Blog tour: Under the Blazing Sun by Jenny Lund Madsen, translated by Paul Russell Garrett
This post is part of a blog tour organised by Random Things Blog Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.
‘Hannah is miserable. Her love life is in ruins, her contract demands a sequel to her bestselling crime debut – and she’s out of ideas. After a mortifying TV interview, her agent ships her off to a sun-drenched Sicilian villa with a simple order: finish the book. No distractions. No excuses.
‘But inspiration doesn’t strike – murder does.
‘When a night out ends in murder, Hannah finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation… again. The police want her out of the way, and the only person who seems to believe her is a young but charming Italian police officer. That is, until she doesn’t.
‘Soon Hannah is chasing suspects, fleeing crime scenes, and doing whatever it takes to avoid becoming the next victim. She came to write a crime novel. Now she’s trapped inside one.’
In Under the Blazing Sun, by Jenny Lund Madsen – the follow-up to Thirty Days of Darkness – irascible Danish author Hannah Krause-Bendix is again sent to an island by her editor/publicist Bastian to focus on producing a crowd-pleasing crime novel. This time, she’s staying in an isolated villa in Sicily, and is more interested in wine, food, and sunning herself by the pool than doing any writing.
However, it doesn’t take long for things to go very awry. Hannah spends her second night in Sicily at the fortress-like home of Hans and Greta Tauson, a wealthy Swedish couple who have taken her under their wing. In the morning, she discovers Greta bludgeoned to death on the kitchen floor, with Hans nowhere to be found. Having been at the scene of the crime, Hannah comes under police scrutiny, as do the Tausons’ young maid, Lucette, and, of course, the absent Hans.
But Hannah doesn’t think either of them are the murderer, and resents being a person of interest herself. This leads her to conduct her own investigation, helped by friends old and new – despite receiving a threatening letter, and her suspicion that someone dangerous is keeping tabs on her.
I found Under the Blazing Sun a fun, deceptively simple read. With its unlikely events, extremely lucky breaks, Mafia shenanigans, and unsubtle, cinematic climax, you’ll want to check your disbelief at the door, trust the author, and enjoy the journey.
Despite finding love with sort-of girlfriend Margrét, main character Hannah remains entertainingly grouchy, blunt and irrepressible. While I’d find her challenging to spend time with in reality, it’s fascinating to watch her make snap judgements of everyone she encounters, and display stunning audacity and recklessness in her (sometimes ingenious) methods of cracking the case.
Her mean-spirited observations (many of which, surprisingly, she just about manages to keeps to herself) can be very funny, and I could relate to her failure to sit down and write something, even when she had time and space ringfenced for her to do just that. Sometimes, the perfect conditions are just too perfect.
Hannah’s fellow crime writer and “frenemy” Jørn Jensen makes a welcome reappearance to help her with the case. As in the previous book, their repartee is really comical, especially because Jørn is so cartoonishly up himself, he takes any vitriol Hannah directs at him in good humour. While Hannah is motivated to solve the murder because she wants to clear her name and get justice for a woman she knew, however briefly, Jørn primarily wants to have an adventure and act like one of the heroes in his books.
Like Thirty Days of Darkness, Under the Blazing Sun can get very meta, as its (however reluctant) crime writer characters can’t help but ask themselves ‘what would I do if I was in a crime novel?’ While the supremely confident Jørn learns the hard way that acting like the characters he’s written doesn’t play out so well in “real life”, Hannah acknowledges that if she read in a book about some of the situations she ends up in, or actions she takes (one of which she even copies from one of Jørn’s books!), she’d dismiss them as too unrealistic, clichéd, illogical, or unworkable – but reality can be stranger than fiction.
I must admit, my brain is a little fried from thinking about this: by explicitly recognising its far-fetchedness, has the author essentially given herself carte-blanche to write an OTT – but therefore especially propulsive – novel? Does that matter, if it results in an entertaining read? I’ve been known to abandon crime novels when something so unrealistic happened that I simply couldn’t push through it, but because I’m aware this author pokes fun at the genre and its tropes, I simply assume any unlikely development is deliberately daft, and keep going (the good writing that makes me care about the characters and want to know whodunit helps too, of course!).
Under the Blazing Sun is a fun self-referential crime novel.
