Lotte Hammer

In "The Night Ferry," by Lotte and Søren Hammer, translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund, a stealthy perpetrator commits multiple murders. One of his victims is Pauline Berg, a colleague of Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen. Berg had been obsessed with a possible homicide that no one else thought deserved further investigation, but she would not be dissuaded from pursuing the matter vigorously. Could her determination to keep a closed inquiry alive have led to her show more death? Simonsen, his wife and fellow detective Nathalie von Rosen (nicknamed the Countess), Deputy Homicide Chief Arne Pedersen, and others join forces to find the villain who jumped onto a tour boat with an intent to kill.

This complex police procedural brings to mind wooden nesting dolls. When one is opened, another is hidden inside. At the outset, Konrad and his team have no idea that they are poking sticks into a nest of vipers. Their quest will lead them to discover corruption in high places; a conspiracy to conceal scandalous acts of savagery; and a sobering history lesson about ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, during which bands of thugs tortured and slaughtered well over one hundred thousand men, women, and children.

Why do terrible transgressions often go unpunished? All it takes is for deceitful people to destroy records and evidence, and pretend that nothing has happened. To reveal the truth, Simonsen and his fellow detectives search for forensic evidence and track down witnesses who have relevant information to share. This novel requires close attention to detail, since it has a large cast of characters and a dense plot that is sometimes difficult to follow. On the plus side, "The Night Ferry" is a suspenseful, powerfully written, and involving thriller as well as a disturbing look at the incredible cruelty of which human beings are capable. Although Konrad Simonsen can be a bit of a curmudgeon, he is intelligent, courageous, a strong leader, and a crafty strategist. He and his colleagues risk their reputations and their lives in order to redress an outrageous miscarriage of justice. show less

This is the third volume in the crime series featuring Danish detective Konrad Simonson (Simon). Although it's rather long and leisurely, it opens with a bang: a school shooting. However, that proves not to be the main crime to be solved, but only the link to a connection with a postman who recently died in a fall. Simon is given the task to determine whether the postman's death was an accident or murder. Along the way Simon also looks into the disappearance 40 years previously of a teenage show more runaway from Liverpool named Lucy. And that's where, for me, a lot of the "fun" and merit of this book came in: repeated reference to Beatles songs and trivia. The runaway's name of course refers to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, and the circumstances of her leaving comport with She's Leaving Home ("meeting a man from the motor trade"), with her parents still mourning and wondering what they did wrong 40 years later. And then Simon's girlfriend from the late 60's was named Rita, and she's involved with parking garages, so references to Lovely Rita the Meter Maid abound. And so on.

I'll probably read another in the series, though I'm not sure Beatles references will be enough to keep me reading. In general I'm not a huge fan of series (or at least those that go on too long), preferring to read new characters and new situations.

3 stars show less

Normally when I get to the stage of actually finishing up a review and publishing it, I've had a good long think, a work
through the notes I take as I read, and have formed an opinion that I'm confident I can support. I therefore cannot, for the life of me work out, why THE HANGING still has me unsure.

A confrontational plot, THE HANGING starts out with a death scene that's particularly uncomfortable. The possible reason for the death of five men, left hanging in a school gym, comes much show more later, with the likely motive a long time before a possible perpetrator. Of course, identifying the victims was obviously going to be a problem as there is a level of disfiguring of the bodies which clearly flags the initial problems the investigation will have. The second major problem, the reaction to the deaths of the public, and even some sectors of the authorities, takes a while longer to reveal itself, but it definitely creates issues for the investigation team.

The team itself, headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen develops as an unusual combination of colleague, competitor, boss, subordinate, friends, lovers, possible lovers, enemies and all levels in between. This is a very difficult group to get a handle on, not just because Simonsen is taciturn, flat, dark and quite distant for a fair part of the novel. Even allowing for a mid novel decision that perhaps there's a dry, desiccated sense of humour going on here, this is still a difficult bunch to get to know. Which doesn't help with connection with the storyline.

Because of the motive behind the murders, the terrible and dark secret that the victims have in common, there's a lot about the plot that not serviced well by a narrative that plods and moves forwards in erratic leaps and bounds. Whilst there are stages when things teeter close to a direction, it always seemed to end up meandering. I'm still not 100% sure if that was actually because of the plotting or simply reader disconnection.

Not being the sort of reader that automatically wants to like or sympathise with a novel's protagonist, understanding is more than enough. Achieving that was a struggle no matter how much slack I sought to give this lot. Perhaps Simonsen's loner pretensions, his illness, his taciturn nature was a little too derivative. We all know that in Scandinavian crime fiction it's been done before with considerable panache and in those days originality. Perhaps it's also because the public reaction to these murders, so easily stirred and built by the perpetrator was somehow a little preachy or manipulative of the reader at the same time.

But strangely, and for reasons that I still can't quite put my finger on, finishing the book wasn't a total chore. There is something there, somewhere that's sort of promising, despite THE HANGING not playing out as well as you'd think it should have from the blurb and the hype. Maybe it is a sense of humour that hasn't translated well. Maybe it was that slight feeling of having been there before. Either way, if the series continues, then I'd like to try another book. After the heavy lifting of the team introductions are out of the way, there might be room for a bit more character development and maybe a plot point or two that stay on message.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/hammer-lotte-and-soren-hammer show less

'The Vanished' by the sister and brother team of Lotte and Soren Hammer is a finely woven accounting of two tales and justice was done to both. The story lines are intriguing, and it seems every time one or the other had reached what might have been its natural conclusion, a new angle was identified, propelling the stories in a new and interesting direction. The story was well-written, realistic, plausible and entertaining.

My only problem with the book as translated by Martin Aitken, was show more that too much of the phraseology had a distinct British flavor to it, which I found somewhat annoying over time. I understand this flavor may be the natural result, of course, of the fact that Aitken is British. I may be speaking from ignorance as far as common Danish phrases being closely resembling British English, but it was off-putting as I wasn't expecting that, and was instead looking for typical Danish phrases and colloquialisms to derive a sense that the dialogues were authentic. Perhaps Danish conversational phrases don't translate well or easily into other languages, but in the end I was looking for that feeling I was immersed in Copenhagen and the forms of speech typical of the Danish people, but I didn't get that.

Detective Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is a very interesting character and I look forward to reading the other books in the series, it is time well spent! show less