Blog Tour: Smoke Screen by Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst tr. Megan Turney #excerpt #SmokeScreen #NordicNoir #BlixAndRamm #RandomThingsTours

Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove where it is my absolute pleasure to share with you an excerpt from Smoke Screen! My review is here if you want to have a look at that, but if you want the cliffnotes: it is brilliant! I mean, I didn’t put it on my Best of 2020 list just cos I adore the cover 🤷‍♀️😂 Many thanks to Anne Cater for having me on the tour, and to Orenda Books for the excerpt.

Let’s have a quick look at the blurb first:

Oslo, New Year’s Eve. The annual firework celebration is rocked by an explosion, and the city is put on terrorist alert.
Police officer Alexander Blix and blogger Emma Ramm are on the scene, and when a severely injured survivor is pulled from the icy harbour, Blix instantly recognises her as the mother of two-year-old Patricia Smeplass, who was kidnapped on her way home from kindergarten ten years earlier … and never found.
Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the unsolved case, as public interest heightens, the terror threat is raised, and it becomes clear that Patricia’s disappearance is not all that it seems…

Ready? Okay, let’s get to Oslo!

Alexander Blix battled his way through the flood of terrified people. He leapt over a flowerbed that was hiding under the snow and slipped on a patch of ice, somehow managing to stay on his feet. Sofia Kovic was close behind him. He listened through his earpiece as she radioed into the operations centre, alerting them to the explosion that had just occurred in front of Oslo City Hall.

A man was stumbling towards them, a charred open wound on his face and a bottle of champagne still in his hand. A woman with something sticking out of her leg limped nearby.

Blix ran past her. People were sprawled across the ground, blood soaked, groaning with pain. Others were sat half upright, dazed, their clothes in tatters. A dark, grey smoke screen had engulfed them.

He stopped, unsure where to begin.

Four bodies lay motionless near the end of the harbour. He ran towards them and knelt by the first body. A young woman with blonde hair. Shrapnel from the explosion had punctured her left eye. He searched her neck for a pulse but couldn’t find one. He moved over to another woman who had injuries to her chest and stomach. Her mouth was agape, her eyes wide open. He couldn’t find her pulse either.

Kovic had bent over a man wearing a grey coat. She looked up at Blix, met his gaze and shook her head.

Down at the water’s edge, slumped across one of the mooring posts, was another body, scorched from the waist up. A man, by the looks of it. His injuries were more severe than the others’. Half of his face and most of his chest had been torn to shreds. There was no point checking for a pulse.

Four dead.

The explosion had left a huge crater in the asphalt. The remnants of whatever had exploded were scattered around them, still on fire. Orders had started to come in over the police radio, something about a bomb, and that they should treat it as a terrorist attack.

Aha! But is it?! (Pre-)order your copy now and you shall know very very soon! Smoke Screen is out now in digital format and on the 18th in paperback.