Sara Blaedel

I can see why this series of mysteries is a bestseller in Denmark. Louise Rick is a character readers can't help but like, and the trials and tribulations of her new job position highlight some of the things women have to deal with in a male-dominated work force like the police. Louise's personal life and the death of her fiance also play a part in the story.

Blaedel also uses the landscape and forests of Denmark to good effect. I often found all the trees to be rather claustrophobic. But the show more investigation itself grabbed almost every scrap of my concentration. I had allowed myself to forget how the developmentally disabled were often treated in the past. It is something none of us should forget. As good as the characters and the setting are in The Forgotten Girls, the investigation into the fate of Lisemette and her sister is engrossing, and its outcome is truly riveting... horrifying... and ultimately transformed by the actions of one elderly man. show less

This gets a whole-hearted "no" from me. A flat combination of unconvincing and unlikable characters, lumpen prose, and implausible plot. And hey, I've ploughed through a bunch of so-so crime novels before now just for the escapism they offered, but the off-putting attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities and the weird strain of internalised misogyny meant I couldn't even turn my brain off while reading The Forgotten Girls.

Although this is the eighth book in the Louise Rick series, it's only the second one I've read, because most of them have not been translated from Danish. This one picks up shortly after [b:The Forgotten Girls|20455343|The Forgotten Girls (Louise Rick, #7)|Sara Blaedel|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1399490582s/20455343.jpg|18222051], with Louise returning to work after a brief leave. She's obsessed with new information about her fiance's apparent suicide many years before and a missing teen show more from her hometown leads back to the same group of men who may have been responsible for his death. It all makes for a compulsively readable story as Louise and her partner/love interest Eik race to find solve crimes past and present.

Louise's best friend, Camilla, figures prominently in this story, too, and this is the part where I struggled to suspend disbelief. Camilla married Frederik, her wealthy boyfriend, after having moved in and renovated his ancestral home...so she's been living there for a while. Yet, somehow in all that time (6 months? a year?), Fred has failed to mention that (a) the forest on their property has apparently legendary locations that (b) are used regularly by followers of an ancient Norse religion for freaking blood sacrifices. And although she knows that the property was originally an orphanage, he hasn't brought up the fact that (c) one of those orphans, now around 90 years old, still lives in the gate house and occasionally shows up at the mansion. Seriously? Fred couldn't have mentioned some of that...even "off screen" so that these developments wouldn't come as a complete shock to Camilla? And also, after said mansion burns down, super-rich Fred can't even afford to rent them an apartment? I realize this is an excuse for Eik to shack up with Louise, but really? All summer, Fred & Camilla can't find a better place than the tiny bachelor pad? And it's easier to send the two teenage boys off to boarding school than to find larger accomodations?

Beyond that quibble, this was a strong detective novel -- a 3.5 for me. I will probably read the next book in the series when/if it's translated into English, especially since the garbled Google translation of the plot of [b:Kvinden de meldte savnet|23511248|Kvinden de meldte savnet (Louise Rick, #9)|Sara Blaedel|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1424068518s/23511248.jpg|43114508] (The Woman They Reported Missing -- hope that gets a better title in translation) indicates it's about Eik's former girlfriend who mysteriously disappeared many years ago. show less

I hadn't read very many pages of The Undertaker's Daughter before I began forming an intense dislike for Ilka, the main character. She must be a prime case of arrested development: her mother knows Ilka's father better than Ilka ever will, but she hares off to Wisconsin like a bratty teenager because her mother couldn't possibly know anything. She's full of plans on what she's going to do once she gets there, but what does she actually do? Locks herself in her room, ignoring everyone all the show more next day, and when the person on the other side of the door finally gives up and shoves papers underneath, does she read them? Heavens no. She just signs them and shoves them back. Big mistake for the forty-year-old teenager.

She can't make up her mind what she's going to do. Is she going to go back to Copenhagen? Is she going to stay? Is she going to sell the business? Is she going to run it herself? I think the final straw for me was when she had a complete mess on her hands yet showed more interest in a date with someone she hooked up with on Tinder. My list of things that annoyed me about Ilka could go on for a day or two.

With my strong adverse reaction to the main character, you'd think I wouldn't have enough of my brain cells left to pay attention to the mystery. The mystery surrounding the cold case and the corpse in the cooler would have been far more engaging if the book hadn't been mired in page after page centering on the whiny Ilka. This is the start of a new series and ends on a cliffhanger. I don't think I need to tell you whether or not I'll continue with it. If you give The Undertaker's Daughter a try, I certainly hope you get much better mileage. show less