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by Hakan Nesser
The Summer of Kim Novak has all the tension and mystery of Nesser's world-famous thrillers, combined with a coming-of-age tale of remarkable psychological precision.
Sweden in the '60s. Erik and his friend Edmund spend their vacation by a forest lake daydreaming about Ewa, a young substitute teacher with an uncanny resemblance to the actress Kim Novak. The boys are having the time of their lives until a shocking discovery disrupts their world. Twenty-five years later, Erik comes across a newspaper article about unsolved crimes and is overwhelmed by memories and questions from that summer of his youth. What actually happened back then?
"Nesser sensitively probes the agonies and ecstasies of adolescence, making this an exquisite example of Nordic noir's ability to reveal the darkest emotional depths beneath a cloudless summer sky." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Nesser's novel gains in power as it raises difficult questions about memory and morality." - Kirkus Reviews
"Nesser has a penetrating eye for the skull beneath the skin." - The New York Times
"A deft anatomist of character." - O, The Oprah Magazine
"One of the foremost Swedish crime authors." - The Times (UK)
"Nesser is one of the best of the Nordic Noir writers, unafraid of moral ambiguity and excellent at building a brooding atmosphere." - The Guardian (UK)
"Hakan Nesser brings a light touch to tales of appalling crime." - Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Not all Scandinavian crime fiction is gory and gloomy; it can also be lyrical and delicate, soaked in sunshine and surrounded by beautiful welcoming nature, yet with a touch of suspense gently simmering underneath the idyllic surface. Especially when it's written by Hakan Nesser, one of the Swedish masters of Nordic Noir." - Crime Review
"Not only a brilliant thriller, but also a sensitive and atmospheric portrayal of a coming-of-age adventure." - Frankfurter Neue Presse (Germany)
"Nesser writes very emphatically, very clearly and even wittily. A first-class thriller." - Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany)
"A must-read." - RTL (Luxemburg)
This information about The Summer of Kim Novak 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.
Hakan Nesser worked as a secondary school teacher in Uppsala before becoming a writer full-time. One of Sweden's most beloved authors, his crime novels have been extremely successful in both his home country and internationally, and have resulted in several films. Nesser was the first author to be awarded the prize for Best Swedish Crime Novel three times, and is the only writer ever to win the Danish Palle Rosenkrantz Prize twice. He was also awarded the European Crime Fiction Star Award in 2010. Nesser's books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold over twenty million copies worldwide.
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