After finishing this book, I had barely even closed the back cover before I was sending someone a message making certain that they moved this book right to the top of their TBR list immediately! That’s how intense I felt upon completing Dolores Redondo’s The North Face of the Heart. Do not let the use of the word “heart” in the title fool you. This is not a story of romance! It is an absolutely incredible thriller that is full of tension and excitement, but also loss and grief so powerful that at times it is physically painful.
The North Face of the Heart is a prequel to the author’s previously published Bazlan trilogy that includes The Invisible Guardian, The Legacy of the Bones, and Offering to the Storm. Note that these are the English titles, though Redondo’s work was first published in Spanish. All three books in the Bazlan trilogy have been turned in to movies and they are all currently available worldwide on Netflix. The trilogy really does need to be viewed in order, but the prequel can be read before or after, as it takes place a significant amount of time before the events of The Invisible Guardian, while the events of the books/movies in the trilogy take place in close succession.
In The North Face of the Heart, a special assignment team from the FBI is chasing a serial killer who murders entire families under cover of natural disasters. Amaia Salazar, a young detective from Spain who is currently training with the FBI (after already gaining a reputation as an exceptional investigator back home) has been added to the team because of her impressive insight. Following in the killer’s footsteps leads the team to New Orleans just as Hurricane Katrina is taking aim at the city.
Redondo’s writing is heartbreaking as she recounts the lives of the many people who remained in New Orleans, believing that this storm would be no different than all the others they had lived through. As a reader living in a world that is sixteen years past these events, you know their faith is misplaced and they will be proven tragically wrong as they desperately seek food, water, shelter, and safety in the coming days. And you know their search will be to no avail. Having lived on the Gulf Coast through Katrina, I was brought to tears more than once while I was reading as I thought about what I already knew these characters were about to face, and what would become of their city.
Against the backdrop of this powerful storm, the FBI team continues to try to put the pieces together to track down and catch the serial killer before another family is destroyed. Amaia soon realises that some of her team members are keeping secrets or working on their own agenda. But Amaia is not exactly an open book herself. This case is opening long-closed doorways that are holding back the secrets of her own past and the ghosts that haunt her.
But when you set a story in New Orleans, ghosts just fit right in. As the team struggles to do the job they have come to do, they encounter voodoo, witches, healers, and spirits in a broken city that has so much suffering left to do.
Redondo’s writing is action packed, but still deeply emotional as this thriller keeps the pace at full speed, practically from cover to cover. It’s a longer book, at approximately 470 pages, but it is a powerful story that absolutely flies by!
The North Face of the Heart is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 1st 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
In a propulsive thriller by the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Baztán Trilogy, a female detective follows a sadistic killer into the eye of a storm.
Amaia Salazar, a young detective from the north of Spain, has joined a group of trainees at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Haunted by her past and having already tracked down a predator on her own, Amaia is no typical rookie. And this is no ordinary student lecture at Quantico. FBI agent Aloysius Dupree is already well acquainted with Amaia’s skills, her intuition, and her ability to understand evil. He now needs her help in hunting an elusive serial killer dubbed “the composer”—a case that’s been following him his whole life.
From New Jersey to Oklahoma to Texas, his victims are entire families annihilated to coincide with natural disasters, their bodies posed with chilling purpose amid the ruins. Dupree and Amaia are following his trail to New Orleans. The clock is ticking. It’s the eve of what’s threatening to be the worst hurricane in the city’s history. But a troubling call from Amaia’s aunt back home awakens in Amaia the ghosts from her childhood and sends her down a path as dark as that of the coming storm.
