HIDE AND SEEK

In a sequel to The Chestnut Man (2019), stalked women are texted live photos of themselves, accompanied by counting rhymes ending with “Gotcha!” just before they’re gruesomely murdered.

For Naia Thulin, a cybercrime detective in Copenhagen who’s been drafted by the elite national homicide unit, and her former lover Mark Hess, an idiosyncratic Europol officer imported from The Hague, suspicion grows that the killings are being committed by someone seeking vengeance for having been neglected as a child. All the victims were work-consumed parents who left their children alone or in the care of others. As a single mother who guiltily devotes most of her time to hunting the killer, to the frustration of her kindly new boyfriend, Thulin can relate. When Marie Holst, the grief-ridden single mother of a high school girl who was murdered two years ago, begins harassing Nylander, head of Major Crimes, for not doing more to find the killer, he insists the girl’s case is not related to the current one. He’s still chafing from the grief he took from the press for the messed up Chestnut Man case. But then Hess uncovers clues that Caroline Holst’s murder is connected with the more recent cases. With the late discovery of vital evidence and the emergence of figures from the past, the investigation gets increasingly wired and weird. The head-spinning plot is not without its hiccups—a minor one is the ease with which imperiled characters slip out of plastic ties and duct tape. And Thulin’s absence down the stretch may make sense in terms of her character’s newfound devotion to motherhood, but it’s still disappointing. But Sveistrup’s knack for tightening the screws on multiple plot strands while leading the reader into the darkest of places is on full display. No surprise coming from the creator of the TV series The Killing.

A mystery so complicated you may want to take notes, but still quite a ride.