I received this book in return for a fair review. I'm not sure if it lost something in translation but in general I found it fairly insipid and uninspired. While I enjoyed the premise, the voice of the protagonist seemed somewhat forced, and his constant inner monologue digressions just didn't work for me. Having said this, I'm not familiar with Scandi-noir, so it's possible that some of the quirks that I found irritating are marks of the genre. For a police procedural, it's not terrible, but I don't find that it really brings anything new to the table. ( )

I received this book in return for a fair review. On another site I gave it 3.5 stars, as it is a much better than average start to a series. Although it shares many threads with other "Scandi-Noir" books, it was a bit more cheerful in tone than most of the others and the lead character and his team seemed like real people and not just a bunch of depressives. The setting is good [with the mud serving a similar purpose as the Fens in the Ruth Galloway series. The plot is good without making me want to read until my eyes closed. I enjoyed the book and will certianly add Olufsen to my list of authors to follow. ( )

Generally I really enjoy police procedurals and this one looked promising, but unfortunately I was disappointed.

I didn't like the style of writing - the sentences were often short and jarring, and there were far too many inner monologue questions that just didn't flow nicely and made the main character seem info use and didn't really add to the story.

I found a lot of typos and errors in the book and feel it could do with some series editing and proofreading. The main premise seemed to be based on a logical inconsistency and this spoiled my enjoyment of the book from the beginning. The different story threads didn't mesh nicely and while it was obvious to the reader how they were supposed to fit, the price seemed incompetent when faced with the same information.

Ultimately I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as I'd hoped to and was quite disappointed with it.

*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review ( )

Chief Inspector Tobias Lange is confronted with a body found in a Danish bog. Is it like Tollund Man? Evidence from the crime scene however demystifies the ancient finding. The mummified male appears to be murdered more recently. Piece by piece the approximate date is set and possible murderer(s) and other victim(s) sought. Although the storyline keeps focus on solving this case, the author brings in elements from left wring green activism groups, sex trafficking and the animosity between the Danish and Swedish people. Are friends or family involved? Was anyone searching revenge? Has the murder a political motive? Olufsen keeps the answer to these questions to the very last pages, true the genre. ( )

I was fortunate to get an early review copy of this book because I probably wouldn't have tried to read it otherwise. That would have been a big loss, as this book is one of the best police procedurals that I've read in a long, long time. That is saying something because police procedurals are my absolute favourite mystery genre. The book is set in Denmark and the main character is Chief Inspector Tobias Lange. A mummified body of a young male is found buried in a bog in Tobias' region, and they have no idea whether it's an archeological find, or an investigateable find as peat bogs serve as wonderful preservatives for dead bodies. As Tobias and his team investigate further, they do find out that the body has been in the bog for about 12 years so they are on the trail of a killer on a very old cold case. Trying to patch together the identity of the body, the bodies past life, the family and friends he may have left behind takes considerable investigating skill, and as they do start to assemble the puzzle, they find a murky, dark trail of sex trafficking, prostitution, green activism and eco-demonstrations, brutal assaults and murder. The book moves along at a very quick pace and doesn't leave a lot of unrelated storylines dangling. Everything is made clear by the end of the book when Tobias nabs his killer, who, by the way, was a bit of a surprise to me, as I had someone else pegged. I truly enjoyed the book and recommend it highly. Thanks to the publisher for giving me the chance to read and review it. ( )