Three crime novels

by Yi Zhang

Just finished three crime novels. All are great works with different style, yet somehow there are some similarities found among them.

The Last Child by John Hart is the first one, an Edgar Award Best Novel. It is about a young boy’s quest into the dark sides of the town looking for his missing twin sister. Real nice plot and great writing, yet some characters are a little bit “2D”.

The next one is a Sweden thriller, Echos from the Dead by Johan Theorin. It’s a story intertwined between the past and now, around the disappearance of a young boy (sounds familiar?) Like many other Scandinavian thrillers, the writing is cold and bleak, and it constantly reminds me of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

The third one, a little old then the previous two, is A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, a masterpiece by Lawrence Block, a really dark and gruesome story, excellently organized and flavored by black humors (the only reason I was not depressed to death).