The Chestnut Man
A Novel
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4.4 • 130 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“A full-throttle thriller in the tradition of classic Stieg Larsson, drenched in atmosphere and charged with adrenaline. Buckle up. You’ll gulp down every word. I loved this book.”—A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
The heart-pounding debut from the creator of the hit Scandinavian television show The Killing.
If you find one, he’s already found you.
A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen.
His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene.
Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago.
A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted?
To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues.
Because it’s clear that the madman is on a mission that is far from over.
And no one is safe.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Søren Sveistrup—the creator of the original Nordic version of the hit TV show The Killing—transports his immense talent from the screen to the page with this haunting debut. Set in Copenhagen, the story starts with the discovery of some brutally mutilated bodies and continues at a breathless pace, drawing us into a world of dirty politics, evil, and grief. Full of the kind of complicated and empathetic characters that made The Killing so enthralling, The Chestnut Man is written in short chapters that tempt you to read just one more…until you realize you’ve stayed up all night. Oh, and the ending is impossible to predict.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sveistrup, creator and writer of the TV series The Killing, makes his stellar debut with this classy procedural, a revenge saga played out in present-day Copenhagen by characters both police and villains excruciatingly true to life. By-the-book detective Naia Thulin hopes for advancement to the national cybercrime center, but she currently works under the opportunistic head of Copenhagen's Major Crimes Division. As a horrifying serial mutilation-murder wave begins, she's saddled with seedy, authority-scorning Mark Hess as her temporary partner. Almost immediately, forensic evidence links the killer, who leaves a spooky doll made of chestnuts by each of his victims, to the year-old cold case of Minister of Social Affairs Rosa Hartung's 12-year-old daughter, kidnapped and presumed dead. With rapid-fire cinematic cuts from one brutal scene after another, Sveistrup illuminates the complexities of urban police work amid abundant inefficiencies, a plethora of red herrings, and government corruption. This one cries out for a sequel and a film adaptation.
