Tenant

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.

OH MY GOD that was hard

i almost never give books 1 star ratings but i was so angry the entire time that i had no choice

i decided about 40% of the way through that the author has never talked to a long list of people including police officers, and WOMEN.

every woman in this book is either there to give the male character a boner (because they are just SO HOT he can't stop picturing them naked omg they're purposely acting shy to turn him on) or to destroy EVERYTHING. it felt like a middle aged man in the 1980's wrote this and i'm extremely disappointed in how anti-feminist, and pro-toxic-masculinity this book was. it was full of girl on girl hate and toxic men who definitely knows more about everything than everyone because they're a man. i'm hoping that this was an issue with the translation and not really what this book is because........ oof.

The story was excellent, well thought through and very gripping.

My one gripe with this book was the character of Jeppe, who I really disliked. His constant judgment of his colleague Anette sprinkled with fatphobia and envy of her successful marriage gets old quickly. The Anna storyline was also gross. I wish there was more of Anette's life in this, and less of this pathetic Jeppe character.

This was a DNF for me. I don't know if it has to do with the translation, but I just found it convoluted and long-winded. It was a slog to get through with too many unnecessary details, like what a coworker was wearing or that the female detective was wearing her hair in a ponytail. Who cares? Just get to the matter. The murder story was interesting and showed promise, but after two weeks I was only 160 pages in and I realized I just didn't care enough to keep going. I'm disappointed because I heard such great things about this book. But I have way too many books on my TBR to keep trying to push myself to get through this one.

A woman is found, murdered in her own apartment and two Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are the lead investigators. As the story unfolds, secrets are uncovered about the landlady and the part her unpublished novel may have had in the murder. As with the best Scandinavian noir the pace picks up as another murder occurs. This was a very enjoyable read and I look forward to more from Katrine Engberg.

This is one of the best of this genre (detective/domestic suspense drama) I've read. I'd rank it up with Jane Harper's The Dry and The Lost Man and Susie Steiner's Missing,Presumed which for me is high praise. It's hard to believe this was a debut - I don't like the cover that much, doesn't really telegraph much but the story has a full range of fascinating characters and kept me guessing. But it was mainly the quality of the writing that set this above many for me. Lots of insights into the emotions behind most of the characters and no one was a stereotype.