Selected by NPR's Maureen Corrigan and The Wall Street Journal's Tom Nolan as one of the best mysteries of the year, Gazan's The Dinosaur Feather--which the Financial Times called "outrageously entertaining"--is a classic of modern Scandinavian noir.
With keenly observed and deeply flawed characters, this scintillating thriller revolves around the controversial and fascinating connections between dinosaur and avian evolution. Biology postgraduate, PhD hopeful, and single mom Anna Bella Nor is just two weeks away from defending her thesis on the saurian origin of birds when her academic supervisor, the highly respected yet widely despised Dr. Lars Helland, is found dead in his office chair at the University of Copenhagen. The police discover a copy of Anna's thesis in the dead man's bloody lap.
When the autopsy suggests that Helland was murdered in a fiendishly ingenious way, brilliant but tormented young Police Superintendent Soren Marhauge is called to investigate. As he begins the daunting task of unraveling the knotted skeins of interpersonal and intellectual intrigue among the scientists at the university, his own troubled past begins to complicate the case.
Everyone involved with the investigation--from Anna Bella Nor to Helland's numerous academic rivals to Marhauge's own ex-wife, who is pregnant with her current husband's child--has something to hide, muddying the investigation and presenting the detective with the greatest professional and personal challenge of his life.
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“Gazan…orchestrates the suspenseful action and overlapping lives of her complex characters with deceptive ease. Just as impressively, she manages to integrate Anna’s superficially arcane research on whether birds descended from dinosaurs with the novel’s moving exploration of such broader themes as parenthood, love, and the potentially poisonous results of living with lies.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The asides--the dissemination of DNA, the structure of dinosaur skulls--prove as intriguing as the central mystery. A top-flight thriller that's poisonous, smart, and outrageously entertaining.
— Christopher Fowler, Financial TimesIntelligently plotted and psychologically believable.
— Marcel Berlins, The TimesImaginative . . . a book with an independent, capable female lead, and one in which scientific research is central.
— Maxine Clark, EurocrimeGazan's novel has by far outdone--not to say outshone--all other crime novels published this year.
— Anette Dina Sorensen, PolitikenMy best mystery of the year turns out to be yet another stunner from Scandinavia. I could be wrong (but I don't think I am) when I say that Gazan disposes of a murder victim here by an infernal means that no other mystery writer--not even the resourceful Dame Agatha--ever concocted.
— Maureen Corrigan, NPRGazan has mastered the arts of suspense and revelation.
— Kristeligt DagbladGazan's brainy thriller . . . orchestrates the suspenseful action and overlapping lives of her complex characters with deceptive ease . . . [A] moving exploration of such broader themes as parenthood, love, and the potentially poisonous results of living with lies.
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)The Dinosaur Feather is the weirdest and most ingenious new mystery I've read in years . . . It will be obvious to readers why Gazan's novel would be the leader of almost any pack. Moody and intricate, The Dinosaur Feather is every bit as unforgettable as its creepy title.
— Maureen Corrigan, The Washington PostFormidable and satisfying . . . in the author's menacing world, sins of emotional cowardice and betrayal can be just as awful as offenses against the criminal code.
— Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal (selected as a top-ten mystery of the year)Simply first-class.
— Jyllands-PostenSkulls, feathers, claws, and winged flight--all are part of an ongoing scientific controversy about the evolution of birds that winds through the pages of Danish author S.J. Gazan's absorbing debut thriller.
— Barbra Clark, BookPage“Gazan…offers vivid sketches of academic politics, scientific rivalries, and avian evolution. She also offers lengthy backstories on Anna, Soren, and Helland’s Canadian rival, which provide depth and texture but interfere with the narrative flow.”
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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 2008 Denmark Radio Literature Prize 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. It has been sold into more than a dozen countries. Gazan lives in Berlin with her family.