#Blogtour #Review - The Bleeding by Johana Gustawsson (trans David Warriner)

The Bleeding
Johana Gustawsson (trans David Warriner)
Orenda Books, 15 September 2022
Available as: HB, 259pp, PB, 259pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 978-1914585265 

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of The Bleeding to consider for review, and to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The Bleeding was for me a welcome return to Gustawsson's writing, writing that shows an uncanny ability to link a present-day mystery with events - nearly always bad, troubling events - in the past.

In The Bleeding, it's a triple timeline.

In modern Quebec, Detective Maxine Grant, who's suffering multiple family pressures (a recent pregnancy; a sulky, difficult teenage daughter; and a husband death in tragic circumstances) is called upon to investigate her old primary school teacher, who's apparently killed her own husband in a fenced attack. (Thirty one stab wounds).

In 1949, twelve year old Lina, bullied at school and neglected by her mother who's attempting to make ends meet after her own husband was killed in the War, finds friendship with the mysterious old lady who lives in the asylum.

And in 1899, Lucienne, a wealthy woman in Paris, loses both her kids in a catastrophic fire. Unable to accept their deaths, she turns to Spiritualism for some answers...

I have to say that the way Gustawsson brings these strands together and uses each to reinforce themes in the others, is nothing short of brilliant. Too much detail would spoil the careful unravelling of the plot, but I did find that taken together, the stories (or the story) amounts to a careful and damning study of the treatment of women in society. The details may be different (Lucienne's treatment by her husband, Lina's torment and public ridicule when her period comes, the pressures that Maxine is under) but they fit together to form a coherent and troubling hole.

At the same time, Gustawsson delivers an intricate and convincing police procedural, the darker moments lightened by the presence of Prof Ginette Montminny ('Gina'), a forensic psychologist assigned to unravel the prime suspect's motivations and behaviour. Gina is, we learn in passing, Emily Roy's teacher, so while Emily does not herself appear, we can be assured that Gina knows her stuff. It's a tribute to the skill of the author, and the desperation of somebody here, then, when a certain revelation occurs which I certainly hadn't seen coming and which cast much of the book in a new light.  (The book is excellent value, it will entertain you twice!)

A vivid and entertaining read, which packs in not only policework, male privilege (and betrayal) and an arresting depiction of life in three different epochs (showing not only how much has changed, but how much has not) but also, as if that weren't enough, a disturbing vein of the supernatural and a slightly sulphurous hint of corruption being passed from generation to generation. Innocent blood is both prized and at great risk here and one can't but feel that a final reckoning is coming.

All in all, another fine book form Gustawsson which David Warriner's translation serves excellently, producing English textured just enough to hint at the story taking place in a non-English speaking locale but not so much as to get in the way of a smooth read. 

For more information about The Bleeding, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Bleeding from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon. A limited signed and numbered edition with  sprayed edges is available from Goldsboro Books

Blogtour review - Keeper by Johanna Gustawsson

Cover design by kid-ethic.com

Keeper (Roy and Castells 2)
Johana Gustawsson (translated by Maxim Jakubowski)
Orenda Books, 30 April 2018
PB, 298pp

Today I'm joining the blogtour for Keeper, the new book by Johana Gustawsson- almost (but not quite) at the tail end. Do have a look at the poster for the other reviews, there have been some excellent ones so far. I'm grateful to Orenda for a copy of this book to review and to Anne for inviting me onto the tour.

In this second outing for Scotland Yard criminal profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells, Gustawsson again roots a modern day crime in a historical evil. In Block 46, the shadow haunting the present was Nazi medical experiments inflicted on prisoners, in Keeper, it's the Whitechapel Murders of the 1880s (the Jack the Ripper murders).

(Full disclosure, I reviewed Block 46 here and I'm quoted - with lots of others - at the front of Keeper).

Johann Gustawsson

I was relieved that while, in this book, Gustawsson looks back to the 1880s, she doesn't try to unpick or "solve" those crimes (though a theory is mentioned). That road has been well trodden. Rather she places a character alongside the killings, allowing that evil, that taint, as it were, to flow forward. Alongside the narration of the modern day crime, we see Freya in Victorian London, and her descendants, showing how abuse and cruelty can flow forward. Never judgemental, Gustawsson nonetheless presents some pretty shocking scenes - like Block 46, this is not a book for the easily upset, unlike that book there is a theme here of specifically misogynistic violence (as you might expect given the Ripper connection.).

If you've read Block 46, you'l know how good Gustawsson is at drawing you into her world, centred on the relationship between Emily and Alexis. They are not an easy pairing - in Keeper they really fall out over a past case which Emily wants reopened, a case which closely concerns Alexis. It;s an example of how complete a world this is, both women come to the series well established, more as if this were book 7 or 8 than merely 2, not only in their different histories but in how their relationship works.

Again, as in Block 46, the story cuts between the UK and Sweden and Gustawsson assembles an impressive cast to investigate what soon turn out to be related murders of women. I was impressed by this cast, in particular by Aliénor Lindbergh, a young Swedish analyst who has Asperger's syndrome. As someone with a relative who has autism I appreciated the portrayal of Aliénor as a rounded individual, not a set of behaviours, and also that while talented - she's doing a demanding job - Gustawsson doesn't portray her as a genius.The rest of the team in Sweden are impressive too, especially Karla, a woman detective having to put up with a degree of sexist ribbing while more or less running an important case.

All in all this is a complex, well plotted and credible crime novel, with a real punch at the end. It develops its central characters, of whom I hope we'll soon see more, and brings (I hope) a new member to the regular team. And as ever Maxim Jakubowski's translation keeps the story flowing along in English while leaving just a slight edge to the language, giving a hint, no more, of "outside looking in" - a bit of distance, of mystery.

Really looking forward to Book 3.