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by S.J. Gazan
Danish author S.J. Gazan established herself as an international talent to watch with her debut thriller novel, The Dinosaur Feather. In addition to being named "Crime Novel of the Decade" by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, NPR's Maureen Corrigan called it her favorite mystery of 2013, and The Wall Street Journal's Tom Nolan placed it in his year-end top ten list.
Now, Gazan's much-anticipated follow-up is here, bringing back maverick policeman Soren Marhauge. In The Arc of the Swallow, a perilous investigation reveals a profit-motivated conspiracy involving the upper reaches of Big Pharma, government, and academia.
Biology Ph.D. candidate Marie Skov is devastated when, on the same day as her mother's death, her mentor Kristian Storm apparently kills himself. Storm had been facing academic dishonesty charges, as well as heated criticism of his research on a vaccine for African children - that suggested the vaccine was causing more harm than it was preventing.
Skov is skeptical that the death was a suicide. She knows Storm's research on the vaccine was sound, and learns that his on-site work in Guinea-Bissau was marred by intimidation, sabotaged data, and the suspicious death of another scientist. She also learns that in his final days, Storm felt he was being followed by a blue Ford with tinted windows.
Soon afterwards, a blue Ford with tinted windows parks across from Skov's home. The police have no interest in re-examining the official narrative. But Marhauge shares Skov's desire for answers, and defies his superiors to help her investigate. They receive unlikely help from a Nobel Prize-winning rival of Storm's, and find themselves on a perilous trail that leads to Big Pharma and the World Health Organization.
Interwoven in this thrilling storyline are deeply-moving portraits of Skov's troubled family and Marhauge's tenuous relationship with his girlfriend, another biologist. The result is a complex page-turner that establishes S.J. Gazan (herself a biologist) as a world-class author at the beginning of a formidable career.
"An amazingly suspenseful scientific thriller ... you will be entertained, provoked, and educated along the way. One of the best [crime novels] I have read, and one you should treat yourself to." - Femina (Denmark)
"Sissel-Jo Gazan once again demonstrates the careful composition and genre skill that is needed to create a crime novel with more to offer ... It has taken her five years to get there, and she scores highly on all the components that an entertaining and challenging crime novel should contain." - Politiken (Denmark)
"The author writes elegantly and with obvious warm insight into her fellow human beings. A family chronicle that evolves into a scientific thriller, and it goes down like ice cream on a hot summer's day." - Antennen (Denmark)
This information about The Arc of the Swallow was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Danish born S.J. Gazan graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a degree in biology. Her debut work of crime fiction, The Dinosaur Feather, was awarded the Denmark Radio Literature Prize 2008 for Best Novel of the Year and went on to become a national bestseller. The Danish Broadcasting Corporation voted The Dinosaur Feather the Crime Novel of the Decade, and in January 2013, it was awarded the Literature Prize of the Ambassadors of the French-Speaking Countries. It has been sold into more than a dozen countries.
S.J. Gazan holds a masters degree in Biology from Copenhagen University, where she specialized in bird origins. While finishing her master studies Sissel-Jo decided to combine her passions as a biologist and novelist and write a scientific thriller. "I took my own ...
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