[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Martin Walker (another fav of mine!) has two books on offer depending on your location:

For fans of Walker's Bruno series who don't already have all the books, it may be worth your while to wishlist and keep an eye on the price of this HarperCollins Canada money-saving omnibus edition of the first 4 books:

Bruno, Chief of Police: Books 1-4, currently @ $19.99, which is not bad at $5 per book (regularly $9-12 individually, as far as I can tell), but Kobo Canada occasionally deep-discounts HarperCollins and other Canadian-branch omnibus editions during their periodic weekend sales or as the Deal of the Day, and sometimes the other Canadian stores match them.

In the recent past I've scored for $4.99 each from the weekend sale:

1. Gail Bowen's The Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries 3-book bundle: Volume 1, #1-3 currently $19.99
2. Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole Mysteries 3-book bundle, #7-9 currently $24.99
3. Guy Gavriel Kay's Guy Gavriel Kay: Three Novels, 3 standalones currently $29.99

And at the $2.99 mark as the Deal of the Day, I got:

• Kim Harrison's Kim Harrison Bundle #1, #1-4, currently $19.99

So while I was pretty tempted by the 1st Bruno book when it dropped to 99 cents during Kobo's Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale, I personally opted to hold out for a future sale on the omnibus, since the library has these.

Originally Posted by sufue

@AT Drake, from previous posts, I think you and I may have similar historical mystery tastes, and I've read the first 2 in this series and the one with the 2nd Armada threat, and have liked them. Thanks for a chance to pick up a couple more at good prices!

Thanks for your recommend of the John Shakespeare series.

I recently read and enjoyed the 1st-in-series of both the Martin Jensen King's Hounds Danelaw illuminator medievals (currently on sale for $2 each upthread, if anyone else wants to try them) and the Mel Starr Hugh Singleton English medical medievals you'd recommended and liked them quite a lot, so I'm going to trust your judgment again and grab the 1st to try out this weekend and see if I want to scoop the rest (in case HC decides to raise the prices suddenly).

Speaking of AmazonCrossing stuff, another one of their translated exclusive Nordic crime mysteries has gone on sale again:

Bargain @ $1.99 from Amazon only from their AmazonCrossing imprint (price good for Canada & US, possibly other countries, but not the UK when I tried; IIRC it's one of their periodic sale deals which goes to mid-month):

Sun on Fire by Icelandic novelist Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson (SYKM, Wikipedia), 2nd in his unnamed maybe-series starring Reykjavik police detectives Gunnar Maríusson & Birkir Li Hinrikson, an ethnic Icelander whose mother is a German immigrant, and a Vietnamese-born naturalized Icelander of possibly Chinese descent (together, they fight solve crime!).

I've bought read both this and the 1st-in-series a couple of months ago, and quite liked them. IMHO, this 2nd book is the better of the two, even though the 1st was popular enough to be adapted into an Icelandic TV mini-series.

You can read these standalone, since the character relationships are treated as long since established, with no major changes between the books, which also don't reference-spoiler the previous case. They're also a pretty nifty dip into modern Icelandic cultural and social issues, if you're interested in such.

When the gutted body of a businessman is discovered in the Icelandic embassy in Berlin, Iceland’s best detectives are sent to Germany to investigate the crime.

The stab wounds and the murder weapon—an elegant hunting knife—suggest a ritualistic killing. But the only suspects present in the sleek modern office building were some of the island nation’s cultural elite, including Jón the Sun Poet and ceramics artist Lúdvík Bjarnason. The victim is someone few would miss, and investigators Birkir and Gunnar, joined by forensics expert Anna Thórdardóttir, wager they have an open-and-shut case on their hands.

What they find is anything but: The crime reeks of premeditation and vengeance, and leads the team into a sordid tale of international child abuse, arson, and retribution.