Danish authors Blædel and Nordbo team up to follow the search for a kidnapper who’s snatching victims from greater Odense at a truly alarming rate.When Claus Laursen turns up to report that his wife, Charlotte, is missing, Inspector Liam Stark’s first impulse is to reassure him: It’s only been a few hours, his wife isn’t a child, any number of things could have prevented her from picking up her own children. But 3-year-old Oliver Laursen has Down syndrome, and Claus can’t believe his wife would’ve broken the routine Oliver depended on unless she was stopped. When she still hasn’t returned the next morning, Stark and his colleagues begin a search, and by nightfall, Kasper, the friend who provided mechanic Dennis Sørenson with an alibi when he was accused some time ago of breaking into Charlotte’s house, has also vanished. What particularly troubles the police are the pages left behind with Quran verses condemning particular sins of which different victims are presumably being accused. The abductions continue unabated on a daily basis, eventually encompassing all the sins enumerated by the Ten Commandments—not an idle comparison for Peter Løve, pastor Beate Nielsen’s husband and the father of the child she’s expecting, since he’s laboriously working on a proof that Allah is identical to the Christian God. Readers hoping for a glimpse behind the curtain for an update on the victims should beware of what they wish for, since the fate that awaits the victims is both horrifying and physically revolting.

Though the motive is more interesting than the identity of the perpetrator, the co-authors keep up the tension to the end. Source: Kirkus

I really liked the book. It is only the second Sara Blaedel book I've read. It is definitely dark and moody. ( )

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This did not start off well for me: junior detective Nassrin's first task in the book is updating intelligence about hundreds of people of 'Arab roots' in the area. It wasn't clear to me if this was because they were Arab, or because they also happened to be criminals, or if it was the position of the Danish police that all Arabs were likely to be criminals. Next Nassrin witnesses a woman being sexually assaulted, and steps in (so far, so good) only to take the perpetrator home to sober up, telling him he has been making a nuisance of himself.

I also struggled with the translation - presumably there is more work to be done before publication, since surely even spellcheck would have caught 'shined' for 'shone', but what on earth does 'a hippie pastor with spaghetti in her pockets' even mean? Also, the term 'residential school' has a specific meaning here in Canada. If the translator just meant boarding school, they should have said that.

As for the plot itself, I thought it was pretty good. The peril of the situation of the people who disappeared was well-described, and things moved along at a good pace. However, the female detectives spent the entire book squabbling with each other in a very immature fashion, which was tiresome, and I was left with a few unanswered questions at the end. Also, it was pretty obvious who the baddie was - apart from anything else there was no one else left to suspect after a certain point in the story. ( )