Exciting news: we’re unveiling the cover of our new book, and you’re invited to the in-person launch event for it!
Dead Men Dancing
‘He realised that he would drown here. Someone had crafted this seat to drown people. To drown him. Terror rushed from his brain to rouse every cell in his body, but there was nothing to be done. He was well and truly tethered. Slowly it dawned on him that he did know why he was sitting here. He’d spent all his life running from this nightmare, and now he’d landed in its clutches.’
Dead Men Dancing (in Faroese Deydningar dansa á sandi), by the best-selling Faroese crime writer, Jógvan Isaksen, begins with the discovery of a corpse on the beach – the body of a man who has been shackled to rocks and left to drown. As the journalist Hannis Martinsson investigates, he comes across evidence of more deaths which have been caused in the same way, and he starts to realise that they are all linked to a local revolt several decades earlier, which tore a community apart. The repercussions have continued to the present day, and Hannis’ enquiries soon put his own life in danger.
The Hannis Martinsson detective series
With support from FarLit, Norvik Press are publishing this crime novel from Isaksen’s Martinsson series, in English translation by Marita Thomsen. You may have read other novels in the Martinsson series – Walpurgis Tide (Krossmessa), translated by John Keithsson and published by Norvik Press in 2016, is available in print and as an eBook – or you may have seen the TV series TROM, which is adapted from Isaksen’s books.
Either way, we think you’ll be interested in what follows!
Choosing the cover
The Norvik Press team looked at several different cover designs before choosing the winner, created by Essi Viitanen. With striking teal text on a dark background (and a coloured spine to match!), it depicts an eerie cave-mouth viewed from within. Readers of the opening scene of Dead Men Dancing will appreciate this reference immediately. Intriguingly, this exact cave-mouth actually exists in the Faroe Islands.
Ready to launch!
Norvik Press and the Representation of the Faroe Islands to the UK cordially invite you to the launch of Dead Men Dancing.
Join us for an evening of Faroese Noir, with renowned crime fiction and film specialist, Barry Forshaw (Crime Time) in conversation with the author Jógvan Isaksen, the translator Marita Thomsen and the screenwriter and creator of the TV crime series TROM, Torfinnur Jákupsson. We will be celebrating contemporary Faroese creativity and getting a first-hand insight into Faroese crime writing, both on the page and adapted for the screen.
A reception will follow the discussion, and copies of Dead Men Dancing will be available for purchase, as well as Walpurgis Tide.
Sign up for your free ticket here: bitly.ws/Wmw8
View our press release: Press Release – Dead Men Dancing
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