Hello everyone!
I'm having a slightly surreal experience in that I'm typing this up at a VERY different time of day than my usual one - because I've fallen into the hole of C-dramas, and that means I somehow binged through eight episodes of one yesterday, going to bed late.
... the irony that they talk about how you should try and sleep enough and be in bed on time in this very drama is not lost on me.
I'll be reviewing it on my blog in the near future, so don't worry! You'll get all my commentary and reports haha.
But first and foremost, the book for tonight.
We're going back into the field where I first cut my teeth as a young reader, with Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, except it's Scandinavian this time.
And I was very lucky enough to have the author reach out to me for a review.
So without further ado: The Village Phantom!
There are no links at the bottom of the page as I don't have anything connecting to this author, but onwards.
The Village Phantom tells the story of journalist Fiona who comes to the small town of Dale, Norway, to film a web series about drug use in rural communities and how it affects the people living there. But truth be told half the time I'm not even sure Fiona's the main character in this story, simply the main driving force behind it!
The characters switch between her, the police chief, the young skateboarder who takes care of the town's youth (and who lost his friend to drugs at a young age, coincidentally this friend happens to be the police chief's son), the mining community this town was built around, the ex-dealer-supposedly-healed druggie Jenny, and of course, the Village Phantom.
Fiona starts off as an outsider who nobody trusts, but she manages to literally bulldoze her way into the chief's good graces by simply appearing constantly and wearing him down - does this actually kind of work, I wonder, in real life? Or is it fiction?
Anyway, she's there ostensibly for the series, but the series itself was launched on the back of a dead man discovered at the town's only train station, a known dealer named Dom who the system couldn't get a hold of because they had nothing concrete on him.
It's later revealed Fiona actually knew Dom because he was a year above her in school, but that's beside the point.
The point now is that Fiona's trying really hard to investigate Dom's death and somehow or other figure out what happened, regardless what her editor and boss is telling her to actually do. At one point she even goes out on cracking ice and nearly falls in because ... I don't think the reason is actually ever given, but, well, I can guess part of it might have been to distract the police officers from finding something? I'm still putting the pieces together myself, haha!
Jenny turns out to be the one who lures most new victims in, but also apparently healed, except there are rumours going around that the mine - which is closing, by the way, a sad story heard all over the world today - that there were drugs being moved through the ranks and people are being let go without compensation so the company can come out better on the other side.
Fiona basically pulls on every single thread in this book until Jenny's found dead in the lake and it's time for her to return home to Oslo, where she'll resume life with her wheelchair-bound brother (who was also a drug addict in youth, part of Dom's group, and now bears the consequences) and potentially go on a date with one of the detectives who'd been working the drug case in Dale, while also successfully doing other web series.
The story, insofar as the reader can make out - because a lot of it is open to interpretation, the way I see it, and you can make your own educated guesses - is this: Fiona's brother got addicted, by Dom's group, and so when she heard about Dom's murder she wanted to go see for herself because of her past connections.
She actually gets sent a video of herself pushing Jenny into the freezing waters, so you start to see the story in a different light, of Fiona being the mover behind it all.
She wanted revenge for her brother, that's obvious, but Dom?
Dom's complicated. Apparently, based on a second video she gets, he drank water that was poisoned, poisoned by a substance easily gotten from the mine, that same mine laying workers of for being druggies, and it could be extracted in a high school laboratory for how easy the process is. By, say, a chemistry professor conveniently also helping a group sue said mine, and tutoring a young skateboarder who lost his friend to drugs in the past.
The mom of said skateboarder also happens to be a pharmacist who knows doses and whatnot.
So I mean ... by the time you get to see the teenager make the jump across the tracks and, supposedly, reunite with his dead best friend (mirage, imagination, time bending?), it's tough to say what's fact and what's conjecture, but it DOES make for a hell of a good book!
This was a very well written book overall! And very Nordic Noir indeed haha, you can usually tell when a writer is from the Scandinavian area because there's just something that defines them, a gritty realism that's often times missing from American or British detective flicks.
The reason I'm only giving it four out of five stars, however, is that I feel like some transitions in the plot are a little rough around the edges, particularly the part where it suddenly becomes a hunt for the Village Phantom. Even during the conversation where this name pops up (and it's not a person, by the way, you'll learn it through reading the book), it isn't given a whole lot of significance whatsoever ... and then all of a sudden, two pages after, the journalist is making declarations as to who it is and how important they are, and whatnot!
Considering the focus to this point of the book has been pretty strictly pointed at a specific person and an investigation, the sudden shift to the Phantom feels like there might be half a chapter missing as to how the journalist got to this idea in the first place.
It's not the only instance, but it is the most glaringly obvious one, so I can't quite give the book 5 stars overall (not counting the fact that I have no clue why this journalist, Fiona, is even still employed at this point, because we're never given a reason why she hasn't lost her job when she always misses deadlines, undermines her superior, and does whatever she wants, flaunting the rules as she goes).
HOWEVER, it's a very enjoyable and gripping read, making you think through every page, so I think it's worth picking up.
Thank you so much to the author for letting me step into this world you created!
The reason I'm only giving it four out of five stars, however, is that I feel like some transitions in the plot are a little rough around the edges, particularly the part where it suddenly becomes a hunt for the Village Phantom. Even during the conversation where this name pops up (and it's not a person, by the way, you'll learn it through reading the book), it isn't given a whole lot of significance whatsoever ... and then all of a sudden, two pages after, the journalist is making declarations as to who it is and how important they are, and whatnot!
Considering the focus to this point of the book has been pretty strictly pointed at a specific person and an investigation, the sudden shift to the Phantom feels like there might be half a chapter missing as to how the journalist got to this idea in the first place.
It's not the only instance, but it is the most glaringly obvious one, so I can't quite give the book 5 stars overall (not counting the fact that I have no clue why this journalist, Fiona, is even still employed at this point, because we're never given a reason why she hasn't lost her job when she always misses deadlines, undermines her superior, and does whatever she wants, flaunting the rules as she goes).
HOWEVER, it's a very enjoyable and gripping read, making you think through every page, so I think it's worth picking up.
Thank you so much to the author for letting me step into this world you created!
xx
*image not mine
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