Swedish paperbacks

Author copies time! I always love getting editions from other countries to see how the book looks on shelves across the world.

This is the Swedish paperback edition of The Samaritan - titled Den Onde Samariten (The Evil Samaritan).

If you're in Sweden, it's on sale now. Glad läsning!

I just found a great review from Dast Magazine last year, when the hardback came out. I don't speak much (okay, any) Swedish, but it's always fun to get Google to translate it:

By Mason Cross
The Samarithan, 2015
Translated by Gabriel Setterborg
Modernista, 2018
ISBN 978-91-7781-179-4, 431 pages

It is really strange that such an exhausted plot as the hunt for a serial killer can become so infernal exciting. Another remark is that authors of this very American genre are a Scot from Glasgow who embraced the really hard-boiled style that for seven, eight decades was introduced by Frank Morrison "Mickey" Spillane, among others. You are drawn very quickly into the evil Samaritan, Cross other thriller after last year's A long track of blood that introduced the human hunter Carter Blake.

The title comes from the fact that the serial killer got the nickname Samariten by offering help to women who got a motor stop, but instead of assisting he tortures his victims before cutting his neck with a saw-toothed knife. In the United States, such crimes have become a frightening reality along long and solitary routes of highway and according to the police, they are difficult to solve.

When a landslide exposes the bodies to three victims in the mountains near Santa Monica, the Los Angeles police investigator Jessica Allen is summoned, and this is not the first time she has seen anything like it - though on the other side of the continent. No traces, small chances of finding an offender.

A little hope is raised when Carter Blake arrives and offers his services, but initially suspicion is apparent. Blake's profile is too good for what they found out about the killer. But it turns out that the helper is a veritable track dog with a slightly scary ability to figure out the next Samarit's trait. And such comes when the killer raises his job to new, frightening levels. It is unpleasant but so exciting and temples that you do not want to stop reading, both about the hunt itself and about the protagonist's past that is about to set it up for him.

Mason Cross was born in 1979 in Glasgow, where he still lives with wife and three children. His previous book was nominated for Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. One doesn't need a load A long track of blood to keep the evil Samaritan . The books are independent of each other but if you want to know Carter Blake better (I think one wants it) it doesn't hurt to read the debut - and the following. Because there will be more.

LEIF PETER JONSSON

Author copies, and the first reviews of Presumed Dead

Author copies! Or, as we call it round these parts, George McFly Day.

I love the cover of Presumed Dead so much - it's easily the best cover I've ever had. Nothing to do with me, other than saying "Yep, that looks just about perfect." 

It's always a thrill to get the pre-publication delivery of a box full of books that you actually wrote, and this time was no exception.

Presumed Dead is published in the UK and associated territories (which means, I think, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland) next week, on April 19th. You can pre-order right now, or if you're going to be near Glasgow on the 18th, there's still tickets for the official book launch.

I've already had some great reviews and blurbs. The excellent Jenny Blackhurst, author of How I Lost You, The Foster Child and other thrillers, all of which you should definitely read, said:

"I absolutely LOVED it, move over Reacher, I have a new favourite hero."

Liz Barnsley is first off the blocks from the blogger scene:

 "It’s quite the rollercoaster ride let me tell you. Add to that small town blues, a suspicious Sheriff, more death, a bit of action and some cliff hanging shenanigans and you are onto a good thing. Then we have perhaps one of the best endings in a thriller novel I’ve come across for AGES. "

Over on Netgalley, Trev T says:

"a fast exciting ride as Blake attempts to be accepted, into this rural community, by a suspicious population and police force who do not welcome the interference of outsiders. It soon becomes clear that a killer is still active and as the body count mounts the lines between the past and present become increasingly blurred. Mason Cross performs the very skilful task of shielding the real killer until the final pages and that disclosure is nothing short of ingenious. "

I'm stoked the book is going down well so far. Can't wait to hear what readers think when it's out for real...

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