The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup

It begins with a shocking discovery on a country farm. 

Decades later, the body of a woman has been found near a playground. A doll made of chestnuts is found hanging from a branch nearby. Upon examination, an impossible fingerprint is found on the charm: that of a politician's daughter, believed to be murdered one year prior. 

Naia Thulin is ready to move on from Major Crimes Division. In fact, she's already alerted her boss that she's been actively recruited to another department, so not it's just a matter of getting the right approvals in place. Until then, she's stuck babysitting an officer being reprimanded by Interpol, sent to work in their department while under review. And it's just her luck that they're hit with an odd case right off the bat. 

Thulin would love for it to be an open and shut case. She has her eye on the most likely suspect, but the evidence doesn't line up. And when the fingerprint of a girl who's supposed to have been dead shows up at the scene, she knows this is going to be anything but an easy case. 

I have to say that I've been a fan of Nordic Noir for quite some time but this year has reintroduced me to that genre with an absolute fury!

Sveistrup is the writer and creator of the original Swedish version of The Killing (and producer on the US remake). But it's hard to make the jump from screenwriting to novels. In part because the two jobs are very different. 

Screenwriting is direction. The story relies on not just the screenplay but the people in front of and behind the camera to convey everything from the emotions and inner thoughts of the characters to the details that make a scene. 

Novels, on the other hand, rely solely on the narrative to convey everything. And I find some people versed in screenwriting have trouble shifting into that space. 

That's not at all the case with Sveistrup's debut! 

Sveistrup's attention to detail, I feel, was always going to be good. It's part of what made The Killing so interesting. But he clearly knows how to write a fully-fleshed and complicated character. And this book is filled with them!

Thulin is a single mother with big career aspirations. But her current position isn't going to get her where she wants to be. The Major Crimes Division is plagued by a lack of funds and a need for new technology that the fancy N3 department has in spades. And Thulin is particularly talented when it comes to computers, so the move is inevitable. 

Of course it would be her luck that she's saddled with a troublemaker from the Hague (who seems uninterested in being there at all) and a case that grows increasingly more complicated with each new clue. 

Mark Hess, said troublemaker, really isn't interested in being there. He's marking time until he can return to his real job with Interpol. And he never does come clean to the reader about exactly what's gotten him temporarily banished, but it very quickly becomes clear that he's every reader's favorite kind of detective: one who doesn't play well with others! 

It's Hess that won't let the stray fingerprint go. He's insistent that it be investigated, which doesn't win him any points with anyone. Thulin believes it's a waste of time and everyone else in the department sees it as as Hess taking a dig at their abilities to investigate and close cases. 

And of course he's right. There is more to the fingerprint after all! (It'd be a short book if he was wrong!)

Sveistrup doesn't stop at giving readers insight into just Hess and Thulin. There are a bevy of characters whose perspectives are explored, even if it's just for the length of a chapter or two. Which makes the book that much more interesting! 

The plot does have the kind of twists you'd expect of a story made for the small screen—the kinds of new revelations that would be a cliffhanger leading into the next episode. And rights to the book have already been sold to Netflix. The show is currently listed as "in development" so I don't know much about it as of yet except that it's a Danish production and it's set to be 6 episodes. But Sveistrup is on board as a producer, so hopefully that means it'll be done well! I'm definitely looking forward to it!

The Chestnut Man is out in paperback as of earlier this month. I have to give a nod, too, to the audiobook production. This is the kind of book that you really don't want to put down once you begin reading, and with a toddler that's not so much of an option! Which is why I leaned hard on the audiobook for a couple of afternoons of reading. Peter Noble does a fabulous job narrating (and even helped me figure out some of the pronunciations!), providing excellent voice to Sveistrup's story. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of audiobooks. You can check out a sample at Libro.fm. 

Order it from your favorite indie via Bookshop!