Walter Lucius (1954–2021)

This crime thriller is the first of a trilogy billed, as many thrillers are, as the new Millennium Trilogy. ‘Butterfly on the Storm’ by Walter Lucius does feature horrific examples of abuse, it does feature a campaigning journalist, but for me it fell short of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy. Without that expectation, I would probably have enjoyed this thriller while at the same time being irritated that so much was crammed in.
The action starts from page one and doesn’t stop to breathe. A young girl is the subject of a hit-and-run accident in the Amsterdam woods. In hospital, it becomes clear the girl is a young boy, dressed as a girl dancer and sexually abused by Afghan men now living in Holland. I found the portrayal of immigrant life in Holland fascinating and almost wish the author had examined this in more depth but the story spreads out to South Africa and Russia and its tentacles become confusing.
Accompanying the child to hospital is Dr Danielle Bernson who, following medical experience in Africa, is traumatized when she sees the child suffer. At the hospital, they meet journalist Farah Hafez, originally from Afghanistan, Farah’s identity was changed when she arrived as a child in Holland. She too has a lot of emotional baggage. Farah’s boss teams her with a more experienced journalist, Paul Chapelle, who she knew in Afghanistan. On the police side we have the pair of detectives assigned to the hit-and-run case, Joshua Calvino and Marouan Diba, a sort of young/old, idealistic/world-weary, good cop/bad cop pairing. There is a huge list of characters to accommodate the various storylines which include child trafficking, police corruption, political corruption, Russian violence and international terrorism. There is too much going on.
In the Millennium Trilogy, the first book had a clear distinctive story which allowed the reader to get to know the key characters which would move forward to book two. In ‘Butterfly on the Storm’, the first book feels like the episode of a television series where the ending has a hook to make you watch next week. This may work with television, but it left me feeling the novel was incomplete.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/… (mais)

A young child is found in the middle of a road in the Amsterdam Bos, the apparent victim of a hit and run accident. However the child is a boy dresses as a girl and the doctor who finds him is concerned. An exiled Afghan journalist, Farah, happens upon the boy in the hospital and is able to comfort him as she speaks the language, she believes that he was involved in a Afghan ritual of child abuse. Meanwhile Detectives Calvino and Diba are trying to find out what happened. All signs point to corruption and abuse at the highest levels in Dutch politics and business, and links with Russia to boot.

This book is the first in a series of novels which have been likened to Stieg Larsson in that they feature mavericks looking into crime in the higher echelons of business and politics. In that way there is a similarity however I think there are major dissimilarities as well. Whilst this book is entertaining it is also quite confusing. That may be that because it is the first in a trilogy and a lot of background has to be put in place but I found the action jumped around a lot and the protracted ending in the last quarter just seemed to be a series of set pieces following one after the next. Having said all that the story is interesting, particularly around the links between the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the Russian involvement in Chechnya. I would not discount following this series as I think it will improve in subsequent volumes.… (mais)

Dit boek is als een film-script geschreven, compleet met sensationele actie scenes. Helaas blijkt dan dat de film beter is dan het boek. Buiten de filmische scenes is het een heel aangenaam geschreven boek, met uitgewerkte karakters en een boeiend verhaal. Wat ik persoonlijk ook storend vind is hoe fictie en werkelijkheid door elkaar heen lopen. Zo wordt het Tsjetsjeens - Russische conflict gebruik, maar dan wel de president van Rusland Putanin of zoiets noemen. Het summum echter is dat de schrijver 90 % van zijn karakters in een apocalyptisch ongeluk op de A9 verzameld, daar wordt de geloofwaardigheid onderuit gehaald. Naast al deze kritiek is het spannende thriller met veel facetten. Toch een aanrader… (mais)