As a reader who has spent decades reading books by and about white men, I really did enjoy this book. It was fun reading a crime thriller set in a country other than Britain or the US. The story was interesting and presented a set of truly bad 'bad guys' with just enough of a twist that one might root for the investigator or for the least bad baddie.
However, as a woman, I found Carl rather hard to like. He's so unprofessional in his relations with his female coworkers that I lost a lot of respect for him right from the start. Certainly it is not just Danish investigators who act sexist at work, but because the reader is seeing through Carl's perspective a lot, we get to 'enjoy' his admiration of his assistant's butt and the way he treats he as if she is incompetent simply because she is female. I have only read this one book in this series, so maybe Carl is just as awful to everyone, but in this book he comes across as sexist.
I also have issues with Assad, Carl's trusty non-white companion, a sort of modern, Middle-Eastern version of Tanto, available for comic relief and to say just the right things at just the right times to land both him and Carl in deep trouble. Assad adds to the racial diversity of the story, just as the Somali no-quite-slaves and the Asian laundry girls do, but the way Assad's character was portrayed bugged me.
Last in my litany of gripes was the bit about how Carl and Assad land themselves in the grand predicament we all know by halfway through the book has to happen. Rabid fox? Deadly crossbow toys? Potentially deadly hunt? Of course our 'hero' has to land himself in the middle of it somehow. But the sudden bout of impatience, blind assumptions, and stupidity that causes Carl to be led by Assad into that hunt seem awfully contrived. Surely there could have been other, more evidence-based reasons these two men could have decided a sneaky visit to the hunt was justified.
Still, I did like this book, enough to only dock one star from its rating here. And, I might read other books by this author, if only because I still like reading foreign crime thrillers enough to forgive Carl's many shortcomings. ( )

Movie was better ( )

This book is rather biased against people with K names, which is a lot of my family... but I guess I like it anyways. ( )

Almost 5 stars - I enjoyed this audiobook very much, and liked the narrator much better than the first one of the series.

This series is a pretty dark police mystery, starting off with a person being hunted by a group of people with various deadly weapons. Like the first one, we don't really know who it is, or the context until late in the book, but I guess it's done that way to let you know right away that there will be violence. And there is. Along with a large number of psychotics from all walks of life. In fact, it's pretty hard to believe there are this many murderous psychos at one time in a place like Holland. Probably not, but it makes for pretty exciting reading.

If you're a fan of dark fiction, serial killers, police mysteries, etc, you should give this series a try. There is some comic relief in the form of Assad, his assistant from the first book, and a new secretary Rose, who is outspoken but competent, both of which Carl has trouble dealing with at times, especially when she starts buying office furniture. ( )

Féll þessi bók vel í geð. Skemmtilegar persónur með gersamlega óþolandi samskipti sín á milli. Siðspilltir valdamikilir auðjöfrar kynntir sem hópur glæpona sem rannsóknarhópurinn í deild Q reynir að tengja við 20 ára gömul morð. Til hliðar við þessa aðila er þó geðveik útigangskona sem reynist hafa verið nátengd bófunum og er eina persónan sem þeir skelfast.
Flott plott og spennandi saga. ( )