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Nordic noir with a twist: Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

On a cold November night somewhere by the sea, a boy is walking alone, furious – something terrible has happened to upset him. Just as he’s about to return home, he is hit over the head and dragged into the icy sea.

In Copenhagen, Hannah is a highly literary author, whose books are critically acclaimed but virtually unread. Suffering under the weight of writer’s block and a snobby contempt for genre fiction, Hannah is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days, which she cannot refuse. Her editor sends her to Húsafjöður, a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland filled with colorful local characters, for inspiration. A few days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s son is pulled from the water. What begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets long kept in the dark. 

Thirty Days of Darkness is an atmospheric and dramatic page-turner of a novel that offers an unusual twist on Nordic noir, incorporating both comedic and metafictional elements. You can tell the author is a scriptwriter: the dialogue is sharp and the characters vivid.

June 4, 2014 is a crucial date for the north-east of Italy: the project to protect Venice from floods called MOSE reveals its darkest side. The underworld and organized crime have penetrated a land with serious difficulties and an unpredictable future. A country where the change of generations does not only apply to large families of entrepreneurs, but also to politics and crime.

Carlo Caccia, a private investigator, will cross unfamiliar paths and encounter unscrupulous people willing to do anything for power and money. And this time he is really alone.

In front of the lush hills of Prosecco, the immense forces and the balances on which the destiny of his land is based.

"We all dream of the 'perfect relationship.' However, such does not exist. Relationships are by definition something complicated. And it is in how we deal with difficulties that the difference lies between a relationship filled with passion, depth, striving for development and joy and one that is immersed in negative emotions such as anger, guilt and boredom ... "