Booklist Reviews
Detective Naia Thulin's request to transfer out of Major Crimes is met with orders to take on a new partner. It's not an ideal match for career-focused Thulin; her new partner, Mark Hess, has just returned to the Copenhagen force after being booted from Europol. Thulin and Hess are still sizing each other up when they're assigned to investigate a killer who has struck twice in rapid succession, leaving tiny chestnut figurines with his victims' carefully arranged bodies. Forensic techs identify a perplexing clue: the chestnut men bear the fingerprints of the murdered daughter of popular government minister Rosa Hartung. Ignoring Thulin, Hess follows his gut and discovers that the victims had been investigated recently by child-protection authorities because of similarly worded anonymous tips. But what's the connection to Hartung? As the investigation becomes hampered by police politics, Thulin and Hess' acrimony shifts into a loyal partnership. Sveistrup, creator of the acclaimed television series The Killing, adeptly weaves together the stories of Thulin and Hess' relationship, their hunt for a wily serial killer, and the disastrous legacy of a childhood mistake. A complex procedural deepened by gut-wrenching social commentary. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.
Kirkus Reviews
In a debut novel by the creator of the television show The Killing, a serial killer in Copenhagen targets young mothers as part of a complex scheme that seems to have ties to the apparent murder of government minister Rosa Hartung's 12-year-old daughter, Kristine, a year ago. The homicidal Chestnut Man, named after the chestnut and matchstick dolls he leaves behind, is a grisly operator who amputates the hands of the women he abducts while they're still alive. A pair of mismatched investigators are reluctantly on the case: Naia Thulin, a local cop who, tired of what she thinks of as "tedious" assignments with Major Crimes, eyes a promotion to the cybercrime unit, and Mark Hess, a disheveled Europol agent on temporary leave from the Hague to serve "penance for some blunder or other." The big complicating factor is the absence of proof that Kristine, who disappeared, is dead; when her fingerprints turn up on the chestnut dolls, hopes stir that she is, in fact, alive. It takes a little time for the novel to set itself apart from other such thrillers. What are the chestnut dolls if not an imitation of the diabolical snowmen in Jo Nesbø's The Snowman? But with its densely layered plot, chilling settings, and multiple suspects with murderous grudges, S veistrup's epic rises above any such comparisons. This is a page-turner that will make you hesitate before turning the page, so unnerving is the violence. One of the best and scariest crime novels of the year, it adds to its rewards by promising us at least one sequel. A tantalizing, un-put-down-able novel by an instant master of the form. Copyright Kirkus 2019 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
DEBUT In Copenhagen, a woman is found murdered with a small token made of chestnuts next to her containing the fingerprint of a missing girl presumed dead. Detectives Naia Thulin and Marl Hess are thrown into a mystery that will make them question everything they know. As the two newly paired partners try to decipher the link between this new case and that of the missing girl, more women are targeted by the killer dubbed as the Chestnut Man by the media. Danish TV scriptwriter (
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Sveistrup, creator and writer of the TV series