously ill woman who lurked around the house, slept on the verandah and peered in through the windows during the day, chattering and calling out to people only she could see. I had only been told about this person as I arrived, with the instruction to absolutely not let her in, as a resident had done this during the winter when it had been very cold and the outcome had been a ‘BIG PROBLEM.’

I was told that this woman had many times been offered help, and always refused. She had long stopped taking her medication and had developed an obsession with the pretty little house in the park.

Despite feeling uncomfortable in this place, I wrote and wrote. I veered between fear of this sick woman and sympathy for her. I was often scared, especially at night, because the woman was angry with me for using the house’s rubbish bin – unaware that this was where she kept her things during the day, her mattress, blanket, pillow and sleeping bag. That night she was louder and angrier than usual.

I would lie awake far into the night, starkly conscious of the difference in our circusmtances. Despite the discomfort she caused me, I was in a clean bed inside, while she lay on an old mattress outside, and it was as well that the weather was fine. During the day I wanted to speak to her and understand her life, but she spoke just French, of which I only understand a few words. Every evening I shut myself in at six o’clock, locking the doors and windows as soon as the shadows began to lengthen and people stopped coming into the park, leaving me alone with this troubled woman.

During the day I wrote, and in the evenings, and through many sleepless nights. The manuscript changed a great deal. The sick woman didn’t become part of the story, but the uncanny feel of those days and nights found its way into what I was writing as Shrouded took shape.

La Rochelle is a very popular destination for tourists, so finding another place to stay wasn’t easy, but I eventually managed to find somewhere and spent the last few days in the city centre. There was a lot of noise late into the night, but I felt much more at ease here among people than alone with the sick woman in the park. The day before I travelled home to Iceland, by complete coincidence I was given a deeper insight into her life and background. This affected me deeply, but this isn’t a story to be told here...

Shrouded by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates (Corylus Books) £9.99 Out Now

A retired, reclusive woman is found on a bitter winter morning, clubbed to death in Reykjavik's old graveyard. Detectives Guðgeir and Elsa Guðrún face one of their toughest cases yet, as they try to piece together the details of Arnhildur's austere life in her Red House in the oldest part of the city.Why was this solitary, private woman attending séances, and why was she determined to keep her severe financial difficulties so secret? Could the truth be buried deep in her past and a long history of family enmity, or could there be something more? Now a stranger keeps a watchful eye on the graveyard and Arnhildur's house. With the detectives running out of leads, could the Medium, blessed and cursed with uncanny abilities, shed any light on Arnhildur’s lonely death?

Sólveig Pálsdóttir can be found on “X” at Solveigpals. She can also be followed on Facebook.

Sólveig Pálsdóttir trained as an actor and has a background in the theatre, television and radio. In a second career she studied for degrees in literature and education, and has taught literature and linguistics, drama and public speaking, and has produced both radio programmes and managed cultural events. Her first novel appeared in Iceland in 2012 and went straight to the country’s bestseller list. Her memoir Klettaborgin was a 2020 hit in Iceland. Sólveig Pálsdóttir has written seven novels featuring Reykjavík detectives Guðgeir Fransson and Elsa Guðrún in the series called Ice and Crime. Silenced received the 2020 Drop of Blood award for the best Icelandic novel of the year and was Iceland’s nomination for the 2021 Glass key award for the best Nordic crime novel of the year. Shrouded is the series’ fourth book to appear in English. Sólveig lives in Reykjavík.

Quentin Bates has personal and professional roots in Iceland that go very deep. He is an author of series of nine crime novels and novellas featuring the Reykjavik detective Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gísladóttir. In addition to his own fiction, he has translated many works of Iceland’s coolest writers into English, including books by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Guðlaugur Arason, Einar Kárason, Óskar Guðmundsson, Sólveig Pálsdóttir, Jónína Leosdottir, Ragnar Jónasson and elusive Stella Blomkvist. Quentin was instrumental in launching Iceland Noir in 2013, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.

Extract from Murder Under the Midnight Sun by Stella Blómkvist

 I sprint through the ruins of the building.

Alexander is reversing the jeep out of the yard in front of the new farmhouse when I come running down the pasture.

I run for the silver steed.

Sissi sees me coming and opens the driver’s door.

The black jeep’s about to turn onto the road as I haul my car around in a half-circle in the gravel and put my foot down hard. The tyres howl on the dirt road’s surface, kicking up dust that surrounds us like a storm cloud.

He’s heading north.

‘Where’s the bastard going?’

‘He’s not making for Sauðárkrókur, that’s for sure.’

I hand Sissi my phone.

‘Call Lísa Björk,’ I tell him. ‘Make sure she’s in touch with Raggi.’

I’m on the black jeep’s tail.

Alexander isn’t hanging around. But the silver steed is steadily closing the gap. It’s raring to go like a racehorse that doesn’t know the meaning of coming second.

He’s driving fast on the coast road leading north.

‘Where does this road go?’

‘First out to Skagatá, from there to Skagaströnd and Blönduós and then onto Highway One,’ Sissi replies.

There’s no more than a few metres between the cars.

Alexander must realise that he’s not getting away from me. I’ll always be on his tail. 

Like a vengeful witch.

What will his desperation make him do?

He could easily do something crazy, like braking hard in the hope of wrecking my silver steed.

It’s a risk I have to take.

He could also make a serious mistake. He could lose control of the jeep.

We hurtle along the coast road at an insane speed in this mad race. I keep the silver steed as close as I dare.

It’s just as well there’s no other traffic. But I know that could change at any moment.

‘There’s a truck coming the other way!’ Sissi yells.

Alexander has clearly noticed it too late.

He swerves to avoid a collision. But he’s in the loose gravel at the side of the road. Like an idiot, he stamps hard on the brakes.

The black jeep is hurled off the road. It rolls over and over on its way towards the sea. It ends up on the rocky shore.

I stop the silver steed by the side of the road. I jump out and hurry down to the shore where the jeep lies on its side.

Alexander is held in by the seatbelt.

There’s blood on his face. But he’s conscious.

I go to the front of the jeep. I stare at him through the shattered windscreen.

‘Tell me where you buried Julia’s body,’ I say.

Alexander looks back at me with a wild glint in his eye.

Then he starts to laugh like a maniac.

‘You’ll never find a body at Gullinhamrar,’ he says, alternately coughing and laughing. ‘Never. Not ever.’

Murder Under The Midnight Sun bycStella Blómkvist, Translated by Quentin Bates (Corylus Books)

What does a woman do when her husband's charged with the frenzied killing of her father and her best friend? She calls in Stella Blomkvist to to investigate - however unwelcome the truth could turn out to be. Smart, ruthless and with a flexible moral code all of her own, razor-tongued lawyer Stella Blomkvist is also dealing with a desperate  deathbed request to track down a young woman who vanished a decade ago.  It looks like a dead end, but she agrees to pick up the stone-cold trail - and she never gives up, even if the police did a long time ago. Then there's the mystery behind the arm that emerges from an ice cap, with a mysterious ruby ring on one frozen finger? How does this connect to another unexplained disappearance, and why were the police at the time so keen to write it off as a tragic accident?

Brutal present-day crimes have their roots in the past that some people would prefer to stay forgotten. As Stella pieces together the fragments, is she getting too close to the truth and making herself a target for ruthless men determined to conceal secret sins?

Hostile Environments by Slava Faybysh

Anyone who has spent time in a leftist organisation has probably had a lot of haters. I myself was knee deep in a radical union for a while, and there was a guy once who wrote a full thirty pages detailing why I sucked. Then he went through the trouble of making copies of his screed and passing it out to everyone. A committee had to be put together to read the charges, and they decided it was “just a misunderstanding.”

That was only one example of the uphill battle I faced when I tried to dedicate my life to the left. Sometimes the left, despite its claim to be building a better world, can feel like a hostile place where everyone criticizes everyone over minor differences of opinion. For some reason, I had willingly placed myself in that environment. (I should note, though, that the other issue is that I can be a dick at times.)

These days, it seems like the whole world has become a more hostile place. Right-wing parties seem to be gaining ground everywhere. Like the newly elected president of Argentina, a real piece of work. This is a guy whose symbol is the chainsaw. He wants to take a chainsaw to anything even remotely smacking of socialism. He’s also a denialist who claims that upwards of 30,000 people weren’t killed and tortured and disappeared during the 1976–1983 dictatorship, that the number was less than 10,000.

Milei was only six years old at the time of the coup, and luckily there are still people around who have firsthand knowledge of what happened. Elsa Drucaroff is one of those people. She was eighteen at the time, working at a leftist magazine, when she heard the news that this guy named Rodolfo Walsh had been ambushed by the Argentine Army. Rodolfo Walsh against the full force of the Argentine Army, alone, armed with a measly .22 calibre pistol. He didn’t stand a chance. But he went down fighting.

After he was killed, Elsa Drucaroff went on to become a literature professor at the University of Buenos Aires, where one of the authors she taught classes on was this self-same Rodolfo Walsh. And decades later she went on to write a book about him, too, called Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case. It’s a fictionalized account of the end of his life, pieced together with the few facts available and packaged in the form of a fast-paced thriller. When I got the opportunity to translate the novel, I jumped on it. I knew very little about the Argentine Dirty War before I read the novel, and I had never even heard the name Rodolfo Walsh, though he was an incredibly important figure in Argentine history.

Rodolfo Walsh was a journalist and a writer of fiction, and he was the first to write true crime. Written almost a decade before Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Walsh’s Operation Massacre is a work of investigative journalism about some Peronist workers killed at a garbage dump outside Buenos Aires. Walsh also wrote detective novels and short stories. 

One of his stories, called “That Woman,” was exceedingly bizarre, but based on real events. In 1955, Evita Perón’s dead body was stolen by the military dictatorship and whisked away to an anonymous gravesite in an undisclosed location in Italy. The military had the bright idea this would come as a blow to Perón’s supporters.

Elsa took the character of Colonel König from this story written by Walsh. In Elsa’s version, the man who had been in charge of stealing Evita’s body in 1955 “has grown bulky, but cannot yet be called elderly.” He’s also a bit of a blunderer (endearing, though) and while he’s dedicated his life to the Argentine military, he’s not quite comfortable with all the torture and raping and killing, and he decides to help Walsh figure out what happened to his daughter. 

Both Walsh and his daughter (in the book and in real life) were members of an armed guerrilla group called Montoneros. People did not know this at the time, but Walsh was the head of intelligence for this group. Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case centres around Rodolfo’s search for his daughter. After a standoff between the five militants at Vicki’s house and 150 troops, there are conflicting accounts as to whether she was killed along with the other four, or taken alive, which would have meant she’d be tortured, pumped for information, and eventually killed anyway.

But for me, it’s about a guy who’s struggling, nearly completely isolated, against a vicious dictatorship that’s consolidating power. A guy who tries to reason with his own organization, and they won’t take him seriously. A guy stuck between loved ones who are in danger and disappearing and an organization that’s being decimated. It’s about what a man does when things go to shit, and I mean really go to shit, on a personal level and all over the country. Luckily, I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet in the present day, but it sometimes feels like we’re moving in that direction.

Rodolof's Walsh's Last Case by Elsa Drucaroff (Corylus Books) Out Now. Translated by Slava Faybysh

A key figure in the politics and literature of Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh wrote his iconic Letter to my Friends in December 1976, recounting the murder of his daughter Victoria by the military dictatorship. Just a few months later, he was killed in a shoot-out - just one of the Junta's many thousands of victims. What if this complex figure - a father, militant, and writer who delved the regime's political crimes - had also sought to reveal the truth of his own daughter's death?  Elsa Drucaroff's imagining of Rodolfo Walsh undertaking the most personal investigation of his life is an electrifying, suspense-filled drama in which love and life decisions are inseparable from political convictions as he investigates the mystery of what happened to his own daughter.

The head of intelligence for Montoneros, a clandestine Peronist organisation co-ordinating armed resistance against the dictatorship, Rodolfo Walsh was also a prolific writer and journalist, seen as the forerunner of the true crime genre with his 1957 book Operation Massacre.

What if beneath the surface of his Letter to my Friends lay a gripping story lost to history?

A key figure in the politics and literature of Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh wrote his iconic Letter to my Friends in December 1976, recounting the murder of his daughter Victoria by the military dictatorship. Just a few months later, he was killed in a shoot-out - just one of the Junta's many thousands of victims.

What if this complex figure - a father, militant, and writer who delved the regime's political crimes - had also sought to reveal the truth of his own daughter's death? 

Elsa Drucaroff's imagining of Rodolfo Walsh undertaking the most personal investigation of his life is an electrifying, suspense-filled drama in which love and life decisions are inseparable from political convictions as he investigates the mystery of what happened to his own daughter.

The head of intelligence for Montoneros, a clandestine Peronist organisation co-ordinating armed resistance against the dictatorship, Rodolfo Walsh was also a prolific writer and journalist, seen as the forerunner of the true crime genre with his 1957 book Operation Massacre.

What if beneath the surface of his Letter to my Friends lay a gripping story lost to history?

You can find Elsa Drucaroff on X at @Elsa_Drucaroff and on Instagram at @elsadrucaroff

Photo of Slava Faybysh photo by Acie Ferguson

Photo of Elsa Drucaroff by Héctor Piastri

The Origins of The Dancer, by Óskar Guðmundsson

The idea for The Dancer more or less pushed its way into my head. We had spend a weekend in the countryside and I was driving home in the evening, my whole family asleep in the car. I switched on the radio and a Rolling Stones song came on, and a vision suddenly came to me of a young man dancing ballet steps to this song. Forty-five kilometres later, by the time I parked the car outside our home, I had almost the whole story – and the first thing I did was to write down the outline of it. For me it was unheard of that the whole way through I knew what I was going to be writing next, virtually to its end. I’ve often thought that it must be wonderful if every story came unforced and fully packaged like that.

When I had the idea, I saw immediately that it would not take place in the present day. This was a great feeling, as I had been wondering for a while about how interesting it would be to write a tale that takes place before the era of computers and mobile phones. It was demanding but also a pleasure to get to grips with a book that features none of these gadgets. The other aspect I relished was setting the story at just that time, in 1983, when I was in my teens and knew the centre of Reykjavík intimately. So it was a joy to be able to take my thoughts back to those years and remember the locations and all the shops that no longer exist.

Ylfa, my detective, is taking her first steps as a police officer. At that time, this was an overwhelmingly male workplace and one that could be challenging for female officers. While Ylfa may come across as being fragile, she also has an inner resilience and can become a formidable adversary. She’s determined and refuses to allow herself to be pushed around – although this isn’t the case in her turbulent home life. She and her fiancé have a year-old daughter. He’s tired of Ylfa devoting so much time to her job so moves out, taking the child with him, and it’s difficult for Ylfa to get to see her.

Ylfa’s superior officer is Valdimar who is not far off retirement age and has a wealth of experience behind him. He’s a respected figure within the police force. As Valdimar took shape along with the story, I immediately felt fond of him. He’s all heart and has a deep-seated sense of justice, but nobody wants to be anywhere nearby when he’s roused to anger. Valdimar is old-school, and has quirks such as a loathing of food that has been heated up in a microwave – a technology that was just starting to appear at that time. The relationship between Ylfa and Valdimar is one of respect and fondness, and he fights her corner when the going is tough at the station and also at home. He becomes something of a father figure for Ylfa.

It was highly challenging and frequently emotionally demanding to write the story of Tony, who is The Dancer of the title. We get to know him when he’s around twenty years old, although we also see glimpses of his sick mother starting to teach him to dance from the age of three. His whole life is infused with insane child-rearing strategies, violence and abuse. My hope while writing The Dancer was that readers would form a close enough connection with his horrific circumstances to realise what happens as he begins to lead a life of his own, with what can only be described as no hope whatever of finding a place of his own in society.

To begin with, the novel had a conventional format, mainly taking place from the points of view of Valdimar and Ylfa. When I came to write the Tony the Dancer’s own scenes, it quickly became clear that to do his tragedy justice, I’d have to spend more of the narrative inside his head. That served also to make the story more graphically brutal as the reader is presented directly with what Tony sees.

The Dancer is the book that caused me the most gut-wrenching anxiety, and I had practically convinced myself that I was putting an end to my writing career. I was certain that the responses would be dreadful, and there would be no way back from this. I was completely aware that readers would find the story disturbing but I was mainly concerned that they would see it as unbelievable. It came as a huge relief when the story was a bestseller and was selected as the best crime story of the year by audiobook producer Storytel, which today is Iceland’s largest publisher. Now The Dancer is published in the UK and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. I’m delighted with the reception it has received, and this is what provides the tailwind you need to keep writing – and I’m grateful to Corylus Books and my translator Quentin Bates for their faith in me.

The next story in the trilogy The Puppetmaster has already appeared in Iceland. In The Dancer we got to see Ylfa coping with her family problems, and this continues in The Puppetmaster as we get to see more unfold. She and Valdimar are presented with a new case, which centres around a boys’ home in rural Hvalfjörður where people are disappearing one by one. Their investigation uncovers a murder case dating back a decade, something that was never solved when siblings were found tied beneath a buoy in Reykjavík harbour. The story addresses how children who failed to fit into the system were treated, sent to these correctional homes, often with horrific consequences. It also takes on the longstanding Icelandic problems of nepotism and favouritism that have resulted in a great deal of corruption in the country’s public life.

The Dancer by Óskar Guðmundsson, translated from Icelandic by Quentin Bates (Corylus Books) Out Now

Life was never going to be a bed of roses… Tony is a young man who has always been on the losing side in life. He was brought up by his troubled, alcoholic mother who had a past of her own as a talented ballerina, until a life-changing accident brought her dreams to a sudden end. As her own ambitions for fame and success were crushed, she used cruel and brutal methods to project them onto her young son – with devastating consequences. There’s no doubt that a body found on Reykjavík’s Öskjuhlíð hillside has been there for a long time. The case is handed to veteran detective Valdimar, supported by Ylfa, who is taking her tentative first steps as a police officer with the city’s CID while coping with her own family difficulties. It’s not long before it’s clear a vicious killer is on the loose - and very little about the case is what it appears to be at first glance.

The Dancer was originally published in 2023 as a Storytel Original Series 

ISBN: 978-1-7392989-5-1

Price £9.99

eBook pub date: 5th January 2024

Paperback pub date: 1st February 2024

https://corylusbooks.com/

Twitter: @CorylusB @oskargudmunds @graskeggur

https://www.facebook.com/CorylusBooks

Quentin Bates has personal and professional roots in Iceland that go very deep. He is an author of series of nine crime novels and novellas featuring the Reykjavik detective Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gísladóttir. In addition to his own fiction, he has translated many works of Iceland’s coolest writers into English, including books by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Guðlaugur Arason, Einar Kárason, Óskar Guðmundsson, Sólveig Pálsdóttir, Jónína Leosdottir and Ragnar Jónasson. Quentin was instrumental in launching Iceland Noir in 2013, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.

Extract from Murder at The Residence

 The old guy mumbles in his hospital bed.

‘What did you say?’ I ask, leaning closer.

‘Death says check mate.’

He’s not much more than skin hung on old bones. His skin is pale grey, stretched across bones that stick out as if all the meat has gone from them. His hair’s grey and sparse. But there’s life in his eyes. They’re blue-green like the deep sea. A pair of twinkling stars in a body close to death.

‘I’ve outsmarted death more than once,’ he continues. ‘And more than twice.’

His voice is faint, hardly more than a whisper.

‘Now my battle’s almost over and the doctors say I have at best a few days to tie up loose ends.’

Hákon has a drip in his arm that feeds him. A computer monitors his pulse that flickers at around fifty beats a minute. There’s an oxygen mask hanging down on his chest and occasionally he feebly pushes it up to his dry, parted lips.

I put my russet-brown briefcase on the floor in front of the monitor.

‘It’s been a marathon and it’s almost over. I’m not running away from death any longer. No point now.’

‘The nurse said you had a final wish. What’s that?’

‘The sin of neglect weighs heavy on me.’

‘Sin? Wouldn’t you be better off with a priest?’

‘Not that sort of sin,’ Hákon says.

A middle-aged nurse looks in when he starts to cough. She makes the old man comfortable in his bed. She moistens his dry lips, passes a damp cloth over his pale grey forehead.

‘There you go, Hákon. That’s better, isn’t it?’ she clucks, without expecting a reply. Then she’s gone back along the corridor. A merciful angel in human guise.

This place gives me the horrors. I swear to myself again that I’m not going to end my days here in death’s waiting room. I try to get this visit over as soon as I can.

‘So, what can I do for you?’ I ask.

‘Are you in a hurry as well?’

‘Yes. Always.’

‘I’d like to ask you to clear the way for me to complete a task I never had the energy to finish,’ Hákon says.

‘Let’s hear it.’

‘I’ve always found injustice hard to bear,’ he continues, his voice weakening. ‘It’s been a hell of a burden sometimes because in this world there’s so much that’s unjust. There are evil people running everything, and I’m sad to say I was never any kind of a hero. I often felt bad over the injustices I witnessed, and mostly never did anything.’

‘Mostly?’

‘Except once.’

Hákon pulls at the oxygen mask with his right hand and presses it to his face. The hand shakes and trembles.

I look away, glance around for a chair. I pull a white stool up to the bed, and sit.

The old man’s stable, for the time being.

‘What happened that one time?’ I ask with impatience.

‘Come closer,’ he whispers.

I’m on my feet, closer to the bed. I lean down to his face. Even though I feel sick at the foul smell of death that’s coming from him.

‘I had to do something,’ he breathes.

‘What did you do?’

‘Killed a man or two.’

I’m taken uncomfortably by surprise. I’m not sure I’ve heard him right.

‘You killed a man or two?’ I repeat.

‘Aye. There were two of them.’

I straighten my back. Looking into his blue-green eyes. They look perfectly clear.

‘Are you messing with me?’ I ask coldly.

‘No.’

This makes me shiver.

‘I don’t regret it in the least,’ he whispers. ‘I had to do it to save my child from a terrible fate.’

‘What child?’

‘I’m asking you to find my child.’

‘What child are we talking about?’

‘She was about a year old.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know what her name is now,’ Hákon whispers. ‘She was christened Ásthildur. She was given a new name when she was adopted.’

‘When was this?’

‘Summer 1972.’

I quickly do the sum in my head.

‘So now she’d be getting on for forty?’

‘Ásthildur will be thirty-eight at the end of May. Her birthday’s the twenty-fifth of May.’

‘Why should I search out this woman?’

‘I want my child to know the truth.’

’What truth?’

‘The truth about her parents. The truth about Hjördís and me.’

Hákon’s eyes flicker to one side, to the white table by the bed.

‘Open the drawer.’

I pull the handle on the white cabinet. There’s a brown cigar box held together with tough red tape.

‘Take the box with you.’

‘What for?’

‘You have to find my child,’ he whispers. ‘You have to tell her the truth.’

Murder at the Residence by Stella Blómkvist (Translated by Quentin Bates) Corylus Books

It’s New Year and Iceland is still reeling from the effects of the financial crash when a notorious financier is found beaten to death after a high-profile reception at the President’s residence.The police are certain they have the killer – or do they? Determined to get to the truth, maverick lawyer Stella Blómkvist isn’t so sure. A stripper disappears from one of city's seediest nightspots, and nobody but Stella seems interested in finding her. A drug mule cooling his heels in a prison cell refuses to speak to anyone but Stella – although she’s never heard of him. An old man makes a deathbed confession and request for Stella to find the family he lost long ago. With a sharp tongue and a moral compass all of her own, Reykjavík lawyer Stella Blómkvist, with her taste for neat whiskey, a liking for easy money and a moral compass all of her own Stella Blómkvist has a talent for attracting trouble and she’s as at home in the corridors of power as in the dark corners of Reykjavík’s underworld. 

Tony Mott on Deadly Autumn Harvest

Thank you for allowing me to introduce myself directly to your readers. My name is Tony Mott, Mott being my mother’s maiden name, and I live in Braşov in Romania. I have written nine novels and two non-fiction books so far. I always knew I wanted to write crime fiction, but at first I was a bit scared of it. My first two books only skimmed the surface – a couple of disappearances here and there – but I’ve now moved more firmly into mystery and thriller territory.

I was born and bred in Brașov and consider it the most beautiful town in Romania. It’s unusual nowadays, when people seem to lead such a nomadic existence, to live in the same town all your life. The longest I ever lived elsewhere was when I was working for a multinational and had to spend three months in Bucharest and another three months in Germany. In my first five novels I did not have the courage to use Brașov as the setting for the whole story, but I’ve always enjoyed telling other people about the beauties of my hometown.

When I started the Gigi Alexa series, I decided that Brașov would not only be the backdrop, but almost become a character in itself. The atmosphere in the old town is very picturesque and friendly, the surrounding landscape is superb, with Mt Tampa overlooking the town. Gigi Alexa, the main protagonist, is a forensic pathologist and collaborates with the police. She loves her hometown as much as I do but complains that it’s boring (as do many of its inhabitants). Nevertheless, she quite enjoys the provincial languor, the quiet that descends upon the centre after eight o’clock at night on a weekday and after midnight at the weekend.

Right next to Mt Tampa (where you can see the Hollywood-like sign of ‘Brașov’) is Dealul Melcilor, Snail Hill, where I used to go frequently as a child. I’d been reading Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard and I thought it would be a good idea to bring back a lizard for my mother, as a stand-in for a salamander. She didn’t appreciate my present. There is a legend that a long time ago a dragon lived on Mt Tampa who swallowed up people, but that he was killed by a young man who tricked him into swallowing a calf hide filled with slaked lime. The more the dragon drank water, the more his insides burnt, and so he died. After his death, a multitude of lizards appeared in that spot – like the one I took for my mother. Legend has it that if you see a lizard there, you’ll have good luck for a whole year, but if you harm a lizard, misfortune will stalk you for three years.

I was at a film conference recently where they discussed filming in Brașov – how beautiful the town was and how well it would work as a film backdrop. We are in discussions about filming this series but I’m not getting my hopes up: the Romanian film industry is quite complicated and very few films and TV series ever get made. Of course, Brașov looks beautiful in every season, but it’s not just about the landscape but also about the story. I hope the story that you will discover walking alongside Gigi through the streets of the city will chill and thrill you.

All the things I read in my teens made me want to explore many different careers: lawyer, psychologist, medical doctor, police officer, detective. As you can see, they are all linked to my innate curiosity to understand how the human mind works, how we make decisions, why we often make the wrong choices, how we construct our real identity beyond what we choose to show to the world. That is how I started writing my non-fiction books, which are all about understanding ourselves, our drivers and values, how to have a sense of purpose and how we can help ourselves to be well balanced, at peace and at ease with the world and the people around us.

My other great passion was storytelling. I believe this is what unites us humans: the way we talk about the things we’ve experienced or the dreams that we have. Although I’m a very matter-of-fact person, I’m also fascinated by mysteries, and demand logical explanations which is what drew me to crime fiction.

Finally, let me tell you a secret: the best place to encounter Gigi if you ever come to Brașov is on the hiking paths on the hills surrounding the city or else on the narrow streets of the Old Town, including Rope Street, the narrowest street in Eastern Europe, only 1.35m in width. Since we mentioned legends earlier, it is said that the couples who kiss on this street will remain together forever.

Deadly Autumn Harvest by Tony Mott (Corlyus Books) Out Now 

A series of bizarre murders rocks the beautiful Carpathian town of Braşov. At first there’s nothing obvious that links what look like random killings.With the police still smarting from the scandal of having failed to act in a previous case of a serial kidnapper and killer, they bring in forensic pathologist Gigi Alexa to figure out if several murderers are at work – or if they have another serial killer on their hands. Ambitious, tough, and not one to suffer fools gladly, Gigi fights to be taken seriously in a society that maintains old-fashioned attitudes to the roles of women. She and the police team struggle to establish a pattern, especially when resources are diverted to investigating a possible terrorist plot. With the clock ticking, Gigi stumbles across what looks to be a far-fetched theory – just as she realises that she could be on the murderer’s to-kill list.

Two writers in Paris by Luisa Etxenike (Aka Antonia Lassa)

The idea of ​​creating a heteronym happened in Paris during one of those wonderful walks I like to take around the city. In a world that is tending more and more towards (re)building borders, my first impulse was linked to the desire to break them down, to go beyond them, to become an explorer of my own writing, a joyous, adventurous explorer. I wanted to have a go at a writing style and literary genre that were totally new to me.

My heteronym was going to be that of a Parisian woman. So, I immediately looked for a name: Antonia Lassa, which has its origins in my maternal grandmother's name. She also needed an address: Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, in Paris of course. And then a profession. She would be an oenologist, an expert in understanding wine, in interpreting it and “guessing” what was to be found in each glass. This knowledge was going to relate closely with her way of understanding literature.

In addition, I endowed her with one desire above all: to write crime novels.

And just like that Antonia Lassa was created; as an author she is different from me, so we were able to start a up dialogue. While we were walking through Paris, I asked her why she had chosen to write crime fiction. "Because”, she replied, “crime fiction is real life, or rather, life itself, with all its light and darkness. And since the genre focuses more on the darkness, it helps us appreciate the light even better.”

Antonia also told me the novels she was going to write would deal with societal issues in a close, detailed way. She would also focus on aspects of identity and intimacy in a political and ethical way. What she wanted to create, like a good wine, were stories full of multiple tones, aromas, flavours but well blended... and that contained mysteries to solve with our five senses. She wants to invite readers to get involved in this literary sampling: to see, hear, smell, savour the mystery... and get close to it. Then suddenly, with a big smile, she added: “Speaking of touch… I just had an idea for my first book. It has to do with the skin…”.

This was how our first walk together ended. But we continue to talk on a regular basis. Recently she told me that her first novel, Skin Deep, was finished, and she started to tell me all about it:

The mystery with which the story begins is closely linked to the notions of place and space. An elderly millionairess who is staying at a suite in the most luxurious hotel in Biarritz, just like every summer, appears brutally murdered in a shabby apartment she had rented. What reasons had led her to the underbelly of that elegant city, as Inspector Canonne who’s in charge of the crime investigation calls it? The first clues point to some sort of sexual motive, although the victim is more than eighty years, and identifying her lover then becomes the police’s number one priority.

This search will be the start of a mystery that will bring with it other enigmas that will be marked by the contrast between a world of light: wealth, power, art, elegant neighbourhoods, and a world of shadows, in life’s underbelly, where crime seeks out spaces where it will go unpunished. There’s also a strong contrast in the different lines of enquiry because it’s not only the police in Biarritz who deal with the case. Singular private detective Albert Larten (another who breaks down borders...) will also carry out his own investigation from Paris, which will force him to travel not only through the streets of that city with the meticulousness of a wine taster (wine is one of his passions and he writes about this is a blog entitled The Wine Detective), but he will also have to roam through different cities in France: Bayonne, Bordeaux, Arcachon...

Larten doesn't mind having to travel, on the contrary, he enjoys the constant movement. Because this singular detective’s specialty is being in perpetual motion and it’s why he has set up his office in a mobile home.

Skin Deep's intrigue moves relentlessly not only through Paris and other cities in the southwest of France, but also through the delicate contours of the body, through the silhouettes of desire and the complicated territories of prejudice, ambition, violence.

At the beginning of the novel, we learn that the murderer has drawn some strange signs and symbols on the skin of his victim, an elderly woman murdered in a shabby apartment, in Biarritz. To solve the crime, the investigators will have to decipher the meaning of these markings and to do so they must observe her skin in detail. For it is in the skin, with all its extraordinary expressiveness, that the answers lie.

Skin Deep by Antonia Lassa (Trans Dr Jacky Collins (Corylus Books) Out Now.

When police arrest eccentric loner Émile Gassiat for the murder of a wealthy woman in a shabby seaside apartment in Biarritz, Inspector Canonne is certain he has put the killer behind bars. Now he just needs to prove it. But he hasn’t reckoned with the young man’s friends, who bring in lawyer-turned-investigator Larten to head for the desolate out-of-season south-west of France to dig deep into what really happened. Larten’s hunt for the truth takes him back to the bustle of Paris as he seeks to demonstrate that the man in prison is innocent, despite all the evidence – and to uncover the true killer behind a series of bizarre murders.

More information about the author and her books can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @letxenike