2023
The matriarch of a wealthy Norwegian dynasty commits suicide on the family estate. Her unpublished memoirs about the family’s trauma – a wartime ship disaster that killed her husband and hundreds of others – are missing. Her granddaughter embarks on a journey to find the manuscript. Aided by a discredited secret agent with his motives, they wind up the family’s labyrinthian past – a dark and dramatic story of secrets, betrayals, and doomed love.
The Cemetery of the Sea is a literary thriller and a sweeping family saga in the style of Donna Tartt, Joël Dicker, and Carlos Ruiz Záfon, a colorful drama about power and inheritance inspired by the great tales from the 19th century as well as modern tv series. Distinctly set in Norway, exploring universally human issues, the novel ends in a fateful final voyage along the stunningly scenic Norwegian coast. The quest to uncover the truth 75 years later converges in the shipwreck on the bottom of the sea 300 meters below the surface – where the shocking truth lies buried …
6/6 stars: Take an enormous fortune, a devastating family secret, Machiavellian politics and strong wills in conflict. Add unsuited inheritors, Norwegian special forces and a hint of the Harlequin novel. The result: A lavish crime novel that not even the most critical reader can resist (…)
The reading evokes Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, with their portrayal of dark family secrets hidden beneath a weighty layer of tradition and money (…) Aslak Nore has written a smashing crime novel ... with a compelling plot that holds the reader enthralled from the first page to the last.
5/6 stars …. a tale of the epic sort that often gets – and in this case deserves – a large audience.
Aslak Nore
Javad Parsa
