Pile by the Bed reviews Dark Music by David Lagercrantz, the start of a new series featuring a Sherlock Holmes style detective duo and exploring the dark consequences of 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan.

Salander and Blomkvist are back again in Millennium #6. Pile by the Bed reviews The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz.

Steig Larsson had originally intended his Millenium series to run for ten volumes but only managed to finish three. The decision of Larsson’s estate to appoint Lagercrantz to continue the series was no whim. In The Girl in the Spider’s Web David Lagercrantz took the extremely popular Millennium series and made it his own. The first of Lagercrantz’s forays into the world of Salander and Blomkvist showed not only a deep understanding of those characters but was in many ways a better novel than any in the original trilogy. When the latest volume opens, Lisbeth Salander is in prison due to her actions in the previous book. With plenty of popular fiction now venturing into women’s prisons, placing Salander in this environment seems a little lazy. There are the usual tropes here – Benito Andersson, a queen bee who rules the prison with an iron fist, corrupt guards and a helpless victim, Faria Karzi. But Lisbeth Salander is such a unique character that there is interest even in putting her in this situation. Salander is not really interested in prison politics, more about finding a way to investigate a new lead into her past while also protecting Faria. She puts…

Christoffer Carlsson is a Nordic crime writer best known for his crime series starring ex-cop Leo Junker. October is the Coldest Month is ostensibly his first Young Adult novel and has won a Swedish crime award for writing for young readers. But parents beware, when the Swedish Crime Writing Academy says “young readers” they are skewing well towards the more adult end of the young adult spectrum. That said, there are good reasons why this novel may have picked up that award. Vega Gillberg, the sixteen year-old narrator of October is the Coldest Month, is woken by a policeman looking for her brother Jacob. She does not know where Jacob he is but knows that he is in trouble and has an inkling why. That inkling drives her to go looking for her brother and to try and solve a mystery that no one wants solved. In the best tradition of noir detectives, Vega is not content with being kept in the dark and keeps pushing at people and pulling at loose ends of their stories until the truth emerges. October is the Coldest Month is a coming of age story of sorts. Vega deals with the depths of the…