Hey, another mystery. Yes, it’s been that kind of week.
This book is almost a parody of these kinds of books. It’s a mystery where the two protagonists both have deep trauma backgrounds, and the murders are over-the-top gruesome. But worst of all is that apparently Holt must have read How To Write A Damn Good Novel before writing this, because she follows the main tenet of that how-to manual faithfully: Every scene has to have both a primary and a secondary conflict.
So a typical scene is that the profiler wakes up at night and pokes her detective husband and tries to say something Earth-shatteringly insightful, and he’ll bellow at her I”M TRYING TO SLEEP HERE, before trying to take a sip from a glass of water and then tipping it into the bed and then roaring out of the room.
Almost. Every. Damn. Scene.
So since everything is interrupted all the time, the book goes on for an unnecessary 440 pages.
On the plus side, the book is about Holt killing everybody she finds annoying, so we get a TV show host killed, a right-wing politician, a book critic who dares to dislike mysteries, and finally a sports person. It’s fun to read somebody who’s obviously enjoying their work.
It’s OK, I guess?
Det som aldri skjer (2004) by Anne Holt (buy used, 3.56 on Goodreads)