✍ Scribed by Helene Tursten; Katarina Tucker
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
“The scenes in which Huss tracks her killer through the underbelly of Copenhagen are as good as Louise Welsh’s similarly creepy tour of Glasgow in The Cutting Room. ”— Entertainment Weekly
“[Tursten] is a master at setting the scene, detailing a foreign milieu until it feels familiar. She juggles a large cast of characters with aplomb.”— Time Out Chicago
“One of the better examples of the Swedish crime fiction invasion.”— Baltimore Sun
“Outstanding.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Spins a good story . . . this is a solid police procedural.”— Library Journal
Part of a human torso washes up on a beach near Göteborg, Sweden. It is so mutilated that gender is only established by DNA testing. A similar crime, now several years old, remains unsolved in Denmark. Detective Inspector Irene Huss is dispatched to Copenhagen to liaise with police. Then a third corpse is discovered. This time it’s identified. It is a girl Detective Huss knew; she had been asked by the girl’s mother to locate her missing daughter. A fourth victim, the son of a woman heading the Copenhagen crime squad, is also known to Huss. She fears the killer is tracking her, killing people with whom she is connected. There is even a chilling suggestion that he or she is one of her colleagues.
Helene Tursten has been compared to P.D. James in her native Sweden. Her Irene Huss mysteries have been highly praised. She lives in Göteborg, where she was born in 1954.
Starred Review. In Swedish author Tursten's outstanding second police procedural to feature Irene Huss of the Göteborg Violent Crimes Unit (after 2003's Detective Inspector Huss), the discovery of a dismembered corpse initiates a frustrating chase for a wily serial killer. The trail leads to Copenhagen, where Huss realizes the same murderer committed a similar horrific crime. After several more deaths, the complex investigation reaches a frightening climax and stunning conclusion. Smart and intuitive, Huss is a fully realized character, whose demanding job often collides with obligations to her chef husband, twin teenage daughters and wandering terrier. While the locales and sensibilities resemble those of such other Scandinavian writers as Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum, the private lives, work habits and personal quirks of Huss's colleagues are as individual as those of the cops in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct. Some readers may be put off by the gruesome crime scene descriptions, but all will relish the vivid writing, strong sense of place, distinctive characters and steady pace. (Apr.)
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Tursten's second Detective Inspector Irene Huss novel will send your gore barometer well into the red zone with its occasionally stomach--turning tale of necrosadism (that's murder combined with mutilation and dismemberment of the victim's parts and organs, all for the sexual satisfaction of the perpetrator). No, this isn't a gentle read, but it isn't an exploitive splatterfest, either. Tursten's heroine, a 40-year-old, hardworking cop in Goteborg, Sweden, attempts to juggle the horrors of modern life, which she faces on the job, with the challenges of a demanding family, which includes twin teenage daughters, a chef husband, and a persnickety terrier. In juxtaposing dismemberment and domesticity, Tursten brings into high relief the toll police work takes on the psyche and the difficulty of moving between dramatically different worlds on a daily basis. The case itself, jumping between Goteborg and Copenhagen, unfolds in classic procedural style, leading to an oddly unsatisfying ending that, nevertheless, has the uncertain feel of real life. Make sure Tursten is on your short list of Henning Mankell read-alikes. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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EDITORIAL REVIEW: “The scenes in which Huss tracks her killer through the underbelly of Copenhagen are as good as Louise Welsh’s similarly creepy tour of Glasgow in \*The Cutting Room.\*”—\*Entertainment Weekly\* “[Tursten] is a master at setting the scene, detailing a foreign milieu unti
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