Yule Island

by Johana Gustawsson, David Warriner (Translator)

Overview

An art expert joins a detective to investigate a horrific murder on a Swedish island, leading them to a mystery rooted in Viking rites and Scandinavia´s deepest, darkest winter. The Queen of French Noir returns with a chilling, utterly captivating gothic thriller, based on a true story. FIRST in a new series.

'A dark, dark slice of Scandi Noir´ Heat magazine *Book of the Month*

'Gustawsson's writing is so vivid, it's electrifying´ Peter James

'Remember her name. Johana Gustawsson has become a leading figure in French crime fiction [and] Yule Island is impossible to put down´ Le Monde

***Winner of the Cultura Ligue de l'Imaginaire Award 2023***

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Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she´s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.

Emma must work alone, and the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?

As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.

When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman's tragic death somehow hold the key?

Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia's deepest, darkest winter…

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PRAISE FOR JOHANA GUSTAWSSON

'Wonderfully dark and intricately woven … will have you hooked from the very first page´ B A Paris

'Johana Gustawsson has become the queen of the French thriller genre´ Le Point

'Intriguingly dark and vivid, and so cleverly told´ Essie Fox

'A gripping story of murder and black magic …Gustawsson slowly weaves together three seemingly disparate strands of her narrative with a skill that shows why she is such an admired crime writer in her native France´ The Times

'A wonderfully creepy, unsettling read, with a superb twist in its tail´ James Oswald

'Bewitching and wonderfully gothic´ Sunday Express

'Johana Gustawsson brilliantly illuminates the depths of the human heart´ Le Figaro

'A whirlpool that draws you irresistibly into levels of darkness so much deeper than you can possibly be ready for´ Ambrose Parry

'Ethereal, romantic and as cold as death, this nerve-shattering and powerful novel immerses us in a cruel and thrilling Nordic tale where love smashes against the rocks of madness´ La Fringale culturelle

'A stunning and beautifully written gothic thriller´ Alexandra Benedict

'Johana Gustawsson has no equal when it comes to hooking us with stunning twists and unexpected leaps in time´ Les Echos

'A bold and intelligent read´ Guardian

'Utterly compelling´ Woman's Own

'Brilliant … the last chapters knocked me sideways, and it's a long time since that's happened´ Lisa Hall

'Cleverly plotted, simply excellent´ Ragnar Jónasson

'A must-read´ Daily Express

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781914585913
Publisher:	Orenda Books
Publication date:	11/23/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	20,517
File size:	464 KB

About the Author

Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press and television. Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, has won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in nineteen countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France and is the first in a new series. Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.

David Warriner translates from French and nurtures a healthy passion for Franco, Nordic and British crime fiction. Growing up in deepest Yorkshire, he developed incurable Francophilia at an early age. Emerging from Oxford with a modern languages degree, he narrowly escaped the graduate rat race by hopping on a plane to Canada – and never looked back. More than a decade into a high-powered commercial translation career, he listened to his heart and turned his hand again to the delicate art of literary translation. David has lived in France and Quebec, and now calls beautiful British Columbia home.

Read an Excerpt

1

Karl
29 December 2012

This morning I opened my eyes to the nape of my wife’s neck and
a tangle of strands. My nose fumbled its way to the heart of the
messy matter. I parted her curls with my breath to find her skin.
And with just the tips of my lips, I kissed her. Again and again,
until she quivered. I paused to savour the morning lushness of her
mouth, that dewy sound it makes. Then I started all over again.
An hour and twenty minutes later, I’m here on the island of
Storholmen, on the other side of the bay. A majestic evergreen
towers proudly in front of me, sprinkled with frost like something
out of a Christmas story.
The nape of the neck I’m looking at now hangs from the
branches.
The icy air burns the back of my throat like a shot of snaps.
I free my boots from the grip of the compacted snow with a
struggle and move in for a closer look. The rope has lifted her
blonde hair up to her cheeks. It looks like there are two clownish
tufts sprouting from her ears. She’s dangling from a low branch,
practically right up against the trunk of the tree, her feet hovering
thirty centimetres off the ground.
I place my thumb and index finger on her shoulder. The latex
of my gloves sticks to her frozen skin and, for a few dilated
seconds, all I see is the mauve of my fingers, a glaring blemish on
an immaculate backdrop. Cautiously, I rotate the body towards
me. The rope creaks on the branch.
Her eyes are wide open.
I close mine for a moment. She’s young. Good God, she’s so
young. A child. Fourteen, fifteen years old at most. Under the
tangle of hair and the rope, there’s a leather cord. Attached to it,
like an oversized pendant, is a pair of open scissors; one of the tips
has nicked her bare breast – the one on the same side as her heart.
A great deal of blood has flowed from the gaping cuts on her inner
thighs, right at the femoral arteries. The lines are clean and
smooth, sliced with seemingly surgical precision.
I crouch down to look at her feet. What I had mistaken earlier
for a twig caught between her toes is in fact a black thread, binding
her big toes together in a symbol of infinity that twists and turns
as the body sways in the wind.
They have to cut her down now. They have to stop this child
from hanging there. They have to lay her down on the ground and
cover her up.
A crime-scene technician pokes his head out from the skirt of
tree branches. He doesn’t bother to get up, just motions for me to
join him. What else – what worse thing – could be lurking there
for us to find beneath this tree?
I nod, gulp, and clear the dry air from my throat with a cough,
then I get down on my hands and knees and follow him under the
tree’s skirt.
It suddenly occurs to me that, since I got here, I’ve heard
nothing around me other than the swishing of our coveralls and
the crunching of our boots in the snow. A hushed, ominous
soundtrack playing in the background. No one says a word. No
one dares to. Something about this island unsettles me deeply. I
feel like I have to mute the sound of my movements. And my
thoughts. It’s like I’m advancing in enemy territory, finger poised
on the trigger of my gun.
Storholmen has imposed a silence on the muted crowd that
surrounds me. A crowd that stands here listening to that silence,
as to the calm before a storm.

Editorial Reviews

"Yule Island is a page-turning noir novel set in a place steeped in the past; it stands to keep audiences guessing until its unexpected end."—Foreword Reviews

From the Publisher