Helene Tursten

Detective Inspector Huss

Detective: Irene Huss

Setting:     Gothenburg: Sweden

Time:        Recent Past (1990's)

Genre:      Scandi-Noir

This is the complicated investigation of the murder of a wealthy Swedish industrialist with a sub plot that involves violent criminals, Hell's Angels and drugs and which eventually merges into the main story. Although Huss is the main character, the team she works with are significantly involved in the development.

As this is the start of a sequence of novels featuring Huss, the elements of the background story ARC are laid, introducing a home life with a husband who is a chef and with twin teen daughters.

As is often the case  prejudiced assumptions enter the story. This time with relating to Finnish immigrants ("only a Finn can clean well"). At one stage one of the daughters gets involved with right wing skinheads and begins to Holocaust deny She needs persuasion to abandon the interest. One agent in this is one of Huss' colleagues who has a Jewish/holocaust ancestory and the other is Huss' mother who experienced rehabilitating concentration camp survivors. In so doing Sweden's discomfort in the ambivolent role it played in the Second World War is revealed.

Rating B++

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