Dead Souls by Elsebeth Egholm

 review by Maryom

On a routine job, clearing war-time explosives from Danish shipping lanes, diver Kir Røjel discovers a box of human bones. At first she and her fellow divers assume it to be a teaching aid, but the contents turn out to be a lot less innocuous - the victim was garrotted, probably in reprisals at the end of WW2.
Later in the year, at All Hallow's Eve, ex-convict Peter Boutrup finds himself unwillingly dragged into a murder enquiry again - a young nun goes missing only to be found dead in her convent's moat, and as Peter was the last person to see her alive, the police are obviously suspicious of him. The nun though has also been garrotted which causes Detective Mark Bille Hansen to believe the two deaths are linked, despite the 60 years between them.
And as if all this isn't enough trouble for Peter to be in, his past is still stalking him. He's contacted by the mother of his deceased friend My, asking for his help in tracing her son who's disappeared, he's being manipulated by someone he felt he could trust and the local drug-dealing biker-gang still feel they have a score to settle with him. Life's never as peaceful as he would like.

Elsebeth Egholm's latest thriller takes the reader back to the countryside and characters familiar from Three Dog Night  It's a complex, convoluted plot weaving several strands together as Peter Boutrup,  Kir Røjel and Mark Bille Hansen find themselves brought together again in the search for a killer, with each of them approaching the target from a different direction and seeing part of the puzzle but not the wider picture. How after all can a murder committed in the 1940s be related to the activities of present day animal activists or the special talent of which one strange family is so proud? It's all excellently done, the different threads moving forward simultaneously and leading the reader (and the police investigators) to suspect first one person, then another.

Be warned - this is Nordic Noir so it is at times rather gruesome, and not for the easily disturbed. I loved it but for me the unravelling of the mystery, and the following of obscure clues leading to the perpetrator always over-rides any squeamishness on my part.

It's probably not necessary to have read the first book of this series, but I did find it helpful having already been introduced to the main characters and their relationship to each other because the story hits the ground running with murder victims piling up almost from the first page.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Headline
Genre - Adult thriller, Nordic Noir

Three Dog Night by Elsebeth Egholm

review by Maryom

Ex-convict Peter Boutrup wants to move on, forget the past and live a quiet respectable life - but things are rarely that easy, are they? First an old friend turns up talking about a lost treasure, then while out walking his dog Peter finds another old acquaintance  dead at the bottom of cliffs - and his reclusive neighbour Felix seems to know more about this than she's telling. At the same time, a local girl has gone missing and a body, which may or may not be hers, turned up in the harbour.  Can all these things be related? It looks like Peter's dreams of a rural idyll are going to be on hold for a while.

Three Dog Night is a complex thriller set against the backdrop of Denmark's coldest winter. The story moves from two directions - that of Peter and his neighbour Felix, and that of the police department who are investigating matters from a totally different angle. As the two begin to merge things turn bloody and brutal. It's a compelling read that goes beyond the mere working out of whodunnit and why, to create a whole cast of characters, each with their own secrets and foibles.
 There's such an array of wonderfully drawn characters that it's difficult to know where to start; Peter himself with his dreadful children's home upbringing and desire to leave his past behind; widowed amnesiac Felix, mourning the death of her husband and daughter; local police chief Mark Bille Hansen, down-sizing his career due to health issues and his former lover from Copenhagen, now his superior, and a potential new one, Kir, the local girl and army diving specialist. It feels  not so much like reading a book as slipping into a new town and playing 'fly on the wall'.
This is the first in a series featuring Peter Boutrup and I don't think we've heard all there is to know about Peter's time in prison or the reason he was there in the first place, and I expect the other characters will be back too.

It's the sort of thing we all love from Danish TV thrillers, but in a book!

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Headline
Genre - Adult thriller, Nordic Noir

Buy Three Dog Night from Amazon