Who Watcheth

September 12, 2016
Fans of serial killer novels will welcome Tursten’s solid ninth mystery featuring Det. Insp. Irene Huss (after 2015’s The Treacherous Net). A journal entry at the start—“I am the one who watcheth in the darkness. I am the Guardian”—clues the reader that a serial killer is about to strike. In a powerful, deftly rendered scene, a dog walker discovers the body of the first victim, Ingela Svensson, who was divorced and lived alone. Huss and her Gothenburg police team learn that Svensson was stalked by someone in the days before her murder. A similar story unfolds with the second victim, Elisabeth Lindberg, likewise divorced and living alone. Punctuating the classic procedural plot are the writings of the Guardian and humanizing details of the personal lives of Huss, her family, and her colleagues. The stakes rise after the killer starts to target women on the force, including Huss’s boss, Supt. Efva Thylqvist, and Huss herself, who decides she is “going to become the hunter.” The action builds to a genuinely shocking denouement.

October 1, 2016
Gteborgs Violent Crimes Unit sets its sights on a killer who takes an unusually retributive view toward sins of the flesh.Divorced florist Ingela Svenssons corpse, strangled and carefully wrapped, turns up in a churchyard. So does divorced nurse Elisabeth Lindbergs. Theres obviously a single pair of hands behind the two murders, but the killer has been so careful to avoid leaving any trace evidence that its hard to tell whose. As they repeatedly interrogate minimally responsive park groundskeeper Daniel Brjesson and wait for the crucial break that will come only with the discovery of an earlier victim who escaped a similar fate by the skin of her teeth, DI Irene Huss (The Treacherous Net, 2015, etc.) and her colleagues focus instead on speculating about the not-so-private lives of their superiorsmost notably, about Superintendent Efva Thylqvists apparent affair with Irenes old friend DI Tommy Persson, whos cooled considerably toward Irene since his divorceand their own domestic problems. For Irene at least, these last carry serious potential to rival the work of the Package Killer. Someone steals her husband Kristers wallet while hes working in his restaurant, uses a bank card inside to buy him a carton full of sex toys, finds ways to harass their daughters far from Gteborg, and then bears down hard to exact vengance on Irene. Is it her old enemy Angelika Malmborg-Eriksson, whose blogs against Irene are pure poison, or does the Package Killer have her in his sights? Proficient, unexceptionable work for readers who havent had enough of self-righteous serial killers targeting helpless women beneath Nordic skies.

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October 15, 2016
In her ninth outing (following The Treacherous Net, 2015), Detective Inspector Irene Huss and the Goteborg Violent Crimes Unit are looking for a serial killer the media has labeled the Package Killer for the way he wraps and leaves the bodies of his victims. The police discover that the killer has also been sending his victims pictures he's taken of them days before he strikes. When it appears that someone has been peering into Huss' windows, the case takes an even more dangerous turn. Though Tursten is often positively compared to other Scandinavian crime writers, his main characters have just as much in common with the detectives imagined by Denise Mina, Tana French, and Karin Slaughter. An imperfect but never over-the-top professional, Huss is the kind of determined, human cop you'd want on the case if anybody ever dared hurt someone you loved.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2016

One of Soho's big-building authors, Tursten returns with the next in a series starring Irene Huss, detective inspector with the Violent Crimes Unit in small-town Goteborg, Sweden. Here, a murder victim received a flower, a bizarre note, and a photograph of herself before she was killed. With further deaths, it seems that this killer makes up rules for his victims, then executes them when they misstep.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016

In her ninth mystery (after The Treacherous Net), Insp. Irene Huss of the Violent Crimes Unit in Goteborg, Sweden, is hunting a serial killer who seems to be picking his victims at random and hiding in plain sight. A string of murders of single middle-aged women has the cops running in circles. Their instincts tell them that they have the killer, but they can't find any links between him and either the victims or the methods by which the bodies have been disposed as tidy packages. Meanwhile, Irene is distracted by a series of malicious pranks targeting her and her family. Could the seemingly random incidents be linked? The haunting finale leaves readers pondering, "Who watches the watchers?" VERDICT This type of stalker case has been done many times, but this take, with its Swedish setting and sympathetic protagonist, draws readers in and keeps them glued to their seats. Recommended for enthusiasts of Scandinavian noir and/or European police procedurals. [See Prepub Alert, 6/19/16.]--Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.