The protective shell served its purpose well. To borrow from the discourse frequently used online to describe relationships, it was complicated. Setting the book down on completion, full knowledge of who the perp was proved no obstacle to deriving maximum enjoyment from the television adaptation. The plot and twists really are that good.
Anticipation that this might be a great novel was not premature. The screen writer for The Killing (easily the best crime drama I have ever watched) was the author of The Chestnut Man. Søren Sveistrup knows how to steer a plot through a maze of teasing possibilities and guide it to a denouement where cymbals clash, chiming with the chequered flag. No running out of steam just to stumble over the finishing line. The bang it started with matures rather than diminishes with time.
Anticipation that this might be a great novel was not premature. The screen writer for The Killing (easily the best crime drama I have ever watched) was the author of The Chestnut Man. Søren Sveistrup knows how to steer a plot through a maze of teasing possibilities and guide it to a denouement where cymbals clash, chiming with the chequered flag. No running out of steam just to stumble over the finishing line. The bang it started with matures rather than diminishes with time.
The novel opens up in 1989 where a cop responds to what he assumes is a routine call only to find himself in a slaughterhouse where the victims are not cattle. Despite it being the Halloween season, the trick or terror scene beckoning him to the butchery at the breakfast table was resolved in favour of terror.
Copenhagen has been the site of some of the best Scandinoir. The villains and cops (not always easy to distinguish in the real world) created by Jussi Adler Olsen and Jo Nesbo have prowled the streets in search of either a victim or a perpetrator. Even a city familiar with killers on the loose had to steel itself when confronted with the Chestnut man, so named because of his calling card, a handmade figurine crafted from two chestnuts and matchsticks. There was a whole row of them in the farmhouse where the 1989 massacre took place. Because of that, comparisons have been made with the modus operandi of the serial killer pursued by Harry Hole in The Snowman.
Two of the city's cops are drawn together in a race against time, where closing in is still not close enough as the clock runs down on yet another life. Naia Thulin wants out of Homicide rather than to be landed with its most taxing investigation. Her goal is to get into cybercrime which will allow her more time to spend with her child. Mark Hess might count himself lucky to be Homicide at all. Once of Europol where he served a five year stint, a serious faux pas saw him receive the red card and a transfer further down the food chain. Initially their personalities clash only later to settle down as a relationship of mutual dependence evolves which casts aside the gene of irritation. Hess has to refocus and show less concern for redecorating his apartment, and begin to home in on the dark decor of the Homicide Department.
As the case progresses, it seems the one theme common to them all besides one hand of each victim being severed, is the shared history of the people murdered, one rooted in the murky and sordid world of child abuse. The discovery of a fingerprint at the crime scene of one killing is that of a child who disappeared a year earlier and whose mother happens to be a minister in the government of Denmark. How could that be possible? There is definitely something wrong in the state of Denmark and the pressure mounts on both detectives to solve the case, a pressure reinforced by the reluctance of their boss Nylander to allow the investigation to proceed full throttle. Getting to the minister whose daughter is still missing is not as straightforward as it should be. Nor does the direction of travel taken by the investigators always lead them where they need to go.
Søren Sveistrup, 2019, The Chestnut Man. Penguin. ISBN-13: 978-1405939775
Two of the city's cops are drawn together in a race against time, where closing in is still not close enough as the clock runs down on yet another life. Naia Thulin wants out of Homicide rather than to be landed with its most taxing investigation. Her goal is to get into cybercrime which will allow her more time to spend with her child. Mark Hess might count himself lucky to be Homicide at all. Once of Europol where he served a five year stint, a serious faux pas saw him receive the red card and a transfer further down the food chain. Initially their personalities clash only later to settle down as a relationship of mutual dependence evolves which casts aside the gene of irritation. Hess has to refocus and show less concern for redecorating his apartment, and begin to home in on the dark decor of the Homicide Department.
As the case progresses, it seems the one theme common to them all besides one hand of each victim being severed, is the shared history of the people murdered, one rooted in the murky and sordid world of child abuse. The discovery of a fingerprint at the crime scene of one killing is that of a child who disappeared a year earlier and whose mother happens to be a minister in the government of Denmark. How could that be possible? There is definitely something wrong in the state of Denmark and the pressure mounts on both detectives to solve the case, a pressure reinforced by the reluctance of their boss Nylander to allow the investigation to proceed full throttle. Getting to the minister whose daughter is still missing is not as straightforward as it should be. Nor does the direction of travel taken by the investigators always lead them where they need to go.
When the plot culminates in a violent crescendo and the identity of the killer is revealed the reader is left with a feeling similar to the moment of revelation in Denmark's The Killing or Canada's Headhunter, superlatives from the crime genre.
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