Monday 18 February 2019

Book Review: THE BOY IN THE HEADLIGHTS by Samuel Bjørk


Author: Samuel Bjørk
Publisher: Random House UK, Transworld Publishers
Read: February 2019
Expected publication: 21 March 2019
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2


Book Description:


Munch and Krüger. An unexpected pairing. A brilliant team.

Winter 1999. An old man is driving home when his headlights catch an animal on the empty road up ahead. He stamps hard on the brakes. But it is not an animal at all. It is a young boy, frightened and alone, with a set of deer antlers strapped firmly to his head.

Fourteen years later, a body is found in a mountain lake. Within weeks, three people have died. Each time, the killer has left a clue, inviting Special Investigations Detectives Munch and Krüger to play a deadly game – a game they cannot possibly win. Against the most dangerous and terrifying kind of serial killer. One who chooses their victims completely at random.

To find the killer they must look deep within their own dark pasts, but how can you stop a murderer when you cannot begin to predict their next move?

My musings:


One of my favourite things about Scandi crime is the atmospheric setting, which normally includes a bleak winter landscape. True to the genre, Bjørk manages to set the stage of The Boy in the Headlights very quickly and immediately drew me into the chilling scene of a lonely, wintry country road, where an old man is driving through the night. Suddenly his headlights illuminate a creature he thinks is an animal crossing the road. But when he gets closer, he realises it’s a small boy running through the night with deer antlers strapped to his head. My interest was immediately piqued, even though it wasn’t until the very end that this particular thread came full circle and I managed to slot the piece of the puzzle into its rightful place.

The rest of the story follows more traditional guidelines of a Scandinavian murder mystery. There appears to be a serial killer on the loose, seemingly picking his victims at random and staging them in different locations in the Norwegian countryside. With no pattern or apparent motive to go on, this type of “thrill killer” is a detective’s worst nightmare. Investigative team Holger Munch and Mia Krüger, officers of the elite homicide squad, are pitching their brilliant minds against the devious plans of the murderer, racing against time to catch him before he can strike again – which will challenge even these two brilliant minds.

When I started reading The Boy in the Headlights, I didn’t realise that it was the third in a series featuring the two main investigators Munch and Krüger, and I wished immediately that I had read the other two books first before tackling this one. Whilst it can easily be read as a stand-alone, both Munch and Krüger are complex and interesting characters with a rich backstory. Munch, whose daughter is still recovering from injuries sustained in an attack that was somehow related to one of his investigations, still harbours regrets about his involvement and his recent marriage breakdown. Krüger, who has lost a sister to a drug overdose, is also still struggling with her own personal demons. With a brilliant mind but also very highly strung and prone to anxiety and depression, Mia makes a very clever but also volatile investigator. Her impulsive nature often sends her off on different tangents not obvious to the clue-by-clue detective, and I found her thought processes fascinating.

Bjørk makes good use of all the elements that make Scandi crime so enjoyable for me: an atmospheric setting, a brutal and yet imaginative and clever killer and an investigative team whose own personal stories will leave you wanting to see them in many more books to come.


I admit that the final reveal didn’t totally work for me, as I found aspects of it slightly baffling and far-fetched. I am wondering, however, if reading the earlier novels in the series would have filled in those gaps for me and am keen to start the series from the beginning to see what I have missed. 


Summary:


All in all, I really enjoyed this original police procedural and think it will appeal to readers who like interesting, complex detectives that don’t quite fit the mould of your average investigator.



Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.


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