Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

The blurb

A snobbish Danish literary author is challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days, travelling to a small village in Iceland for inspiration, and then the first body appears…

Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that she’s doing something wrong.

When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hanna is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in thirty days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjörður – a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for inspiration.

But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is pulled from the water … and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk … including Hannah.

I am sitting here in that just finished a book distracted state of mind. I’m still within the story but just trying to peep above the surface to return to real life. The feeling of the story is still fresh. The dark humour, the sadness for the victim and of course the sense of unease that hovers over the small town like a cloud of dust – making it hard to breathe. The author invoked a great sense of place. The dark, cold landscape. The small, close knit town with only a single policeman, a policeman who generally only has to deal with small town crimes. I’m still there and even though the sets are long and light here in the UK, my mind is in the cold, dark town.

As a crime thriller goes it was engaging and had enough twists to satisfy but, for me, the most interesting aspect of the story is how author and translator manage to zone in on the most unlikeable characteristics of Hannah our protagonist. The author of course rather wonderfully creating her and the translator skilfully transferring her through the complexities of linguistics. I will discuss Hannah another time – we follow her on more than one journey within the pages of this story.

But to answer the question – my initial thoughts – In a nutshell I really enjoyed this quirky, rather unusual thriller and I was invested from the moment I witnessed the victim attacked. This, I felt was where the hook came (and right at the beginning too). Jenny has an amazing ability to lead your feelings towards her characters – she manipulates your like, hate, compassion, indifference… and I liked our victim, felt immediate empathy for him. I wanted to know why he had to die. The other feelings that were floating around? Well, it is well plotted, there is a dark humour that could bring a wry smile (or even a chuckle) and I was intrigued how little the author seemed to want me to like her protagonist. I do think you have to feel something for the characters you read, I don’t believe you have to like them.

This is a super debut and I am interested to see how it will become a series.

Bookclub chat part 2 coming soon…