Loved this book, great story highly informative of other cultures and full . Of mystery, with an unexpected ending.

I didn't really enjoy this book, it had a slow start and then in the middle started to becoming gripping but soon fizzled out. I found some parts became irrelevant.

Well I am not too sure what to say about this book. It started off in an interesting way and then careered off into a miasma of different characters, all of differing nationalities, with a multitude of different names, that eventually I lost both the plot and the interest. Different cities and altogether a most confusing plot and as for the last few chapters....well

A lengthy novel which was well written and very interesting. Farah, the investigative journalist was a fascinating character and played a pivotal role in the unfolding story which crossed continents and included some very dark aspects of human nature. The author did a very skilful job with the massive crash on the intersection, letting the reader see it from a number of different perspectives. I would have given a five star rating and in fact my rating is more a 4.5 than a 4 but I found the ending hardly worthy of the majority of the book. It reminded me of earlier James Bond films where it all gets very noisy towards the end and the plot is dropped for shock and awe. Why did Farah go to the dacha? If it was a pantomime we'd all be shouting, "He's behind you!" Maybe it wasn't the end for Farah, maybe the Claymore was a dud? We are given to understand that there's more to come from the author, I do hope so but let's hope the ending is a bit more cerebral.

A young child is found in the middle of a road in the Amsterdam Bos, the apparent victim of a hit and run accident. However the child is a boy dresses as a girl and the doctor who finds him is concerned. An exiled Afghan journalist, Farah, happens upon the boy in the hospital and is able to comfort him as she speaks the language, she believes that he was involved in a Afghan ritual of child abuse. Meanwhile Detectives Calvino and Diba are trying to find out what happened. All signs point to corruption and abuse at the highest levels in Dutch politics and business, and links with Russia to boot.

This book is the first in a series of novels which have been likened to Stieg Larsson in that they feature mavericks looking into crime in the higher echelons of business and politics. In that way there is a similarity however I think there are major dissimilarities as well. Whilst this book is entertaining it is also quite confusing. That may be that because it is the first in a trilogy and a lot of background has to be put in place but I found the action jumped around a lot and the protracted ending in the last quarter just seemed to be a series of set pieces following one after the next. Having said all that the story is interesting, particularly around the links between the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the Russian involvement in Chechnya. I would not discount following this series as I think it will improve in subsequent volumes.

I wish I could rate this book in two halves. The first half I thoroughly enjoyed it was a totally unique read. The second half I lost the story there were more characters coming in and it got a bit more confusing. This would probably all come together more over the course of the three books

A complex story written in in-depth detail, I struggled to get into it and found it quite hard going in parts, a thrilling story in idea but it just didn't quite grip me. I really wanted to get into this book but perhaps it just wasn't for me.

An accident and child laying on the floor, the book starts with good story . The first couple of pages are very fast and intense.
But a lot of stuff I wasn't comfortable with , Farah was very difficult person to like ( she was full of contradictions). I don't know if it's the translation or actual writing but it was weird book .

I think you need to be patient, because as soon you finish the first half, the book kick up . It became amazing that I felt it was worth it . It was carnage at the end ,WHICH I LOVED.
very fascinating political intriguing and different characters I never read before .

Farah start to grow on you , but you know she have a lot package( that why she is difficult character to love).

This is complex book and have many issues , hopefully the next book will answer some of the question of what happened at the end .

A young Afghan boy wearing girl's clothes is the victim of a hit & run on a road near Amsterdam. Two charred corpses in a nearby car. What starts as two isolated incidents, escalates into a criminal and political conspiracy that reaches far beyond Amsterdam. Farah Hafez is a journalist who gets sucked into a series of events that snowball out of control.

In addition to Farah we have the police pairing of Detectives Diba and Calvino, the burned out former star, and young protege respectively. Their investigation criss-crosses Farah's own, with plenty mutual mistrust all round. Farah is an interesting character, with a complicated background that gives the author plenty to play with. I'd like to see Calvino fleshed out more in the next instalment, as he comes across the more intriguing of the Detective duo.

Overall a decent read. The one area it fell short for me was the pace. It was pitched as on par with the Millennium trilogy, and didn't measure up to that high standard. There are some scenes that could be cut out completely, or at least shortened, without damaging the flow, and doing that could ramp up the tension a little. Going from a bit of an amble, to a frantic pace in the final 20% was too much of a "stamp on the accelerator" too late, but I'll be likely to read the next instalment and see how it evolves.

This book was the first Dutch thriller I'd read - but won't be the last! I really enjoyed learning more about Dutch culture, in the same way that I have enjoyed the insights afforded by literature from Scandinavia. The book was breathlessly pacyand tautly plotted - definitely one to keep reading through the night.

A fan if the millennium trilogy, I was interested to get stuck into this novel that was compared to the classic books.

I enjoyed the novel. It had strands of similarities such as the political element and journalistic characters.

It is difficult not to contract to Salander as the book is marketed as such. The character of Farah did not have the depth of the girl we live with her dragon tattoo. There was character development and she was believable. I enjoyed the character of the corrupt detective, whose dejected, fearful and run down character is depicted well and is very believable.

The plot took a cultural abuse scenario with the young boy forced to be dressed as a dancing girl and took us to an unfamiliar category of abuse it was interesting to learn about.

The novel used the classic book ends approach which worked we with the ending linkingto her childhood with herself and Theboy she adored as a child together. That said the ending surprised and was not a classic finale to this genre. A bit different.

In conclusion a good read in a similar genre to Larsson. Not comparable, but up there. Hope we hear more from
This author soon.

A young injured child is found on the road.
In the middle of a forest.
At night.
With no cars nearby, and only a phone call to say she was there alerts the police.
Set in Amsterdam and its immediate surroundings, we find hat police are very much the same wherever they are located within Europe. The only difference being that the laws that govern how they operate vary.
So this story has as its central characters: a young journalist, originally from Afghanistan but after escaping the Russian invasion was brought up in Amsterdam; two policemen, 1 fat and ill-tempered, Moroccan, and eating all the ‘wrong’ food according to his Italian partner, who is smooth and careful of his health; and a young child.
The policemen have their own personal lives to sort out as they try to untangle the mystery of the child.
Now note that the author is from Holland and that this is a translation as it was originally published in Holland in 2013.
So for me, the translation sometimes got in the way and the writing style was often irritating. I found that the way the characters suddenly started reminiscing without relating apparently to the current context put me off. Such as, why did the Moroccan think about the bus accident that killed his brother when they were discussing theories about the burnt bodies in the car? Was it the burning vehicle that triggered it? If so, it wasn’t clear. Am I, the reader, supposed to feel more sympathetic towards him as a character? If so, it failed, as he really irritated me.
At times these digressions spoilt he flow and pace for me, but thankfully they were not enough to stop me continuing to read. It was for me an uncomfortable style of writing that is not uncommon amongst Europeans especially, but not exclusively, Nordic writers

I’m grateful to Netgalley for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. Set mainly in Amsterdam, it’s translated from the Dutch and is the first of a trilogy. I requested it based on the description. Very much my sort of book, I thought, and I was right for at least the first half. Gradually more and more characters were added and the plot began to get larger and larger. It became an international conspiracy with tentacle4s all over the globe.. I was finding it increasingly hard to keep up with events, until, towards the end, I began to loose patience.

The tale opens with an obviously very frightened child running away through a wood and then being knocked down by a car. Next we are introduced to the heroine, Farah Hafez, a Dutch citizen of Afghan origin who, besides being a journalist on a national Dutch newspaper, is a martial arts fighter who drives a 1980s Carrera Porsche. Obviously an interesting and complex character. Gradually more characters come on the scene, including Danielle Bernson, a high principled trauma specialist with experience in a war zone, and two detectives, Marouan Diba, middle aged of eastern European origin and Joshua Colvino, young, good looking, of Italian descent. The setting of the tale is rapidly filling with characters, all with interesting backgrounds. It will gradually get too complex. There are already many subsidiary characters that I haven’t mentioned.

Despite difficulties following an increasingly complex story, I felt that it was well written. There is a nasty vicious scene three quarters of the way through the book which involves multiple carnage on an Amsterdam motorway. The way in which the author interweaves the scenes and characters has to be admired, if not the horribly vivid images conjured up.. In short chapters he flits back and fore between the view points of various characters, each piece of the action cleverly intertwined. The fact that the whole scene was so ghastly that I felt like giving up, says a lot for the strength of the writing.

Having read umpteen thrillers, detective novels and police procedurals in the last few years, why is it always thought necessary for the lead character to have a damaged, complex background in order for them to be interesting. We get this in spades with this lead, Farah Hafez. This current trend was not always so. I long for a book where a sensible, believable plot is all that is required. This book ends somewhat in the air, but since this is the first of a trilogy, I guess that we will meet these characters again and the plot will evolve. Will I be looking for the next book? Probably, but not for some time.

The first in a series apparently. It's hard to decide who is the main character here and the point of view jumps about very quickly. Many of the characters are unsympathetic. The picture of police work doesn't ring true and the ending leaves you hanging - so you will read the next book, I suppose. I will not be reading it.

Butterfly on the Storm was definitely a case of not judging a book by it’s cover. The blurb made it sound like it was going to be a good read and it really wasn’t. I persevered to the end of the book but it left me feeling like I had wasted precious reading time. It had a lot of potential but it left me feeling a bit meh.
The beginning was promising, it began with a young boy running through the woods trying to escape from someone. As he is running he sees some lights coming towards him and he is hit by a car. Shortly after this two bodies are discovered in a burnt-out car nearby.
Danielle is the attending doctor at the scene and takes him under her wing but with her own baggage will she help or hinder him.
In the meantime, Farah Hafez is about to compete in a martial arts competition. She is Afghani by birth but has lived in Amsterdam since a young age and considered herself to be Dutch. The martial art she is practicing is something that was taught to her by her father who was killed before she and her mother fled her homeland.
This and other parts of the story surrounding her homeland and it’s culture were fascinating for me. Likewise the other parts of the story were mostly interesting as well but together they were just a bit too much and didn’t seem to mesh for me.
Whilst Farah is competing in this competition Farah badly injures her opponent and goes to the hospital afterwards to check she is ok. Whilst there she sees the boy and recognises that he is speaking the language of her homeland.
Unwittingly Farah becomes embroiled in a tale of corruption which could ultimately put her life in danger. Something about the boy speaks to her though and she knows as a journalist she cannot let it go.
As detectives Diba and Calvino dig deeper into the case so too does Farah. She helps the detectives by telling them that she believes the boy was involved in a practice of her homeland called Bacha Bazi.
“Boys with dirt-poor parents sell them to a warlord for a couple of hundred dollars. Boys dressed as exotic female dancers, but intended first and foremost as bedfellows for dirty old men.”
As the case unwinds so too do the barriers keeping away Farah’s past.
Like I said it sounds good but the reality was a bit of a let-down.

This book started off in the usual police thriller pattern, the burnt out car with two bodies and the run over girl which is in fact a boy Unfortunately, as the plot developed, I found there were too many things going on at once. This book has too many big issues: police corruption, international terrorism, pedophilia. There were a lot of characters and complicated backgrounds to take in. Maybe things will get clearer in the subsequent books in the trilogy but in the end this did not appeal to me.

I was excited by this book as I loved Steig Larsson's Millennium series but found this so disappointing on so many levels and, in my view, there is simply no comparison. Firstly I don't think it was very well translated as I found the English very clunky and pedantic to read. Secondly It was much too long and needed a good edit. Thirdly I didn't empathise with any of the characters except the doctor. Some of the detail was so superfluous - who cares what Farah uses in the shower or on her face? I felt the author tried to straddle too many genres - bit of chick-lit, bit of thriller, bit of prose, throw in some sex and violence. It was unconvincing and the bottom line was that I didn't really care what happened to any of them. There were so many characters that it was difficult to keep track of them, some of whom added little to the plot and others who were over- described to the point of tedium. I learnt, for example that Diba was Moroccan no less than three times in as many chapters. And who is left exactly to appear in the next two books of this trilogy as most have been killed off. Unfortunately I have no intention of reading the next two. Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK/Michael Joseph for an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

I was given an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and independent review.
This book came highly recommended and I loved it. This is a crisply written thriller with interesting, well executed characters. Whilst the book had a fairly steady pace, there is enough intrigue and building of the plot, to keep me reading it constantly so as to find out how the story ended.
I cannot wait to read the next book in the series!!!
5 stars from me

I'm afraid I was a bit disappointed with this book. I had high hopes it would be the start of a trilogy I would enjoy but I just felt there was something missing.

I read the book to the end but I didn't feel I 'connected' with any of the characters and to me, none of them seemed particularly likeable.

There were some elements to the story that were promising but it just never seemed to gel. As I progressed through the book the plot got a bit disjointed and, for me, confusing. The closer I got to the end the more random the plot seemed to become. I kind of felt I was reading 3 different stories? Perhaps things become clearer/get resolved in the 2nd and 3rd installments.

I'm not sure if the book was originally written in Dutch and later translated to English. If so, perhaps something was lost in translation.

On the positive side, I did manage to finish it. If it had been really awful, I would have abandoned it at some point.

I don't like being negative but personally speaking, it just didn't work for me. Sorry.

Such a gripping story, it had me from the first chapter!