The Wolf by Samuel Bjørk

Good morning, readers! Today I'm super excited to be a stop on the Random Things tour for the latest in Samuel Bjørk's Munch and Krüger series, The Wolf!

As an aside, over a decade since I was introduced to this series with the amazing I'm Traveling Alone and to this day it remains one of my favorites!

The Wolf is actually a prequel to the existing series. It is the story that starts it all: Mia Krüger being recruited to Munch's team at the ripe old age of 21. Her dreams to be the first female Delta sidelined when she's approached with an offer that turns out to be too tantalizing to resist. 

Two boys have been murdered. Their bodies found in a bizarrely laid out scene with a dead fox placed between them. It mirrors a still unsolved case from Sweden with one exception: the animal there was a hare. 

As Munch and his team comb the growing crime scene as well as case files from outside of Norway, the head of the police academy flags Mia Krüger as a potential candidate Munch who might interest Munch. And while he's not looking to expand his team at the moment, Mia's skills of observation prove to be truly unique. After just forty minutes with the crime scene photos, she's made an observation everyone missed. 

Solving the case is anything but easy. No trace evidence at either scene, no connection between the victims in Sweden and Norway, and an eight-year gap between the crimes complicates things, to say the least. And yet, Munch's team is determined.

Bjørk, aka Frode Sander Øein, excels in creating dark and disturbing puzzles of plots for his characters to unravel. And he also excels in building fascinating and well-rounded characters. 

I've noted before that although this is commonly referred to as the Munch and Krüger series, it is in fact a larger cast of characters, all of whom get a careful amount of focus and build. (Though Munch and Krüger do take the spotlight.)

In the case of The Wolf, Bjørk even adds a bit of a forward that sent me on an internet search to see if it was in fact real, which is actually something I love. It means the author has done such a great job at putting together their story that it does feel as though it could be seated in reality!

I will warn you that this series is dark. And by dark I mean it probably needs ALL of the trigger warnings. But if you're a fan of Nordic Noir, this is truly one of the best series I can recommend!

To date there are actually five installments in the series. The fifth has only just released this year and has yet to be translated (so I don't have a title), but the reading order now is:

The Wolf

I'm Traveling Alone

The Owl Always Hunts at Night

The Boy in the Headlights

Book 5 

Short Fiction Friday: Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

I don't recall where I first heard about Yoko Agawa's Revenge, but it was recommended online and I added it to my must have list. When I was in New York in January, I realized I was walking distance from The Mysterious Bookshop, so of course I headed over there as soon as I dropped my stuff off at my hotel! Surprise, surprise, they had Revenge on their shelves :)

If bleak and add are your bag, this is the book for you. It's eleven interconnected short stories, each as bizarre as the next.

In the first story, "Afternoon at the Bakery," we meet a woman who is buying a cake for her son. She waits and waits, but no one comes to help her. Finally, another woman enters the bakery and the two of them talk for a bit. The first woman tells the second woman the story of her son.

Now, I've struggled with this kind of story since the birth of my own son. But something about Ogawa's writing kept me turning pages.

Most of the stories have a bit (or a lot) of tragedy in them. All of them are weird. There's a man who runs a museum full of torture artifacts. There's a writer who spies on her landlord. There's an old post office filled with kiwis!

For a lot of people, I will admit this book is going to be too dark and dismal for distraction right now. But for the right audience, this is going to be just the kind of quirky and bizarre read they'll need to completely forget the real world around them!

This is one of just five of Ogawa's books to be translated into English. I highly recommend it (again, if this is your genre!) for fans of short fiction. Her latest, though, is a dystopian novel called The Memory Police that sounds fabulous! I haven't had the chance to read it yet, but if you're short story averse, that one might appeal!

Order Revenge from BookBar!