If you are looking for something a little different, then step into this feel-good mystery which is full to overflowing with gentle humour, pointed social commentary, and a delicious plot. Following on from prize-winning and LoveReading Star Book Kalmann, our hero finds himself in trouble with the law and searching for answers about his grandfather who supposedly spied for the Russians. My advice if you haven’t yet, is to start with the first book, as well as being a fabulous read, it also gives the best introduction to Kalmann. I am a huge fan of his, Kalmann quite simply makes my heart smile. As a leading character he is a triumph and as a narrator he is to be celebrated. Jamie Lee Searle translates wonderfully again, I always feel it works well when the translator continues in a series, as of course they already know and understand the characters and have a developed relationship with the writing. While this mystery visits the USA and spends time at the Capitol riots, it is mostly centred in Iceland. The riots as seen from Kalmann’s point of view creates an absolutely fascinating and thought-provoking moment. Iceland, with its landscape, people, and history sings out and celebrates community. These aren’t traditional mysteries, they feel fresh, provocative, and this new book sits again as a LoveReading Star Book. Highly recommended, the powerful yet gentle Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain is an uninhibited firecracker of a read.
Kalmann is back! But he's already in trouble; in an interrogation room at the FBI headquarters in Washington, no less. All he wanted to do was visit his American father, but the loveable sheriff of Raufarhofn got himself mixed up in the January 2021 Capitol riots. Thanks to sympathetic FBI agent Dakota Leen, he's soon on a plane home. But not before she informs him that his grandfather was on a blacklist, suspected of spying for the Russians during the Cold War. Back in Iceland, there's a murder and one heck of a mystery to unravel. And what role does a mysterious mountain play in all this? Somehow Kalmann never loses heart. There's no need to worry; he has everything under control.
Joachim B. Schmidt, born in 1981, emigrated from Switzerland to Iceland in 2007. He is the author of several novels and short stories and a journalist and columnist. Joachim, of Swiss and Icelandic nationality, lives in Reykjavík with his wife and two children. Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain won the the 2024 Friedrich Glauser Prize, Germany's most prestigious award for crime fiction. It is the sequel to the best-selling Kalmann, previously published by Bitter Lemon Press.
