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Ebook Details
  • 06/2024
  • 9798989981601 B0D4SVYTGJ
  • 375 pages
  • $6.99
Luke Sheldon
Author
Two Dead Billionaires
Det. Hekla Fritzdóttir is investigating the case of her life: the gruesome murder of an American billionaire in Iceland’s most luxurious hotel. But the young detective’s work leads her to places that powerful forces inside and outside her department don’t want her to go—and to a dangerous conspiracy that threatens her life. As the pressure mounts, she realizes that one of the few people she can trust is the prime suspect’s ex-boyfriend, a washed-up, suicidal former FBI whistleblower who doesn’t trust her—and shouldn’t. Can they get past their mutual suspicion and work together to protect innocent lives? And can they keep their own dark histories from consuming them? Two Dead Billionaires is a riveting political thriller and murder mystery from Luke Sheldon, an important new voice in the genre. With crisp storytelling and relentless tension, Sheldon's wildly entertaining debut novel takes readers on a captivating journey and tightens with every page.
Reviews
This twisty, socially engaged Icelandic noir, Sheldon’s debut, opens with one of the two dead plutocrats promised by the title: American tech billionaire Jack Drumman, wealthy from social media and data mining, is discovered with his throat slit in a luxury hot-spring hotel 45 minutes out of Reykjavik. Facing her first murder investigation, and the nation’s “first known murder in years,” detective Hekla Rafney Fritzdóttir, shaken but determined, quickly finds wealthy Americans like Drumman’s wife and assistant to be defiantly uncooperative, as both nations put on the pressure to solve the case, and the evidence at first seems to point to a homegrown killer— Aldís Eva, an activist investigative journalist, famous for targeting international financial crime and making a target of Drumman.

With crisp prose and a strong feeling for characters living at the ends of their ropes, Sheldon mines tension not just from the crime and its coverup. Throughout, Hekla understands that Iceland’s future is in some ways at stake, from her disgust at Drumman’s hotel—“sleek, two-story monument to excess” —to her reluctance to ascribe guilt to Aldís, who has stoked great controversy in her zeal to push “back on the corroding influence that countries like the United States had on Iceland.” Hekla’s nerves and exhaustion, touchingly drawn, never diminish her savviness, and she proves a compelling detective as she faces bureaucratic setbacks, red herrings, and tough interrogations—she snaps at her nation’s wealthiest citizen, a business partner of Drumman’s wife, “If you’re helping Iceland, why are all your negotiations in secret?”

Sheldon’s plot eventually pairs Hekla with August Sorenson, a former FBI legal attaché in Copenhagen who once was close to Aldís. August, too, is living bleakly, and his early perspective chapters wallowing in sex, suicidal ideation, and autoerotic asphyxiation feel convincingly miserable but diminish narrative momentum. Still, August eventually proves a memorable co-lead, but it’s Hekla who grabs attention and keeps the pages turning.

Takeaway: Dark Icelandic noir with a strong edge of outrage at economic injustice.

Comparable Titles: Sara Blædel, Ragnar Jónasson.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A

Formats
Ebook Details
  • 06/2024
  • 9798989981601 B0D4SVYTGJ
  • 375 pages
  • $6.99
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