Spring is (almost) here, the dark days are soon to be over, and it’s time to pick up a book to pass the time as we wait for the official end to winter. These five works in translation, released in February, will take the armchair traveler all over the world—or, at least, to France, Argentina, Finland, Canada, and Denmark. Some are noir, some are thrillers, and all are excellent. Enjoy!
Cloé Mehdi, Nothing Is Lost
Translated by Howard Curtis
(Europa)
This pitch-dark French noir explores the aftermath of violence and the questions still unanswered in the wake of a teen’s murder by police. 11-year-old Mattia spends his days emotionally managing the adults around him, trying to keep his teachers from realizing he’s gifted, and thinking hard about the murder of 15-year-old Said during a police identity check. As he considers the life and death of Said, he puts together the larger puzzle of oppression in the heavily policed suburbs. Mehdi’s writing conjures the best of French noir, and reminds us why the French named the genre.
Mariana Enriquez, Our Share of Night
Translated by Megan McDowell
(Hogarth)
What a strange and luminous novel. Mariana Enriquez stunned with her collection The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, and Our Share of Night is just as fantastic (and fantastical). Beginning in Argentina in the years of the dictatorship, Our Share of Night follows a father and son on a grief-driven road trip as they mourn the loss of the woman who united them, her dangerous (and possibly immortal) family close in pursuit. A dark vampiric noir that heralds a new era in South American horror.
Katja Ivar, Trouble
Bitter Lemon
Katja Ivar’s third in her Hella Mauzer series takes place in Helsinki in 1953; Mauzer is off the force and working as a private detective when she accepts a job from her old bosses to perform a routine background check on a government minister. She’s promised, in turn, the files on her father’s death in 1942—files that many would prefer never to be opened again.
Marie Hélène Poitras, Sing, Nightingale
Translated by Rhonda Mullins
(Coach House)
In this eerie French-Canadian gothic fable, the patriarch of a grand estate brings a new woman to his palace. She will bring prosperity, fecundity, and growth to his fields, but she has her own agenda, one in which those who take from the earth will eventually have to give back what they’ve stolen…
Katrine Engberg, The Sanctuary
Translated by Tara Chace
(Gallery/Scout)
Katrine Engberg has established as modern master of Scandinavian noir with her dark procedural series, and now her quartet drives to a thrilling conclusion in The Sanctuary. Engberg’s detective Jeppe Kørner is on leave on a remote island, mending his broken heart, when he finds his sanctuary may have more to it than meets the eye. And his partner Anette Werner is working a complex case that appears to indicate Kørner’s island refuge as the place for answers.
