Title: The Final Days of Abbot Montrose, By Sven Elvestad
Genre: International
mystery
Description:
“It is an evening in early May when the
quiet of Montrose Abbey is shattered by the sounds of shouting and broken
glass. When the police arrive, they find the abbey library ransacked and
bloodstained. Broken furniture and a burning carpet bear witness to a violent
struggle. And the abbot himself, the scholarly Abbot Montrose, is missing. Only
a torn fragment of his cassock remains, caught in the wrought-iron fence
surrounding the abbey.”
Author:
Sven Elvestad
was a Norwegian journalist, who according to Wikipedia, was the first foreign
reporter to interview Adolf Hitler. He wrote his early fiction under the pen
name Stein Riverton. The Norwegian literary Riverton prize is named after him.
Wikipedia also notes that the style of one of his novels, The Iron Chariot,
compares with that of Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamson. If Hamson’s
breakout novel Hunger, about a young man incessantly whining about being
misunderstood, is illustrative of his style, I would very humbly suggest that
the compliment extends not from Hamson to Elvestad, but rather the reverse.
Appraisal:
The Final
Days of Abbot Montrose is a masterful who-done-it written in the golden age
of the genre, when the likes of Agatha Christe and the Ellery Queen duo were
spinning best sellers. Sven Elvestad weaves dual threads into a complex plot
abundant in twists, laced with humor, and populated with engaging characters.
The requisite hints as to the conclusion to a murder mystery are subtle but
laid out sufficiently so that the reader does not feel deceived by the writer
when all is revealed. Nothing is hidden, merely camouflaged.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
Format/Typo
Issues:
None
Rating: *****
Five Stars
Reviewed
by: Sam Waite
Approximate word count: 60-65,000 words
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