Blood Angel
Book two about Hilma
English sample available
On a cold winter morning, a six year old girl calls the 112 Emergency Line from an unknown number and says that her mother is dead.
The girl doesn’t know where she is, who owns the house, the address – but there is a trampoline in the garden.
Unfortunately, the winter storm has blown a lot of trampolines out of their gardens that night.
The Police can see that the phone is located in the outskirts of Reykjavik and when they finally manage to find the house – it’s empty, but full of blood.
Hilma and her team are desperate in finding the mother and the daughter – a search that brings them into the darkest corners of human nature.
A thriller that hooks you right from the beginning. Oskar Gudmundsson's narrative style is extremely captivating- no wonder his first book, Hilma, won the Blood Drop, the Best Icelandic Crime Novel in 2016.
Morgunbladid Iceland
Blood Angel is an independent sequel to the author's first novel but it's not necessary to start with the first one to enjoy the sequel. Actually, it's referred to events in the previous book in such a way that it's not unlikely that the reader will decide to read Hilma right after Blood Angel to get a better insight into the clever police woman's thoughts and life.
To follow the investigation of the disappeared mother and daughter which the police can't find any trace of, apart from a lot of blood and one finger, is hypnotizing. As a matter of fact, the author never looses the reader's attention, not when he is describing Hilma's favourite café nor how the horrifying events took place. And in the end, the investigation leads us into a reality which is more uncanny and more discusting than the reader could ever have imagined. Thus, the book is not recommended for the very sensitive.
Eventhough it's a classic thriller which we know quite well, Blood Angel is not one of those you can put down after reading and not giving it a thought because the debauchery follows the reader for quite some time after the case is closed and the book ends. I really do hope that we get more books with Hilma.