Title: THE CORPSE FLOWER
Author: Anne Mette Hancock
Publisher: Swift Press
Read: November 2021
Expected publication: 3 March 2022
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
It's early September in Copenhagen
and 36-year-old journalist Heloise Kaldan is in the middle of a nightmare. One
of her sources has been caught lying, and she could lose her job over it. Then
she receives the first in a series of cryptic and ominous letters from alleged
killer Anna Kiel, who is wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of a
young lawyer three years earlier.
The letters keep coming, and hint at a connection between Anna and Heloise. As
Heloise starts digging deeper, she realizes that, to tell Anna's story, she
will have to revisit the darkest parts of her own past - confronting someone
she swore she'd never see again.
My musings:
THE CORPSE FLOWER is Nordic Noir at its finest!
I admit that I probably would have
passed right by this book had I not heard about it from a friend. It’s a bit
misleading, because the “corpse flower” in the title does not refer to actual
corpses, but to a large Indonesian plant (Amorphophallus titanium) which emits a stench similar to that of rotting flesh, thus
attracting flies and carrion beetles to its flowers to pollinate them. In the
book, the flower has a certain significance to one of its characters. So if you
were put off by the images of rotting corpses the title evokes, fear not!
The story may start off innocently
enough, a bit slow even. But don’t be fooled! As with any mystery that involves
a whole investigative team – in this case Danish investigative journalist
Heloise Kaldan and homicide detective Erik Schäfer – there is a bit of
character building to set the scene, as was the case here. We also have an
elusive killer, a woman named Anna Kiel, who is on the run after brutally
murdering a lawyer in his home. When she contacts Heloise by writing her
cryptic letters, she is as much in the dark as we are! Who is Anna Kiel? Why
did she kill a man? And what is her connection to Heloise?
As the story unfolds, Heloise will
not only put herself in the path of danger, but she will uncover a dark,
horrible secret that fits in well with the genre. I really liked Heloise as the
lead. She is enigmatic, fearless and suitably flawed herself to give her a good
backstory. Ditto with Erik Schäfer – I would love to see them both back in
future books. Because Heloise is the person we get to hear most from, this is
not your typical police procedural, which perhaps made the path to the final
reveal more relatable as Heloise has to
use her own incentive and investigative skills without the privilege of police
databases and resources.
Summary:
All in all, THE CORPSE FLOWER had all the dark
elements I love in the Nordic Noir genre, plus two enigmatic lead characters
who I would love to see back in future books. Once the story gets rolling, it
will lead you into murky waters and topics troubled enough to haunt you in your
nightmares. With an overall theme of justice and revenge, the story gradually
built tension until I could not tear myself away and had to read late into the
night until I had all the answers. A great book from a new voice in Danish
crime fiction!
Thank
you to Netgalley and Swift Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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