Review: The Chestnut Man

The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I have enjoyed a lot of what could be termed ‘Scandinavian Noir’ I have always found the television from the Nordic countries to be more dynamic and involving than their literature. Series such as The Killing and The Bridge, despite complex plots, focus as much on the human element as on solving the crimes. Søren Sveistrup, writer of the former series has, perhaps not surprisingly, written a novel more akin to those television series than to his contemporaries on the bookshelves.
The Chestnut Man is a fast-moving crime novel. The plot, as complex and intriguing as it is, fairly thunders along. Two detectives, the young ambitious, Naia Thulin and, burnt out jaded Europol cop, Mark Hess, who has been sent back to Copenhagen while an investigation is held into possible misconduct, are initially suspicious of each other. However, as they investigate the murders of two women in separate incidents, the pair are drawn together as their theories that the crimes are connected, not only to each other but possibly to the disappearance of a senior politician’s daughter a year ago, put them out of step with their colleagues who consider the early crime solved as a murder, despite the lack of a body.
Like The Killing, The Chestnut Man is a mixture of police procedural, politics and familial relationships and it is the impact of the crimes on the families - the Government minister and her husband who are struggling with the loss of their daughter, Thulin’s distress at neglecting her own daughter because of her career ambitions - which, I feel, sets the novel apart. An entirely satisfying crime story, the book also sheds some light on another side of the Danish capital, the poorer tenements, the immigrant communities.
I enjoyed The Chestnut Man immensely and look forward to more from Søren Sveistrup, especially if he revisits Thulin and Hess.

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