Monday, May 05, 2014

Picture a “Norwegian” on Your Bookshelf

If you’ve been reading The Rap Sheet for a while, you know that I was a big fan of Norwegian by Night, the first novel by Derek B. Miller, released in hardcover (by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) just about a year ago. I included Miller’s book in a Kirkus Reviews rundown of my 10 favorite crime novels of 2013, championed it further in January Magazine’s “Best Books of 2013” compilation, and even included it among the nominees in The Rap Sheet’s poll to select last year’s best crime-fiction book covers. (It came in third.) Here’s what I wrote in January about the novel’s plot:
Eighty-two-year-old Sheldon “Donny” Horowitz is a retired, widowed, and Jewish watch repairman living well out of his element. His beloved granddaughter, Rhea, has moved him from New York City to Oslo to be with her and her new Norwegian husband, Lars. She fears that Sheldon--congenitally insolent and cranky in often comic measures--is fast slipping into dementia, since he claims to have been a sniper in the Korean War, rather than a mere file clerk. But after a Kosovar war criminal murders Sheldon’s neighbor and tries to take her son, it falls to our octogenarian philosopher-hero to flee with that boy, dodging cops and killers and, if disaster doesn’t intervene, finally deliver himself from the guilt he’s borne for his own son’s death. Ripe with memories of wars long ago fought and regrets insurmountable, this is a remarkably moving, memorable debut thriller.
This week, Mariner Books (a division of Houghton Mifflin) is finally bringing out Norwegian by Night in paperback. And because I enjoyed Miller’s tale so much, I would like to make it available to a wider audience. So, with the help of those good folks at Mariner, The Rap Sheet is offering five free copies of Norwegian by Night to its enthusiastic readers. If you’d like to enter the drawing, simply e-mail your name and postal address to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. And be sure to write “Norwegian by Night Contest” in the subject line. Entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Monday, May 12. The five winners will be chosen completely at random, and their names listed on this page the following day.

Sorry, but at the publisher’s request, this contest is open only to residents of the United States and Canada.

What are you waiting for? Send your entry in now!

1 comment:

Gram said...

Thanks for this offer.