Stooppppp! And go read this story! So good couldn’t get enough of it!

This book starts out with an unnamed man seeing someone drop a child from a bridge. Abruptly, the next chapter flips to Heloise Kaldan in her doctor's office, considering an abortion. Her appointment is cut short when the doctor receives a call telling him that his son is missing from school. Another segue to detective Erik Schafer being called by his partner to report to said school to respond to a missing boy.
Because I didn't read the first book in this series, I don't know how the friendship between Kaldan and Schafer began. The fact that Heloise is a reporter assigned to write about the case on which Schafer is working turns out to cause problems between the two of them. And Heloise's ambivalence towards her partner and pregnancy is another stressor in her life. In spite of the tension between them, Kaldan provides assistance to Schafer in the solution of the crime, and they maintain their friendship through various personal issues. Although the inclusion of personal crises and problems distracted from the police investigation of the missing child case, I did appreciate getting to know the two main characters and gained an understanding of them.
The chapters were short and a little choppy feeling, but that also made it a fast read, especially since there was always something happening. The ending took me by surprise, and I didn't feel like the motivation was entirely explained. But overall I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading the next installment in the series. ( )

"Schäfer looked over at the child-sized jacket on the light table and speculated on what kind of a monster would hurt a child. In his thirty years on the force, he had investigated almost 600 homicides, and an ordinary person had been hiding behind every single beast. In most of the cases he had been able to see the situation through the killers’ eyes, and it wasn’t hard to understand motives like revenge, jealousy, money, and sex. But— no matter what glasses Schäfer put on—there was no part of him that would ever understand how a person could make himself hurt a child."

I'm pretty sure this marks the first series I started and continued through netgalley. I really love the darkness in Nordic noir like this. This is a great - and quite dark sequel to the Corpse flower.

A 10 year old boy Lukas goes missing. The case becomes linked to his weird interest in pareidolia - seeing faces or other significance in random objects and things.

This is a really good procedural that feels smart as the author takes us through the likely suspects and the evidence. I don't know much about Denmark or their police so I can't speak to the accuracy.

Thank you netgalley and Crooked Lane books for giving me an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )

This is the second in the Kaldan and Schafer mystery series by Anne Mette Hancock after the Corpse Flower. It is a dark story as was its predecessor but it was not as compelling as the first book. I'm not even sure what the title has to do with the book.

The Collector deals with Hannah Kaldan's internal struggles about having a child more than her investigative abilities. Eric Schafer is having trouble making the evidence make any sense. As a result, this mish mash is not overly engrossing.

I was disappointed as I really liked The Corpse Flower. ( )

This was a great follow-up to the first in the series and a really enjoyable thriller that kept me guessing! Although this is #2 in a series, you don't have to have read the first one to understand what's going on - this story and the characters stand on their own just fine, but it is enhanced if you know the backstory from the previous book. The book also didn't do too much filling you in on what happened in the previous book (which I think can be annoying for readers regardless of if they read it or not).

[SPOILERS BELOW]
I loved that the mystery in this was hard to piece together (for both the characters and the reader) and that in fact it didn't get tied up neatly as the act of only one person. This was a complex story with multiple overlapping mysteries. The ending was also quite chilling - don't drink that vodka, Anne Sofie!! ( )