READ IN DUTCH

And this is the other Black pseudonym I was talking about. Well, luckily I like this duo a lot better.



I had never really heard anything about the authors before, but I was positively surprised by this book. It was refreshing and interesting, once you stop minding the annoying lesbian jokes which are - needless to say - not funny. I did like the descriptions of Dublin though.



I've read one other book by Ingrid Black, and I think that after that they stopped translating them, because I never saw another one, unfortunately. ( )

The Dark Eye is the second in a series of dark mysteries featuring ex-FBI agent Saxon, who left the agency, wrote a bridge-burning account of her time there and moved to Dublin where she's at loose ends. She's supposed to be writing, but she'd much rather use her connections (her lover is head of Dublin's homicide squad) to investigate things on her own. So when a man phones her to say that someone is trying to kill him and asks her to meet with him out at Howth's lighthouse, she agrees and is given a convoluted mystery to occupy herself with. Along the way, she tangles with a serial killer, the art establishment and a bunch of seriously disturbed individuals. The ending is dramatic, but somewhat diluted by the need to explain things afterward.

This book is part of a series, but it stands alone well enough. It gives a bleak and somewhat hopeless version of Dublin. Saxon is a prickly and difficult character, somewhat reminicent of early Kay Scarpetta. She's interesting and opinionated, and not always able to control her tongue. She has a distinctly right wing view of justice, but there are plenty of more balanced characters to balance things out. ( )

This is one of the best thrillers I have recently read. The fact that it took place in Dublin in streets and areas I know was a bonus. A serial killer is on the loose and the police are baffled finding no link whatsoever among the victums. Saxon, a former FBI agent (with her own personal demons) turned crime writer in Dublin, is drawn in by a telephone call from a troubled man who claims someone is trying to kill him. She goes to meet him with unexpected results. One of the things I enjoyed about this book was the character Saxon whose wit and intelligence and bloody-minded determination makes the book come alive. I laughed aloud at some of her dialogue. There is a scene in an art gallery of photograghy where she tears a strip off the pretentious owner cutting through his esoteric artsy doubletalk. But to be fair to Saxon, he started it. There was a display of photographs of torsos of naked women with signs of violence. A chain lay over the body of one woman with clear bruise marks from being struck by the chain. The owner walked up to Saxon and asked whether she liked them. Liked them!!! He asked a woman if she liked photograghs of mutilated women. When Saxon finishes with him, he is a quivering mass of jelly. I actually read the scene several times it was so amusing. When he mentions the word "erotic" she really lets him have it.
This book is published by Headline, one of my favourite publishers of British mysteries, a division of Hodder Headline Ltd. ( )