Katrine Engberg

This is the fifth volume in the Kørner & Werner series, which once again had me hooked from the first page to the last.
Although Annette Werner and Jeppe Kørner have since gone their separate ways, they come together again to work on this brutal and mysterious case.
Jeppe needs some distance and is therefore working as a tree feller on Bornholm. But when a friend asks him to look for a missing man, he is happy to make a few inquiries. At the same time, half of a dead man, sawn lengthwise and show more squeezed into an old suitcase, is found in Copenhagen. Annette Werner is leading the investigation, but she is simply not getting anywhere. Even a second suitcase containing the other half of the man's body does little to advance the case. But then a clue leads them to Bornholm of all places.
Engberg manages to portray her protagonists solely through their thoughts and actions. Annette enjoys being a police officer, but she is also a wife and mother, and is therefore constantly torn between the two roles and afraid of neglecting one or the other. This is likely to be familiar to many working mothers. Jeppe takes a break from his job as a police officer, but is not entirely content with the solitude of Bornholm in winter. The very personal sensitivities of these two people bring a human component to the otherwise rather brutal case. This is further emphasised by the sensitive portrayal of Jeppe's acquaintance, Esther de Laurenti, who has to cope with the death of her long-time roommate while carrying a long-kept secret. When rather shady characters and conservative believers are added to the mix, the circle of interesting characters is complete. show less

The Butterfly House is the second book I've read by Danish author Katrine Engberg. I've enjoyed them both mightily.

Three people have been murdered in Copenhagen. They've all bled out, and they've all been left in public fountains around the city. Jeppe Korner is in charge of the case, and his partner, Anette Werner is peripherally involved. She's supposed to be at home on maternity leave, but she's finding breastfeding tiring and far too time-consuming, and she's bored. Although Jeppe show more doesn't want her involved in the investigation as she's official on leave, she ignores his warnings and gets far too close to the case. Much of the story takes place inside mental institutions and with unmedicaated mental health patients. In a rare exception in popular fiction, Engberg actually seems to have researched mental health symptoms and the sort of care that is needed, instead of making mentally ill characters act like the "bad guys". I am grateful to her for her research and/or her lived experiences.

The book, mainly a crime novel, does weave in and out of the characters' lives. We see Anette's sleep-deprived newborn household, and Jeppe's chequered relationship with his mother and his involvement with the woman in his life. Neither interfere with the story, and really prop up the main players as police detectives with somewhat neglected personal lives.

There are several more books by Katrine Engberg, and I will be reading all of them, and perhaps acquiring them for my Nordic crime collection. show less

Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner are two police persons in Copenhagen who are quite different, but they are a good team nonetheless. In this novel, they deal with the brutal murder of a Danish celebrity from the fashion scene who is found in a local park.

Once again, I really liked this novel. Although it is not short, there are no lengthy parts at all, it kept my interest from beginning to end. The case is woven masterfully and I simply loved when all the puzzle pieces finally came together. show more The reader learns more about the characters in the police team and once again, I enjoyed the Copenhagen setting which is described wonderfully. However, both aspects do not overshadow the story. My only slight criticism is that I was not that interested in the parts of the story taking place in the world of companies and founders, but that is a matter of personal taste. show less

This novel is set in Copenhagen and starts with a brutal murder: A young student is killed in the flat she shared with another girl. The murder seems to be connected to the elderly woman who owns the house and lives upstairs, or rather to something she wrote. Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner, two very different characters, are assigned to the case, but there is no trace of the killer and they are at a loss.
Although the murder is a bit too brutal for my reading tastes, I loved everything else show more about this novel: The characters, the style, the composition. I could not stop reading and it simply never got boring, but not in a cheap, page-turner type of excitement. I really cared about the story. The only thing I criticize is that in the end, things became a bit too far-fetched in my opinion, and I would have wished for a simpler solution.
The Copenhagen setting is well done, too, I loved the descriptions of the city and the mentioning of streets and places, but it did not overshadow the plot or feel artificial.
I highly recommend this novel and will definitely continue with this series. show less