This book has within its covers a long, winding and complex crime thriller story. It is meshed intrinsically with cop procedure and all the pros and cons that come with that.

Fabian Risk is a kinda meh character in my opinion. He isn’t a bad guy, but he isn’t actually all that likeable, he’s a pretty ordinary husband and true to cop dramas, a mostly absent father. He does seem to be good at his job, but perhaps a little reckless with the rules and his own health and welfare.

Supporting characters were fully formed and varied. I liked most of them. Though his family felt a little vague. This might be due to his drive to be at work.

The crime aspect of this story is complex and true to typical forms. I liked the added complexity of working across Swedish/Danish borders and the pull of ownership on the case.

The things that didn’t work for me:

1. The length - at just over 600 pages this story contained a lot of superfluous information that didn’t do much to progress the story.

2. The seemingly invincible baddie - I get that there needs to be a challenge in this type of story, but it felt entirely unrealistic. Just a bit too far fetched. The bad guy needs to stumble too even if it’s been years of planning. This aspect wasn’t really explored enough.

3. An overwhelming amount of location information - as someone who hasn’t been to Sweden, a bit of description is great. But the level of detail bogged down the story to crawling point. Where I’d read and read and read and make it through 1% of the book.

The guts of this story are really quite good, it just takes way too long to get there.

*I was provided an electronic copy of this book via Netgalley*

Well written if a bit overlong.
This is a first book in a series and it was an interesting story.I did have trouble getting into to it but when I did I enjoyed it.

Thanks Netgalley the Author and Publisher for a copy of this book to review.