I listed to The Baztán Trilogy a couple of years ago and was overjoyed when a new book was released by Dolores Redondo.

The North Face of the Heart takes place before the stories in the trilogy. In this book, we get to know Amaia Salazar when she was a young detective training with the FBI. I especially liked that in this book FBI agent Aloysius Dupree was a big part of the story. I was fascinated by him in the trilogy, so it was thrilling to finally get a book with him with a bigger role. Loved the book, engrossing from the beginning to the end, Now I just hope for more books with Amaia Salazar.

This took me by surprise, I was intrigued by the cover and title and requested it from NetGalley, and I hadn't even read the synopsis, lol. But boy, did it deliver!

Thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for my eARC.

This was such an intriguing story, he dark element just absolutely captivating! Amazing pace and brilliant writing! I couldn't put it down and pick up anything else for two days straight!

It baffled, amazed and stressed me out in every possible way! I enjoyed how all the events and reveals ended up intertwining beautifully!
Also, this was my first time reading this author, and I'm delighted to say I've found a new fav with Dolores Redondo!

I just love it when books like this one force me to keep thinking of them for a while, it will live with me for long. Totally recommend!

Favorite Quotes:

Bill and Bull. They’re with the Violent Crimes Unit. These fellas have arrested more criminals than all the rest of my officers combined. They know these streets better than anyone... If I had a son, I’d trust them with his life; if I had a daughter, I’d keep her out of their reach.

Juan had difficulty with words… he was overwhelmed by the very fact that every object had its own unique name. He was one of those who thought things existed only when they were spoken of, so he could exclude horrors from his life and home by refusing to put them into words.

Her first thought was to go to the nearest toilet. She didn’t care if it was filthy. She needed her privacy, even if she had to pee on the floor. This is teaching me a lesson, she thought. Comes a time, from one day to the next, when we find ourselves ready to accept things we swore we’d never put up with.

… it was far better to be nice to someone like her than to get on her bad side. As his late grandmother used to say— and she knew a lot about it— you don’t have to believe they exist, but don’t you dare go around claiming they don’t.


My Review:

This is a brilliant piece of writing and of superb quality. I was late getting to this one and thought I would give it a quick start before beginning my scheduled tasks but soon changed all my plans as I was bewitched and couldn’t put it down. Ms. Redondo sucked me into a baffling, disconcerting, complex, prickly, and distressingly compelling vortex that tossed me in several different directions without a playbook of the plethora of uncomfortably intriguing storylines that eventually connected and entwined.

It was heart-squeezing, ghastly, inconceivable, curiously addictive, gritty, twisted, riveting, and ingeniously paced and executed. I'll be processing and savoring this one for quite some time as the little pea in my brain is still unpacking and connecting all the dots. I consumed this book as quickly as my tired optical orbs and feverish brain could take in 500 action-packed pages, and oddly enough, I would have been thrilled with 500 more of the same.

An intense and well-fashioned thriller with lots of twists and turns until the very end.

Amaaia Salazar has been working as a detective in northern Spain using her unique skill set to solve crimes. Now, she finds herself with a group of trainees at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Amaia is assigned to work with FBI agent Aloisius Dupree, who is very familiar with her skills and way of understanding evil using her intuition. They are searching for a serial killer known as “the Composer,” and Dupree is looking to solve another case that has evaded him for years. The Composer sends them on a search from New Jersey to Oklahoma to Texas over years that coincides with natural disasters. The latest natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, sends them to New Orleans where the destruction is worse than ever and the body count climbs higher and higher. As Amaia works to figure out little clues to bring the Composer to justice, ghosts from her childhood reemerge making the case hit closer to home and causing her to question everything she’s ever known.

The North Face of the Heart is a great suspense thriller with a lot of depth to it. The story is not one you can rush through, lots of depth to the characters and mysteries they are trying to solve. All of that made for a great story; for me though, the hardest part to get past was the head hopping. It’s common to have different characters points of views throughout a book but it is supposed to be one point of view at time. Here there were several instances readers would be in one character’s head and what they were feeling and thinking and the very next paragraph would be a different character’s point of view. At first it was very confusing and hard to tell who’s head I was in and then it would switch. For me this is a problem because it took me out of the story, I would be reading along and then have to stop to figure this out, I couldn’t just keep reading, I had to go back and reread to figure out what was happening. If there was a break in paragraphs to show it was changing, that would have helped but that wasn’t the case. Overall, it was a great story if the writing had been cleaner. Now, this book was written and then translated so some of it could have been lost in translation. I would recommend this book to readers that enjoy a good mystery that is detailed and full of twists that will keep them guessing.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within are my own.

True crime and thrillers and crime fiction are among my favorite genres. I love a good dark thriller and when you add a serial killer and FBI profilers, it hits all my sweet spots. Still, I was worried when The North Face of the Heart arrived because of the size of the book--at almost 500 pages is a big commitment for me with an insane work schedule and many other books for review, book clubs and buddy reads competing for my attention. Also translated books (this one from Spanish) can sometimes get bogged down in the translation. But this one got under my skin pretty quickly, and I found myself compelled to read it and find out what was going to happen next.

Amaia Salazar is twenty-five and already an Assistant Inspector in Paloma, Spain who has gained some notoriety for solving a cold case when she is sent to the Quantico with a group of European police officers for training. Her profiling abilities and confidence get her noticed by the senior agent working on a case where a serial killer is targeting and murdering families during storms and natural disasters and has been getting away with it for almost two decades. Soon she is placed on the profiling team and headed for New Orleans and one of the biggest disasters in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina. The book alternates between 2005 and flashbacks to Amaia's childhood where she suffered some serious trauma that still impacts her as an adult. Although primarily told through Amaia's eyes, we get the POV of other characters, past and present. The pacing was good--you could feel the tension build along with the gale-force winds of Katrina and that made it hard to put the book down. Amaia is a great character and the most fully flushed out in the book--it was easy to root for her. This book is apparently a prequel of sorts to the author's bestselling Spanish Baztán trilogy. (I was happy to find that Netflix made this into a trio of films that I am going to start streaming this weekend). I liked the darkness of the story, the crushing and horrific reality of the people who suffered through Hurricane Katrina (difficult to read but so compelling) and the bits of Spanish and Creole folklore that is woven into it all. It's not a perfect book, the dialogue gets a bit clunky, possibly due to the translation, and some of the characters seem to fall into crime fiction tropes, but overall, I really enjoyed it, it was well-worth my time, and I plan to seek out the author's other books.

The North Face of the Heart is the prequel to the Redondo’s popular Baztán trilogy, which I haven’t read, and is translated into English by Michael Meigs (who oddly turns up as a character: “our team leader there is Michael Meigs, a great guy”).

This novel tries to include it all: Hurricane Katrina and FEMA’s response, multiple dysfunctional families, multiple serial killers, unlikely romance, racism, misogyny, magic realism, good cop/bad cop….. The novel would have benefitted from paring down to tighten up the story line.

At 15% in, I made 4 predictions to myself about what would happen by the end and unfortunately I was 4/4.

Readers who enjoy trilogy will probably enjoy this prequel. I found it predictable and unfocused.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to review the ARC via Netgalley.

Wow! This book really blew me away. Yes, it is a suspense/mystery novel, but it is also so much more. It is true literary fiction with an amazingly complex plot and characters. Redondo sets much of the book in New Orleans immediately before, during and after Katrina. She does an amazing job of capturing the natural disaster and the very human failings that caused so many to suffer. And she does all of this while keeping the reader guessing about who the murderer is and how the private lives and backgrounds of the FBI agents inform their approach to the case. This was a fantastic read and I can hardly wait for the next Redondo novel.

Eerie and atmospheric: Dolores Redondo's thriller, 'The North Face of the Heart,' hits with the force of a hurricane

The human heart has four distinct chambers. Not so “The North Face of the Heart.” Dolores Redondo’s atmospheric new thriller is multifaceted and layered, driving a compelling search for a serial killer into the heart of a hurricane.

Fans of Redondo, one of Spain’s bestselling writers, are familiar with the brilliant detective Amaia Salazar. Here, the author offers a prequel to her Baztan trilogy in a standalone origin story: Salazar is only 25 and an assistant inspector with a provincial Spanish police force who’s been invited to attend a series of law enforcement lectures in the United States.

During one of those lectures, Salazar learns about a serial killer, aka the Composer, targeting families who are victims of natural disasters. Already on the FBI’s radar for a past case she solved in Spain, Salazar is plucked from among the students on the strength of her unorthodox critique of the current presentation — a trait that will become a future trademark — to assist in the investigation.

When that investigation takes the team to New Orleans on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, things unravel with the thrust of gale force winds, alternately covering and revealing facts and fabrications as Salazar navigates a city under siege, the obtuse hierarchy of the FBI, experienced local police officers and a Cajun “healer.”

Simultaneously out of her physical element and completely competent in building the psychological profile of a killer, in this early story we see the young inspector take on departmental storms and tantrums with Redondo providing a healthy dose of Salazar’s traumatic backstory.

A large part of the magic is in the author’s depictions of 2005 New Orleans just before the hurricane, and the killer, are poised to strike. Betting that the Composer — so named because a witness to a prior murder saw him “waving his arms like someone directing an orchestra” — will strike in the aftermath of what is projected to be one of the nation’s most violent natural disasters is just one hedge the elite team is taking. It is Salazar on whom much of the wager is laid because it is she who is able to make connections others can’t: The theatrical arm movements following a series of murders could mirror a liturgical service, and it is the inspector who offers the most cogent answer for the similarity in the chosen victims and things such as the orientation of the bodies after death.

That much of her seeming clairvoyance comes at the price of someone who’s lived through horrific trauma does not go unnoticed by the team leader, FBI agent Aloisius Dupree. It is Dupree who recognizes that Salazar’s intuition is inspired by the evils of her past, and the interplay between the two officers is brilliantly crafted by Redondo in a foreshadow of the detective’s drive toward True North.

For the uninitiated, “The North Face of the Heart” offers a deep dive into the Redondo series. For fans, the exhumation of past ghosts will even more fully flesh out the textured detective.

Wow! That was SPECTACULAR. The best book I have read this book so far.

I discover Redondo earlier this year and I was surprised. She is such an excellent storyteller that I have already bought all her books in polish and English. It is a must-have for every bookworm/thriller/Spanish literature lover.

Amaia is a woman who intrigues me from the very first page. She has a great intuition like a sixth sense when it comes to crimes, murderers, and the motive of the killer. Coming from places where the ghost seems to be alive and monsters are hiding in the humans' bodies, she is the right person to solve this crime. Her partner, Durpree, sees his reflection in her behavior, actions and they are making a team that can see more than other people. This will save them. Or kill them.

I have never ever read a book that keeps me awake all night. Not because of the length (don't get me wrong here), but because of the beliefs, of the monsters hiding in the dark. I was scared as hell. Truly.

This book is huge awe to the local history, culture, the religion of New Orleans, and people still living in the deepest swamps. It is so educational and makes me feel great respect for the author for taking all these into her stories. Dolores, great job!

Psychological point of view is also a great pro in here, 'cause it's all seems to be perfectly fitted in details and see all people's fear and action in danger.

It's not 5/5, it's over a scale for sure. Redondo is a queen of Spanish thrillers.

Usually a thriller is entertaining, and fine to pass the time. This thriller is so wonderfully written—the descriptions of the settings and characters are as compelling as the plot.

While Amaia is visiting the Quantico FBI Academy with other international inspectors and detectives, she’s especially looking forward to a seminar led by FBI agent Dupree. Imagine her shock and that of her mentor when Dupree seems to be singling her out during his presentation. He’s already recognized her as a "needle in a haystack" like him—a detective with nearly supernatural instincts.

Amaia goes overnight from a trainee to an integral part of the hunt for a serial killer. With the beautiful and tragic backdrop of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, what she thinks is just the hunt for the serial killer is also assisting Dupree with chasing monsters from his own past.

Usually thrillers are built heavily on the unexpected twists in their plot. This book was also poetic and inspiring in its descriptions of the historic city of New Orleans, the magic that lives there, and the tragedy brought so suddenly by Hurricane Katrina. I’d rate this book a high 4 out of 5 stars and recommend it to those who like contemporary stories, thrillers, and drama with some old-school voodoo history.

The North Face of the Heart by Dolores Redondo is a fast-paced, exceptionally put-together mix of mystery, disaster, greed, and growth.

Will Salazar and Dupree find the serial killer before he strikes again?

Amaia Salazar
Amaia Salazar is an Assistant Inspector from Spain at the FBI for a special training seminar for foreign law enforcement. Although she isn't average, she has things to learn, and learning from Special Agent Dupree is an honor, especially when he singles her out to assist with an ongoing investigation into a serial killer, "the composer," that has recently surfaced.

I really like the character Amaia. She has lots of grit, and she faces adversity straight on. Yes, she has ghosts in her past and a mother from hell (I think that is literally). However, Dupree helps her see why her past is so much a part of her future. A few times, I was completely floored by the things that her mother does and that her father was such a coward. But I also see that she had her aunt, and she did what she needed to do to survive.

Aloisius Dupree
Dupree has been with the FBI for a while and leads one of the most elite teams in the bureau. Dupree is from New Orleans and had an old case that sometimes haunted his progress in the FBI. There is more to Dupree than meets the eye, much like with Salazar. However, he hides it well, and one of his goals is to teach Salazar how to be a great investigator. He knows she has it in her, but he also wants her to be careful using her "hunches."

At first, I thought that Dupree was an egomaniac, but once you get to know him and his secret, you really understand him better. He truly cares about his Nana, but he also knows that he is the only person who can figure out this whole Barron Samedi gang that has been around for years terrorizing families and young girls. I found that Dupree is a gifted investigator, but he comes across as gruff and grouchy at times.

The Story
Part of Dupree's team went to Florida to chase a lead, and the rest end up in New Orleans before Katrina hits. However, the disaster that follows makes it hard for them to stay on the Composer's trail. Then they get a call which ends up being part of the Samedi case, and Dupree is hurt. However, Dupree takes the gang out of New Orleans to the Bayou for assistance and to help find the missing girls.

The author gives us the history of Salazar, what is happening in New Orleans before, during, and after Katrina. The devastation is vast, and the poor people who stayed really had no other place to go. We get to follow Dupree's Nana, who is in her 80s and doesn't really have anyone to help her except her neighbor, whose own mother is sick and in a wheelchair. Their plight is filled with sorrow and pain. Ms. Redondo truly is gifted at letting us see the world through her character's eyes.

Four Stars
I enjoyed the story and had a hard time putting it down. I even cried for the Katrina survivors at times, and I was always rooting for Salazar to catch the composer. My rating for The North Face of the Heart by Dolores Redondo is four stars. If you are looking for a good crime novel with some paranormal aspects, this is a good one.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of The North Face of the Heart by Dolores Redondo.

Until the next time,
~Jen

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I found this book a little confusing but with enough interest to keep me reading. It may be because there is a trilogy by this author that I haven’t read that would give me more background about the character. But this book has it all....a malevolent and sadistic serial killer, voodoo, witchcraft and magic, two damaged detectives with demons of their own, unbelievable stories and to top it off the most vicious hurricane to hit New Orleans....Hurricane Katrina.

The Hurricane is a story unto itself. I personally don’t know if I could have survived. Using it as a backdrop for this book is perfect. Atmospheric, spooky and creepy-don’t read this if it’s thundering.

"The North Face of the Heart" by Dolores Redondo is a character-driven journey in which you will want to follow the protagonist, Amaia Salazar. The details to each scene invite readers to become detectives, empathizing for the victims while relentlessly searching for answers.

The case overall was interesting, though I guessed the killer's profession within the first few pages as I felt like it was pretty obvious. I wasn't particularly invested in Amaia's childhood and skimmed those chapters.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Really good and interesting! A great insight into anthropology of religion, ethnography of Basque country and in this particular case, rich mythology of Louisiana. An amazing book about a serial killer on the loose!

This was an excellent police procedural. the protagonist was a deeply scarred woman with a haunted past but who has amazing insights into murder. She identifies a serial killer who focuses on entire families and leaves a trail of bodies to his ultimate crime. Very good book