The Girl without Skin

The Girl Without Skin begins with what seems to be an important historical find, a Norse mummy in a crevasse. A police officer left to guard the body is murdered, his body flensed and eviscerated with an ulu, as though the murderer was skinning a seal. When journalist Matthew Cave begins to invesigate the murder, he is told about a series of four murders back in the 1970s that were uncannily similar–four men all flensed and eviscerated.

Matthew is given a notebook kept by Jacob, the man who investigated the murders in the Seventies. He is captivated by the man’s writing, poetic and emotionally rich descriptions of the land, and intrigued by the case.The forty-year-old mystery is centered on the abuse of young Greenlander girls. Their show more fathers are murdered, but Jacob comes to suspect there is a connection to Greenland’s most powerful leaders. Matthew soon learns they are involved again as he is threatened directly.

The police are certain a recently released woman named Tupaarnaq is involved in the new murders. She was convicted of killing her mother, sisters, and father and has the kind of powerful self-possession of Lisbeth Salander. Matthew is fascinated, awed, and certain she is innocent. They work together to solve the case.

Mads Peder Nordbo creates a vivid environment, cold, damp, and fog-bound. He makes the environment an integral component of the story. Even the murders grow out of the customs of Greenland. The flaying of the murder victims with an ulu is a skill many learned when hunting seals. The sense of place is strong enough to bring me back to read the rest of the series when it is available even though I have some serious criticims of the book.

There are too many plots in The Girl Without Skin. There are the four murders in the Seventies, the disappearance of investigator Jakob, the sexual abuse of young girls, medical experiments, government corruption, the murder of Tupaarnaq’s family, the current murders, and the disappearance of the corpse in the crevasse.

While I recognize that many of the Danes are portrayed as corrupt, this book suffers from the “white savior” syndrome. The Inuit portrayed are consistently as complicit in the crimes and Matthew and Jakob, the white saviors seeking justice. If Tupaarnaq were centered as the hero, the story would be more interesting, but instead she is exoticised by Matthew. The Danish/Greenlander relationship is fraught with the same biases of all colonial relationships and they permeate the book.

I received an e-galley of The Girl Without Skin from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Girl Without Skin at Text Publishing Company
Mads Peder Nordbo author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/9781922268198-the-girl-wi... show less

journalist, law-enforcement, international-crime-and-mystery, suspense, horror

Very dark. If you enjoy reading about the hard truths of man's inhumanity on a small scale, rather than war and that kind of high body count, this may be for you. There is a lot of blood, personalized torture, and apparently meaningless violence in a story that is of a particular species of horror to law enforcement anywhere in the world. The visualization of the countryside is beautiful, getting inside the murderer's head is disturbing, and the whole thing gives suspense a new depth. The writing is beyond very good, but the subject matter is quite disturbing.
Charlotte Barslund (Translator) needs to be loudly recognized for her work as well!
I requested and show more received a free ebook copy from Text Publishing Company via NetGalley. show less

Opening with a breathtaking first-person account of the car accident that killed Matthew Cave's wife and unborn daughter, THE GIRL WITHOUT SKIN isn't as straight-forward an undertaking for fans of Nordic Noir as it might seem.

Early on in the novel you're going to find yourself ticking off the required elements list. Awful personal tragedy; man lost in grief and lacking direction; isolation in a cold and inhospitable location; tension between different groups of people; local indigenous stories and customs; bone-chilling cold and weather creating a closed room setting; an outsider finding his way in a strange location; and since the advent of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, a loner, slightly weird, off-sider who is more of an outsider show more than the outsider who is the central cornerstone of this story.

In this case - Matthew Cave serves as the sufferer of the personal tragedy; the grief-stricken outsider in a strange place - a journalist from Denmark who finds himself in Greenland initially writing a story about the discovery of a mummified Norseman pushed up from a glacier, which rapidly turns into a current day murder. Which then reaches back into recent history and a series of cold-case murders that were never solved. The role of loner has been allocated to Greenlandic woman Tupaarnaq, recently released from jail for the murder of her entire family (except her brother), she's tough, stand-offish, less of an off-sider and more of the central protagonist at points through the story. She's the source of the title of the novel as well - covered in tattoos, she's seemingly without skin. Add to that a town that's isolated, a current day murder that's occurred on the ice shelf outside town, cold, snowy, inclement weather, the implications of the manner in which the killings happened, and the tension between the local Greenlandic people and the Danes and you have your list of required elements. Add to that the enigma of the character of Tupaarnaq, the complications of Cave's own father, and there is potential for some readers to get the distinct feeling we've been here before.

In many ways, dedicated readers of Nordic (Scandi) noir have been here before. There are many elements that seem to echo The Dragon Tattoo series in particular closely, and this novel is digging its way into societal problems, and the sorts of dark, deep secrets within families that make your stomach churn and your teeth grind. Although THE GIRL WITHOUT SKIN is less of the why than we've come to expect from many of the analytical psychological thriller versions around.

Which is making it sound like THE GIRL WITHOUT SKIN is a bit of the same-old-same-old. Which for the first third of the novel it was starting to feel like the case, until at some point it became hard to step away from. There was much to learn here about the cultural tensions and differences between Danes and the local Greenlanders. There is much intrigue about where Tupaarnaq and Cave are heading, and how they will both adjust to lives that have dished up a lot of hard blows. It was interesting to see that the domestic and authority blindness that lead to abuse of children and violence within families happens in all sorts of places and cultures, and it was good to know that there are some good people in all dark places.

Ultimately what THE GIRL WITHOUT SKIN did deliver was potential for what's likely to happen next. Just because it's got a list of required elements doesn't mean they weren't delivered well, making this an extremely readable and intriguing book.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/girl-without-skin-mads-peder-nordbo show less

My idea of Greenland is an indirect one absorbed from "Smila's Sense of Snow", which, while about a Greenlander, is set in Denmark proper. Mr. Nordbo's Greenland is entirely new to me.

Matthew is a dead man walking, a man for whom there will be no recovery from the loss of his wife and unborn daughter in a car crash. In his numbness he has come to Greenland as a stringer for a Danish newspaper and is now based in Nuuk, a town where he lived briefly as a child. He has no goals, no ambition. He merely survives.

Matthew's Danish editor is ambitious for the paper though, and pushes Matthew to report on everything, providing exclusive stories from a reporter on the ground in this far off place. When a mummified Viking shows up in a cave, it's show more a big deal and Matthew is right there on the job. He's there too when a cop is found murdered and when a body tied in a bag is found by a fishing crew. Suddenly a sleepy coastal town is the scene of multiple murders.

The story is tied to the past, which is presented in flashbacks. These flashbacks are fairly short and to the point so they aren't too bad. They tie nicely to the present, which makes them feel less like text stuffing. I got a bit lost, though, with the story of Matthew's father, a US serviceman, and the reasons why he abandoned his wife and child.

This is not the best of the Nordic thrillers, but the unusual location and the details of Greenlandic life, make it particularly interesting.

I received a review copy of "The Girl Without Skin" by Mads Peder Nordbo, translated by Charlotte Barslund (Text Publishing) through NetGalley.com. show less

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

A frozen man is discovered in the ice near Nuuk in Greenland. There is a great stir when scientists opine that it could be a mummified Viking, and local journalist Matthew Cave is despatched by his editor to cover the story. Things change very quickly however when the eviscerated corpse disappears and the cop that was guarding it is found dead, with the same eviscerations. Soon there is a third such killing.

Cave, a newcomer to Nuuk, is asked to look into similar killings that happened in the 1970s, to see if there is a connection. In the process he runs into Tupaarnaq, a recently-released prisoner who was convicted of such a killing and is an show more immediate suspect.

The plot, which shifts between Matthew's contemporary investigation and the investigation of 70s policeman Jacob, is nicely paced and there are a few surprises. I have to say that I felt that the 1970s setting worked better. I'm afraid that the contemporary plot elements of an investigating Scandinavian journalist assisted by a non-conformist tattooed woman into crimes involving abuse was just a little, dare I say, too familiar. show less

The Girl Without Skin is set in the barren, frigid landscape of Greenland. The story follows Matthew Cave, a Dutch journalist who moved to the isolated town of Nuuk, Greenland after his pregnant wife and daughter were killed in a car wreck. Matthew was the only survivor. Matthew works as an investigative reporter for a local paper. Matthew is sent out to a remote section of ice where a group of travelers has unearthed the mummified corpse of what is initially believed to be a Nordic Viking. Complete bodies of Vikings are incredibly rare in the area, and if this is a Nordic Viking, it could be the story of the century. Testing; however, reveals that the body is actually only about 40 years old.

The body was left under armed guard on the show more ice and Matthew and the police vow to return to inspect and remove the body the following day. Everything is turned upside down when Matthew and the police return to the ice the following day to find the mummy missing and in his place, the cop in charge of guarding the mummy is found dead, and gutted like a seal, with all his internal organs stripped out and missing. The mummy and the missing organs are soon found by a fisherman. However, the fisherman who finds the remains is also found gutted like a seal before he can be officially interviewed. As the body count rises quickly, the police and Matthew must move quickly to find the perpetrator of such brutal crimes. Greenland has seen this type of crime before, 4 men were found gutted and brutally murdered in the early 1970’s. Matthew believes that he may be able to learn who is responsible for the current string of murders by studying the murders from the ‘70’s. Matthew is assisted in his quest when a member of the police force gives him a private notebook that belonged to Jacob, the investigator who originally interviewed the 4 men who were murdered. The story alternates between present day, and 1973, and is told through the eyes of Matthew and Jacob. The story is multi layered and complex. It is an engaging tale. We as the reader are pushed headlong into this story, and I really wanted to find out who is responsible, and the fates of the characters that have been reported as missing. Matthew is assisted in his journey by a tough as nails young woman named Tupaarnaq. Tupaarnaq is a complex figure who has a difficult past after she spent twelve years in prison for the murders of her father, two younger sisters and her mother. Together Matthew and Tupaarnaq vow to dig into the people behind these mysterious deaths. What they find leads to a years long saga of corruption and abuse. It was a fun, engaging read. The descriptives are thorough and convey a realistic world of what it may be like to live in the rugged isolation of Greenland. There are so many moving parts in the story and the names are somewhat complicated, so there were times i did get a little bit lost on which character was which, but overall it was a lot of fun. show less

Journalist Matthew has left his Danish home after with wife and their unborn daughter died in an accident. In Greenland he tries to make a new start. When an old, in ice conserved body is found, he believes to have found the story of his life: a new iceman just like Ötzi might be the scoop of his career. But it soon turns out that the body isn’t several hundred but only forty years old. His first deception leads him to old Greenland murder cases that were never solved. Four men had been killed and sliced open. When he starts to investigate, he doesn’t know what kind of hornets’ nests he is stirring up with his questions.

At first, “The Girl Without Skin” attracted me since the description sounded like a typical Scandinavian show more thriller set in the Greenland ice. As it turns out, there is much more to it than just brutal murders that need to be unravelled. Apart from the suspense and the clever story about these long time unsolved cases, it gives insight in a hardly known culture and the way the small community works – which is even worse than any of the violent killings.

I liked how the story slowly unfolds, one thing leads to another and you end up somewhere completely other than expected. All steps are well motivated and the highly complex case is solved satisfactorily. There is just one aspect that was a pity a bit: the protagonists, the Danish journalist, and his Greenlandic female helper resembled by far too much Stieg Larsson’s characters. The fearless investigative reporter who is eagerly ready to risk his life for a story and the inscrutable tattooed woman who is said to be a murderer and who easily hacks into official and highly protected computers – we have read that before. However, the parallels did not diminish any of the story’s appeal and suspense. show less