The Beige Man

Starred review from December 1, 2014
Two cases that arise on the same wintry night in Göteborg, Sweden, propel Tursten’s excellent seventh mystery featuring Det. Insp. Irene Huss (after 2014’s The Fire Dance). Discovering the culprits behind the hit-and-run that killed Torleif Sandberg, a retired police officer, is straightforward, but the strangulation murder of an abused 12-year-old girl found in an abandoned root cellar requires Huss and her fellow officers to investigate a much larger issue: human trafficking and sex crimes. After questioning pimps in Sweden, Huss and company travel to the island of Tenerife, where Det. Insp. Juan Rejón wants their help with some local murders. In a bizarre meeting with one of the traffickers, Huss witnesses a shockingly violent encounter between rival gangs, but most of the action involves diligently looking for clues in the usual procedural fashion. Cleverly, Tursten doesn’t reveal the significance of the beige man of the title until the last page.

December 15, 2014
The seventh case for DI Irene Huss (The Golden Calf, 2013, etc.) gives Goteborg's Violent Crimes Unit still another chance to show why it's so well-named. A pair of lowlifes steal a BMW and drive it at high speed past the police station before they hit a pedestrian, abandon the car and set it afire. Police dogs, stymied by the burning smell, can't pick up the thieves' scents. But they do smell something else. Their noses lead the police to an underground cellar that's become the final resting place of a half-naked young woman who's been strangled to death. The nightmare of dealing with two unidentified corpses ends when the victim of the hit-and-run is identified as retired cop Torleif Sandberg, universally known as "Muesli," a friend of Superintendent Sven Andersson, Irene's soon-departing boss in VCU. The identity of the young woman remains a mystery but not her business in Goteborg, since it's increasingly clear that veteran trafficker Heinz Becker and big-time drug dealer Anders Pettersson had smuggled her into the country as a sex slave. But Becker is soon killed in yet another car crash, and Pettersson remains silent as the grave. While other VCU members track down possible candidates for the murderous car thieves, Irene focuses on the dead woman. A trip she's ordered to make to Tenerife, where the young victim may have been headed, places her in the crossfire between two warring crime families, and she's glad to limp back to chilly Sweden, where the obligatory domestic complications (sick dog, accident-prone mother, unexpected though natural death) continue unabated. Effectively puzzling till the final pages, rewardingly logical in its conclusion: One of Irene's best.

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Starred review from October 15, 2014

In the seventh entry (after The Fire Dance) in the Swedish crime series featuring Detective Inspector Huss, the theft of a BMW turns quickly into a search for the vehicle sought in a hit-and-run fatality. The hunt for the thieves unearths a gruesome discovery meant to be hidden for many years. And that's just the first chapter, but it is not overdone, nor implausible. The hit-and-run victim is someone the police know well, or do they? The second victim is an unknown. Three crime scenes, three intricate plotlines. Huss and her cohorts spread out in different directions that appear to lead nowhere but converge in a shocking finale. Huss's police team adds a cohesiveness and realism to the novel, demonstrating that crime solving relies on many heads working together and not on one rogue officer as so often depicted in crime fiction. Tursten also makes sure her readers get a glimpse into Huss's home life, which rounds out her protagonist. VERDICT Fans of Henning Mankell and Hakan Nesser will enjoy Tursten. For readers new to the series, there is no need to start at the beginning. Allow yourself time, this can be easily read in one sitting.--Frances Thorsen, Chronicles of Crime Bookshop, Victoria, BC

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
In the latest mystery featuring intuitive Detective Inspector Irene Huss, Tursten again masterfully blends a well-paced procedural with a broader social issue and the personal lives of members of the Gteborg, Sweden, police force. While investigating the hit-and-run death of retired police officer Torlief Sandberg, police find the body of a young girl who was obviously sexually active. This leads Huss and colleagues to the increasing scourge of human trafficking and sex slavery, at the same time they're wondering why Sandberga nondescript beige man with department ties only to Superintendent Sven Anderssonwas outside in light clothing on a very cold night when a stolen BMW hit him. On the home front, Huss frets about her husband, a talented chef now working part-time; their pending empty nest; the frailty of her aging mother; and the illness of her beloved terrier. (And when she has to give up a family ski trip to travel to Tenerife, at the request of the Spanish Policia Nacional, she finds herself in the middle of gang warfare linked to a compromised police chief.) Superior Scandinavian crime fiction with a feminist bent.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)