American By Day

'A superb novel on all levels' Marcel Berlins, The Times 'Derek B Miller writes the kind of crime fiction the world needs right now. Principled, but not afraid to get down and dirty - and shot through with some of the sharpest humour you're likely to find.' Joseph Knox, bestselling author of Sirens She knew it was a weird place. She'd heard the stories, seen the movies, read the books. But now police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård has to leave her native Norway and actually go there; to that land across the Atlantic where her missing brother is implicated in the mysterious death of a prominent African-American academic. America. And not someplace interesting, either: upstate New York. It is election season, 2008, and Sigrid is plunged into a United States where race and identity, politics and promise, reverberate in every aspect of daily life. To find her older brother, she needs the help of the local police who appear to have already made up their minds about the case. Working with - or, if necessary, against -- someone actually named Sheriff Irving 'Irv' Wylie, she must negotiate the local political minefields and navigate the back woods of the Adirondacks to uncover the truth before events escalate further. At once a thrilling race-against-time crime story, a personal journey through grief and a meditation on the world in which we live, American By Day once again shows Derek B Miller to be one of the most imaginative, ingenious and entertaining writers working today.