Latest recommended thrillers | Oamaru Lifestyle News | Health, Fashion, Food and Wine in Oamaru

The Hypnotist
by Lars Kepler, HarperCollins, $39

Another thriller by a Scandinavian and another dark, bleak, chilling novel. What is it about the Scandinavian climate that - from countries which are prosperous, enlightened and socialistic - induces writers to produce some of the most blood-curdling murder mysteries ever written?

This one is right up there with the most disturbing of them, and may even lead the field. Best not read on your own, especially at night. It's been compared to The Silence of The Lambs and The Shining, so that gives some idea of how hypnotically frightening this book is.

Police are investigating a triple-murder of family members, from which the eldest daughter managed to escape.   A disgraced doctor  uses hypnosis to extract facts from the only witness - a young boy suffering from severe shock, who saw his parents and little sister murdered.

This is seriously scary reading.

Exposed
by Liza Marklund, Random House,$39.99

Yet another murder-mystery from a Scandinavian writer, but not nearly as grisly as The Hypnotist.

Young trainee journalist Anika scores a job with Sweden's biggest tabloid. She hopes this will ignite her career, and it looks as if she's on to a scoop when a caller tells her about the naked corpse of a young woman found in the woods.

However, evidence  places the chief suspect hundreds of kilometres away from the scene at the time of the murder. Have the police got it wrong?

The more she investigates, the more she puts herself at risk.

This is a good read with a lot of pages (557) -  another thing the Scandinavians always guarantee.

Splinter
by Sebastian Fitzek, Allen and Unwin, $37

Fitzek is not Scandinavian but German. However, this book is right up there in the scary stakes.

It evokes  the frightening poems and fairy tales about witches and evil beings, which Germany has contributed to the lexicon of reading for children - only this is adult fare.

The reader simply doesn't know where they are - or what's going on - for much of this book. Neither does lead character Marc Lucas.

He is seriously troubled, trapped in a nightmare from which he cannot wake. Should he visit The Clinic, a mysterious place which claims to be a world leader in ridding you of traumatic memories? But has he been there before?

Trouble is, he can't remember.