Zodiac by Anamaria Ionescu
When investigator Sergiu Manta is handed the investigation into a series of bizarre murders, he can't sure what he's getting involved in as he has to work with regular detective Marius Stanescu, who has his own suspicions about the biker he has been told to work with, and wants to get to the truth. The twists and turns of their investigation takes them from the city of Bucharest to the mountains of rural Romania, and back.
Review
This book is a bit confusing at the start as there are so many characters and not a lot of introduction to them. However, keep going as once you have figured about stuff this is a captivating book about the secret intelligence of Romania.
The main characters of Sergiu and Dragos are well formed, extremely likeable and a great foundation of this series. You find out some of the Sergiu’s background but I am sure there is more to be found out there! I hope that both of them are going to feature in future books. I did also really enjoy the character of the supporting detective Marius as he is intelligent and determined to find out the truth but is also a caring family man.
The story is strong - lots of red herrings and then we are able to see the real reasons about half way through the book, so the pacing is excellent. It is a very fast read - you want and need to know why these people were killed and how they were linked. The ending does not come across as being far-fetched it is very believable that this could happen, especially in a country which is still feeling the after affect of the USSR and communism.
I can’t wait to read the next in the series.
Corylus Books
Corylus Book is a new venture aiming to publish fiction translated into English. The people behind the company have very different backgrounds, but what brings us together is a deep appreciation of crime fiction and a strong interest in books from countries that so have been under-represented in English.
It took a while before it turned out that everyone’s thoughts had been on similar lines – that we wanted to take a chance on presenting some of the great European crime fiction that wouldn’t normally make its way into English. With a mixture of language, translation and other skills between the four of us, it seemed the logical next step to take.
The first Corylus books are a pair of Romanian crime novellas, Living Candles by Teodora Matei and Zodiac by Anamaria Ionescu.
There’s more to come in 2020 – starting with Romanian novelist’s Bogdan Teodorescu’s Sword, a powerful political thriller that has already been a bestseller in Romania and in its French translation. Sword will be available in May and will be followed later in the year by the first of two books by Icelandic crime writer Sólveig Pálsdóttir. The Fox will be available in the second half of this year, followed by Shackles in 2021.
And there’s more to come, with a novel by Bogdan Hrib set partly in Romania and partly in the north-east of England, a second novel from Teodora Matei, and we’re talking to more exciting writers from across Europe about what we can do together...
