After following the lives of a rural community caught up in World War I, the next selection for the Eason Book Club, picked by Mary O’Rourke, is In the Name of Love by Patrick Smith.

Smith, though born in Ireland, has spent the majority of his life in Sweden working as a translator. He has penned a number of novels and short stories in Swedish, but only published his first English work at the age of 70.

In the Name of Love takes us right into the heart of contemporary Sweden, where young woman is brutally murdered on an island near Stockholm - a haunt of wealthy retirees and arty weekenders. Suspicion falls first on a family of Iraqi refugees, initially welcomed into the community but gradually feared and shunned. But then, as the victim's story unfolds, suspicion begins inexorably to fall elsewhere.

Lena Sundman was rude, dysfunctional, and very young. Everything a fastidious man like Dan Byrne disliked. Taking refuge on the island after the sudden death of his wife, Dan finds himself strangely drawn to the troubled girl, starting from the moment he reluctantly rescues her in the teeth of a gathering snowstorm.

This is a taut, elegantly chilling drama in the tradition of Scandinavian masters from Ibsen to Larsson.

The Eason Book Club on The Pat Kenny Show takes place on Thursday, August 27th. The other recommended reads by the Eason Book Club for July are: Go set a Watchman by Harper lee, Circling the Sun by Paula McLain, and The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray.

You can listen back to last week's club discussing The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernières here.