Friday 7 July 2017

Book Review: What dark clouds hide - A. Holt


Serie Vik/Stubo - book 5

OMG I have just finished this book and I am shocked! I do not want to spoil it for anybody so I will not go into details but it is one of those crime novels where the end is not at all what you would expect. An extremely good book, Stubo is very much a secondary character in this volume, while Johanne Vik is more central. I  read three previous books in the serie - not sure why I skipped book number two - and I have to say this is dfinitely my favourite one out of all the four I read. 
A child is dead on the same day where Oslo is devastated by a terrorist attack which left all the police force busy in dealing with finding the killer. A police man just out of the police school is left investigating the child case and, in all his inexperience and mistakes, has suspicions on the accidental death so he decides to go in depth into the case. Joahnne Vik is a friend of the child's family and she finds herself called in by different parties and she decides at the end to look into it for her own ethics. As usual in her novels Anne Holt is very good at pitching the atmospheres that cloud the facts and Vik, with all her strange behaviours, is an interesting character with great profiling skills. Compared to UK and USA crime books, in my view you feel the difference in setting and in the culture and that's what makes Holt's books so interesting in my view. 
I highly recommend the serie - preferably in order to get to know the characters and their story - and I particularly recommend this fifth book in the serie.  

Overall rating:  7.5     Plot:  8     Writing style: 7.5       Cover: 5




Title:What dark clouds hide
Author: Anne Holt
Publisher: Corvus
Pages: 320
Publication year: 2017

Plot:
On a summer's day, Johanne Vik arrives at the home of her friends Jon and Ellen Mohr and was greeted by a scene of devastation: their young son, left unattended, has tragically fallen to his death.Meanwhile, Oslo is under attack. An explosion has torn the city apart and newly qualified police officer Henrik Holme is the only one available to attend the Mohr household. As Holme investigates, he casts doubt on the claim that the death was a tragic accident and calls upon Johanne's profiling expertise to understand what really happened. But neither realise that those involved are determined to hide the truth - no matter what. Before the summer is over, more shocking deaths will occur
The Author:
Anne Holt is Norway's bestselling female crime writer. She spent two years working for the Oslo Police Department before founding her own law firm and serving as Norway's Minster for Justice between 1996 and 1997. She is published in 30 languages with over 7 million copies of her books sold worldwide. 
Books in the Vik/Stubo serie - in publication order:
Punishment
The final murder
Death in Oslo
Fear not (Modus)
What dark clouds hide

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