This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out. Lately, I’ve been really drawn to reading wintery works of crime fiction and wanted to share with you, two of my favorites. Today, I’m recommending The Hunting Game by Helene Tursten and The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. Apparently, I’m also a fan of books with the word “hunting” in the title, but I won’t even try to analyze what that says about me or my reading habits.
Known for her crime stories featuring Detective Inspector Irene Huss, Tursten introduces readers to a powerful new heroine in The Hunting Game, 28-year-old Detective Inspector Embla Nystrom of Gothenburg, Sweden’s mobile police unit. Plagued by chronic nightmares and racing thoughts ever since she can remember, Embla has learned to channel most of her anxious energy into her job and into sports. A talented hunter and prizewinning Nordic welterweight, she is glad to be taking a vacation from her high-stress job to attend the annual moose hunt with her family and friends.
But when Embla arrives at her uncle’s rural cabin, she sees an unfamiliar face has joined the group. And she isn’t the only one to notice. One longtime member of the hunt doesn’t welcome the presence of an outsider and is quick to point out that with the new face, the group’s number reaches 13, a bad omen for the week. Sure enough, a string of unsettling incidents follows, culminating in the disappearance of two hunters. Embla must track down the killer while confronting a dark incident from her past.
In Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to ring in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago.
The trip begins innocently enough, but after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps. Now, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead…and another of them did it.
Check Out The Hunting Game and The Hunting Party and other great works of snowy suspense like them at the Sioux City Public Library. Want more? Subscribe to our podcast, The First Fifty Pages, a podcast about books, library culture, and current reading trends. Available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play.
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