Ruthless | Anne Mette Hancock, transl. Melissa Lucas

Danish writer, Anne Mette Hancock, has made a major impact on the crime fiction scene in the last two years with three novels: The Corpse Flower (October 2021), The Collector (November 2022), and now Ruthless. All three are part of the Kaldan and Scháfer series, which features journalist Heloise Kaldan and police detective Erik Scháfer’s investigative skills.

Jan Fischhof, a dying elderly man, feels compelled to confess his past wrongdoings. Heloise Kaldan has been visiting Frischof on a regular basis for an article she’s writing about a charitable organisation that cares for the terminally ill. Naturally, this piques the interest of Heloise, an investigative reporter for Demokratisk Dagblad, a Danish newspaper. The only problem is that Fischhof’s mental abilities are deteriorating, and he is of little assistance to Heloise. He mutters the name “Mads Orek,” which provides Heloise with a breadcrumb.

This leads her to Tom Mázoreck’s suspicious death in 1998. Mázoreck died after his boat caught fire in Flensburg Fjord, which was ruled an accident. She does, however, connect Mázoreck’s death to the disappearances of two teenage girls from Gråsten, Mia Sark and Nina Dalsfort. There is also a link to local crime boss Jes Decker.When the body of one of Decker’s thugs washes up on the beach, police detective Erik Scháfer looks into it. He already has his hands full trying to find the killer of Lester Wilkins, a kingpin in the international jazz world in his early days, so Heloise’s assistance might come in handy.

As Scháfer and Kalden’s investigations intersect, they uncover a web of smuggling, drugs, porn, prostitution, and possibly human trafficking. It also appears that the police in Gråsten  are doing everything they can to hinder the investigation, possibly to protect their own skins. To make matters worse, Heloise’s boss, Mogens Bøttner, forbids her from continuing with the story, so she takes a week off to finish it on her own time.

Ruthless is just as complex and intricately plotted as its predecessors There seems to be less chemistry between Kaldan and Scháfer and we see less of Connie, Scháfer’s effervescent wife. Gina, Heloise’s best friend of 30 years, is barely mentioned in comparison to The Collector where she plays a cardinal role. Scháfer’s ex-partner and Heloise’s previous love interest, however, resurface. Meanwhile, Scháfer is beginning to feel less efficient at work, believing that he is not as sharp as he once was. Connie appears to avoid his affections as well, and his insecurities begin to catch up with him.

Ruthless is everything you’d expect from a well-written Nordic Noir novel. Strong characters, an ideal setting, and a plot with a twist (or two). The third in the series packed less of a punch for me than the first two, but if you’re looking for a Scandinavian fix, you can’t go wrong.

Ruthless is published by Crooked Lane Books who provided me with a review copy via NetGalley.

Read the reviews of The Collector and The Corpse Flower on the blog.

Thirty Days of Darkness | Jenny Lund Madsen

Translated by Megan E Turney — From Ruth Galloway to Eve Ronin, if there’s one thing readers can’t complain about in recent years it’s a lack of strong female protagonists in crime novels. Now, debut Danish author Jenny Lund Madsen introduces Hannah Krause-Bendix, who is perhaps more she-devil than shero.

Read the rest of the review of Crime Fiction Lover where it was originally published.

The Collector | Anne Mette Hancock

In the second Kaldan and Scháfer Mystery, ten-year-old Lukas Bjerre vanishes from his Copenhagen school’s aftercare programme, and old friends Detective Erik Schäfer and investigative journalist Heloise Kalden reunite to figure out who is responsible.

Detective Erik Schäfer and his Violent Crimes Unit team are dispatched to the school shortly after Lukas’s disappearance is discovered. Also at the scene is the journalist Heloise Kaldan who came to support her best friend Gerda. Gerda, one of the parents, was the last person to see Lukas alive when he arrived at school that morning.

Read the full review on the Crime Fiction Lover website where it was originally published.

The Corpse Flower | Anne Mette Hancock

It’s been four years since Anne Mette Hancock debuted in Denmark with Ligblomsten. What started off as a new crime series, the Kaldan and Schäfer mysteries, has grown into, so far, a series of three books. Thanks to Crooked Lane books and Tara Chase’s translation English readers can now also enjoy the first of the series, The Corpse Flower (Ligblomsten).

Journalist Heloise Kaldan’s career is at a turning point. After breaking a controversial story for her newspaper, the Demokratisk Dagblad, it comes to light that her anonymous source has lied, and Heloise and the newspaper’s reputations are in jeopardy. To add insult to injury Heloise’s source, Martin Duvall, the head of communications at the Ministry of Commerce, is also her lover. The betrayal is both professional and personal and leaves her on unsteady ground.

Martin claims he was set up, but Heloise has more pressing issues to deal with. She started receiving letters from a woman who has been wanted for three years for the murder of a prominent young lawyer from a rich family, Christopher Mossing. Heloise was never involved in the Anna Kiel case, but she knows that the evidence against Anna was clear–cut. Anna was caught on camera leaving the crime scene, covered in blood and disappeared soon after. The police found no motive for the killing, but Anna had a history of mental illness. They came to the conclusion that she fled the country.

Until an elderly lady walks into Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer’s office, claiming that she has seen Anna Kiel while on holiday in Provence, France. And she has the photographic evidence to prove it. Schäfer, who works in the Violent Crimes Unit in Copenhagen, was heading the Mossing murder investigation. Meanwhile Heloise is conducting her own research and her first stop is Ulrich Andersson, the journalist who covered the Anna Kiel story.

When Anna Kiel posts a threatening message with a photo of Heloise’s flat on Instagram, she alerts the police and for the first time, her path crosses with Schäfer. The two make the perfect team. Schäfer wants to catch a murderer and Heloise needs to know why an alleged murder is sending her cryptic and ominous messages.

“He seemed at once violently authoritarian, potentially fear inspiring, and—most of all—extremely charming.”

In the mean time Heloise is doing her own research and her first stop is the journalist who covered the Anna Kiel story when it broke, Ulrich Andersson. However, shortly after meeting Ulrich he is found murdered in his apartment. Is Anna Kiel back and resuming her murderous spree? If so Heloise’s life is in danger.

The only way Heloise can figure out what Anna’s intentions are is by following the written breadcrumbs she leaves for her. Much to her dismay, she realises that they lead back to her own past, one she has been trying to erase. Heloise is reserved, unemotional and generally distrustful of people. It would be interesting to see how Heloise’s character develops in subsequent novels and if Schäfer manages to crack the tough exterior. This is not to say that there are any signs of a relationship between the duo. Schäfer is happily married to Connie and hopefully it stays that way.

“Fine, almost silent September rain descended upon Copenhagen for the fifth day in a row. The summer, which was long over, had been grayer than usual, and it was starting to feel like the four seasons had been replaced by one long, muddy autumn.”

Hancock draws up the ideal setting for a crime novel. Here Copenhagen is dreary and rainy, miserable and cantankerous much like the staff of the Demokratisk Dagblad. There’s Mogens Bottger, an investigative journalist covering crime who is morbidly obese and permanently sweating, Mikkelsen, the editor in chief who once burst a blood vessel in his eye during a fit of rage and Carl–Johan Scowl, a “greasy garden gnome of a man” also known as The Shovel. The peek into the offices of the newspaper and its characters is reminiscent of Millennium, Mikael Blomkvist’s political magazine and is on par with our notions and expectations of a newspaper. It also provides the perfect juxtaposition for the police and their investigation of the case.

The novel’s narrative is cleverly split into two – that of Heloise and the other of Anna. The reader is held in suspense throughout, not knowing if Anna is to be trusted. Her narrative certainly doesn’t divulge any details and will lead readers up the garden path and straight into the rough.

It’s not unusual for publishers to brand Nordic crime writers as “The next Stieg Larsson” – there have been multiple “next Stieg Larssons” over the past decade. It would be insulting to call Anne Mette Hancock “The next Stieg Larsson”, because she isn’t, she’s a crime writer in her own right. However, The Corpse Flower has some elements which reminds of the Millenium trilogy and it will certainly appeal to those who fell in love with Nordic Noir thank to Larsson. The themes of revenge and justice are also present here, but so is forgiveness.

The Corpse Flower is a skilfully and tightly plotted crime read which should satisfy even the pickiest Nordic Noir junkie. We can only hope that the next two in the series is set to be translated.

The Corpse Flower is published by Crooked Lane Books, a Penguin imprint. Thank you to the publishers for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

About the author

Image: http://www.nordinagency.se/anne-mette-hancock/

Anne Mette Hancock has a bachelor’s degree in History and studied journalism at the Roskilde University and Berlingske. She was born in the small town of Gråsten in Denmark and has lived in both the US and France. Today Anne Mette lives in Copenhagen with her two children.

In 2017 she made her debut as an author with The Corpse Flower, where we are introduced to journalist Heloise Kaldan and police officer Erik Schäfer. This poignant suspense novel awarded her with the Danish Crime Academy’s debutant prize in 2017.

The second book in the series, The Collector, was published in 2018 to great acclaim. That very year Anne Mette Hancock was named Author of the year in Denmark. Her third novel Pitbull was published in January 2020.

Cold Fear | Mads Peder Nordbo

Following World War II the United States became interested in Greenland mainly for its convenient location and offered to buy the island from Denmark. More recently Donald Trump expressed the same interest. In both instances the USA was met with a clear negative response. However, in 1950 Denmark allowed the USA to establish a military base at Thule, North Greenland. It’s here where Mads Peder Nordbo’s second novel translated into English is set, only years later in 1990.

Tom Cave, a young US soldier, takes part in an experiment conducted by the US military to increase resistance to very low temperatures and condition the body not to die of hypothermia. The aim is to strengthen NATO’s Arctic units and create soldiers able to endure inhumane weather conditions.

Tom and his fellow soldiers are pushed beyond their physical limits to such an extent that the pills start to have severe, possibly fatal, side-effects on their health and sanity. During one such incident it is claimed that Tom killed two other soldiers and then shot himself.

Almost twenty-five years later Matthew Cave, a journalist and Tom’s son, is reporting on three violent suicides in a small town on Greenland’s east coast. The situation is eerily reminiscent of the one Tom was involved with in 1990. A bag of pills was found at the scene and the victims experienced hallucinations and erratic, violent behaviour which ultimately led to their deaths.

Cold Fear switches between these two timelines and locations whilst revealing the family dynamic and challenges Matthew faced while growing up without a father. More complications arise when he finds out his father lived with another family in Nuuk during the 90s while Matthew and his mother were waiting patiently for Tom’s return to Denmark.

This is the stripped down, simplified summary. There’s much more meat to the story itself. For example the kidnapping of Arnaq, Matthew’s stepsister, by a dangerously religious oaf, dim-witted, violent albino and the evil incarnate Kjeld Abelsen. The plot is relatively intricate and partly so because Cold Fear was preceded by Girl Without Skin which, in my opinion, contained some background information needed to keep track of the story. It’s not impossible to follow the plot and the essential facts are provided, but one does experience some FOMO and I felt as if I would’ve should’ve benefited from reading the Girl Without Skin first.

This is particularly true of the character of Tupaarnaq, the seal hunter and convicted killer.

In the previous novel Matthew moved to Nuuk from Denmark to find some peace and quiet, but instead met Tupaarnaq and was drawn into investigating a cold case concerning revenge killings and sexual assault on children.

I suspect the first novel explored more of Tupaarnaq’s back story with further character development. Her secretive character invokes the reader’s curiosity. And of course, inevitably, comparisons will be made with Lisbeth Salander. Both their bodies are covered in tattoos, they display extreme asocial behaviour, and both have a strong sense of revenge and seeking justice. I’d like to believe that Tupaarnaq will be given more attention and her character fleshed out to a greater extent in following novels in the series.

In this case Matthew’s character development feels stronger. We understand his struggle to discover the truth about his father. Both the death of his wife, Tine, and unborn baby, Emily and his guilt for driving the car in which they were killed are slowly divulged.

Of Tupaarnaq we know that she’s considered an outcast because she brutally killed her father by slicing him open like a seal and she was accused of also murdering her mother and sisters. For this she served twelve years in prison after which she disappeared to Tasiilaq, a hellhole” where two thousand people live of which five hundred are children on the social services risk register and rape, murder and violence are prevalent. 

Nordbo certainly effectively evokes the grimness of the Arctic landscape and possibly also state of mind. He brings the threat of population decline and inhabitants’ struggle to survive in a challenging environment to the forefront. In order for the country to have a future, younger people need to develop special skills to survive and create a future for themselves in Greenland. Unfortunately, the population is declining and according to some, the government isn’t taking care of its people. Add low incomes, unemployment and consequential social issues such as alcoholism and domestic violence and Greenland has more than its fair share of problems.

At times Cold Fear reads more like a horror-thriller than your run-of-the-mill crime fiction novel. It contains graphic, gratuitous violence, incest, rape and all the sordid ingredients of very dark crime fiction. Subsequently it sits solidly on the far spectrum of Nordic Noir – it’s violent, moody and there’s not much light at the end of the tunnel for Greenlanders. Cold Fear is an action-filled crime thriller with an interesting premise set in mostly unexplored geographic territory – from a literary perspective at least.

Mads Peder Nordbo is a Danish-born author who has lived in Nuuk in Greenland for many years. He is the author of seven novels and has been published in eighteen languages.

Cold Fear is published by Text Publishing and they kindly provided me with a NetGalley review copy.

About the author:

Mads Peder Nordbo is Danish but has lived in Greenland for several years and works at the town hall in Nuuk. He holds degrees in literature, communications and philosophy from the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Stockholm. He is the author of five novels; his two latest books will published in eighteen languages. The Girl Without Skin is the first to be published in English.

Charlotte Barslund is a Scandinavian translator. She has translated novels by Peter Adolphsen, Mikkel Birkegaard, Thomas Enger, Karin Fossum, Steffen Jacobsen, Carsten Jensen and Per Petterson, as well as a wide range of classic and contemporary plays. She lives in the UK.

About the book:

When Danish Journalist Matthew Cave’s half-sister Arnaq disappears, leaving behind only a trail of blood, he realises they are both pawns in a game of life and death.

As a young US soldier stationed in Greenland, their father took part in a secret experiment with deadly consequences. Accused of murder, he was forced into hiding.

Desperate to discover the link between these two disappearances, Matthew is joined by Tupaarnaq, a young Inuit woman, who returns to Nuuk to help her only friend—and to settle a few scores of her own.

But, as things begin to unravel, Matthew begins to wonder: Is the father he has been searching for his entire life actually a cold-blooded murderer? And is Tupaarnaq really who he thinks she is?