1222

The first thing I thought when I read the blurb for 1222 was, “Oh! It’s a Norwegian And Then There Were None.” I love a good mystery, and a good locked room mystery? Even more fun. Put that locked room in a snowed-in resort high in the mountains? Love it.

The interesting thing about this is that Anne Holt’s detective, Hanne Wilhelmsen, is about as unpleasant a main character as you have read lately. She has good reason to be cranky — she’s been injured in a train wreck, she can’t get around the resort all that easily in her wheelchair, people keep turning up dead and the folks in charge expect her to help. Hanne doesn’t feel like helping. She left the police force after the shooting that left her disabled and she has been show more something of a hermit since then. Now, she has no choice but to lend a hand, whether she wants to or not.

I hated Hanne for the first few chapters! She kind of grows on you, especially as you find out more and more about her backstory. She takes a young man under her wing, Adrian, who might be a runaway. She struggles with her limited mobility in a very difficult situation. She is churlish and rude and yet people still seek her out. She’s going to be a very interesting character.

In terms of the mystery – I really enjoyed it. Plenty of plot twists, plenty of misdirection, and characters to both love and hate. It’s a variety of locked room mystery — they are stranded in a remote cabin, no way in or out, so the murderer must be among them, right? I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say that they may not know everything about the resort and their fellow passengers.

This is the first in Anne Holt’s Hanne Wilhelmsen series. The next book, Blind Goddess, goes back in time to before Hanne’s injury, and it will be interesting to see how it proceeds in terms of time line. Just what I needed: another mystery series to follow.

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I listened to this and there's a lot to like. It is set in a snowbound hotel to which the passengers of a train are transferred after a crash in a storm on the Oslo-Bergen trainline. Which makes it certainly unusual, if nothing else. It also turns out to be the 8th in a series, of which this is the first I've read, but I certainly didn't feel I'd missed anything not having read the earlier books. The central character is Hanna Willemsen, and she narrates this. She's an ex police officer who was shot in the back and is now paralysed from the waist down. She's also rather grumpy, anti social, and has a lesbian muslim lover. Which, again, is somewhat unusual. She's also quite aware that she's grumpy, antisocial and inclined to be brusk, show more rude and less than communicative, which at least gives her an air of humanity that the is more appealing than the veneers she presents to the world is. The cast of characters is equally varied, with some religious people, some divisive characters, a runaway, families, a murderer, the works, really. There is also an additional carriage with police escort and lots of speculation. It's inventive, varied, neatly done and I really liked the way each chapter is prefaced with the description of the Beaufort scale, from calm to hurricane. It's an effective mystery and it works really well. show less

One thousand, two hundred, and twenty two. Norwegian story by Ann Holt. I'm on a Scandinavian binge. This one is set on the Bergen Train line in dead of winter in Norway, at the town of Finse (1222 meters above sea level, inaccessible by most transportation means except train — there is no road that goes there.) The train she was on inexplicably crashed during a worsening snow storm and all the survivors are carried to the old inn in town. Only the engineer, was killed in the crash, but many were injured. As the snow gets worse, (entrapping all in the lodge), so does the death rate— mostly by murder.
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This was the first book of the author’s I’ve read, and there’s enough about her past hinted at that I want to read more. show more She’s an interesting character, retired police inspector (because she was disabled in the line of duty), introvert, cynic, married lesbian with a daughter, observant, curious, and a bit of a grump. The only thing I didn’t like was the ending, because I wasn’t 100% sure who the man she was looking at was. show less

I enjoyed this Norwegian mystery of the locked-room type. A train comes off the tracks 1222 meters above sea level in a raging blizzard. The passengers are helped to a hotel in the area to wait out the storm, where one is found dead. Although reluctant to help, Hanne Wilhelmsen, a former police officer is asked to investigate. In the course of her last case Hanne was paralyzed by a bullet, and is now retired and in a wheelchair. Prickly and outspoken, she gradually uses her natural curiosity to observe those around her. Holt’s story is not complex or twisty but it kept my interest throughout. Now I’m looking forward to reading more Hanne Wilhelmsen books.

An excellent mystery featuring a wheelchair-bound (at least in this part of the series) ex-detective stranded at a mountaintop hotel following a train accident during a Norwegian blizzard. When a priest is murdered, she is reluctantly drawn in while they all await the end of the storm and arrival of the police. Meanwhile, a mystery train passenger is kept isolated by armed men.

The protagonist, Hanne Wilhelmsen, is one of the most enjoyable characters I've run across. Since being shot and paralyzed she's withdrawn from the world except for her nuclear family, and she's independent, bitter and very sarcastic, but she's very observant and smart. And a delightful storyteller.

I'd call this a mystery rather than suspense - a good yarn in show more which you know someone will die - but not the main character. And with a trainload of suspects, there'e lots of suspicion to throw around. I whipped right through this in a day. It's the first I've read in the series, but certainly not the last. show less

This is Anne Holt's homage to Agatha Christie's style of murder mysteries, taken to modern Norway. Hanne Wilhelmsen is an ex-cop, a paraplegic traveling by train through the Norwegian mountains to Bergen to see a specialist. The train derails near an isolated holiday resort and the passengers are taken by snowmobile to the hotel to wait out the fierce winter storm that prevents them from being rescued. Sometime during that first night, a man is murdered and Hanne finds herself unwillingly heading up a quiet investigation, helped by the red cross worker who rescued her, a doctor and the hotel manager.

Holt excels at the character study and here she has plenty to work with. She remains true to the spirit of the genre, while creating a show more modern collection of people, who are on edge after surviving the crash and learning that a murderer is living among them. Holt even ends the story in a particularly Christie-like way, while retaining the its very modern setting.

I didn't look at her. Instead I met Geir Rugholmen's gaze. He was still standing on the table, his legs wide apart; he was strong, but there was an air of resignation about him. We were both thinking the same thing.

The people who were snowed in at Finse 1222 had begun to let go of their dignity. And only eighteen hours had passed since the accident. show less

At 1222 metres above sea level, a train is derailed and the passengers are forced to move to a nearby hotel. Outside the worst storm in Norwegian history rages while, inside, a murderer is at work.

1222, by Norwegian author Anne Holt, is a locked room mystery reminiscent of 'Then There Were None' by Agatha Christie. As the number of possible suspects dwindles, Hanne Wilhemson, once a police detective, now wheelchair bound, uses her considerable deductive talents with only the aid of her 'little grey cells' a la Hercule Poirot to eventually solve the case.

Like the books from the Golden Age of Mysteries it pays homage to, 1222 is more puzzle than gore. However, if this superb novels follows many of the conventions of the British Cozy, it show more certainly does not adopt all of them. This is no sexually repressed, slowly evolving story. Hanne is a lesbian who, with her Muslim partner, has a daughter. And, as for the plot, well, let's just say it has all the twists and turns, as well as the quirky characters of any modern thriller, but is able to keep the reader enthralled without the need for long and often deeply disturbing descriptions of murder's aftermath. show less