Tenant

Copenhagen suspense with detectives tasked to finding a murderer who carved an intricate pattern of lines on the face of the victim. The murder victim, a young woman, rented an apartment from an elderly woman who had begun writing her first novel before the murder and it was a murder mystery. And the idea for her victim came from her knowledge of her tenant's life. The connections between the real murder and the novel murder form the basis of this truly twisted thriller. I found it hard to put down.

The mystery part of this book was fine. This book's weakness is the characters, they are just a different iteration of the mismatched but actually perfectly complementary duo of police officers (detectives). This is to the mystery genre what harlequin novels are to the romance genre, it follows the rules and it's devoid of any real surprises but it's digestible.
The male detective talks about his weight and erectile problems/erections constantly and is mentally unstable following a divorce. It sounds like it could make for a gritty read but it doesn't, it all comes across as rather banal. There were 2 women in the police department that I kept mixing up because we never really had a reason to care about what we learned about them (which one is the single mom and which one is still happily married with the plumply happy man? I already forgot and it never mattered to the story any way).In short, this novel could have used some trimming.

Didn't have too high of expectations for this one and that's mostly when my expectations get exceeded by a particular novel. I have a nasty habit of being perpetually uninspired by most of the endings of the books I read. I'm not sure why. It's like I get my hopes up that a book is going to have 13 different twists that I never see coming — and then when I book only has 3 twists at the end, I consider that a disappointment. This book was satisfying and I'd recommend others to read it.