Burned
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4.2 • 11 Ratings
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for CrimeFest's eDunnit Award
A BRUTALISED VICTIM IN THE WILDS
A solitary tent is found to contain the body of a half-buried woman. She's been stoned to death. There are lash marks across her back. One of her hands has been cut off.
A LONE VOICE
Two years earlier internet reporter Henning Juul lost his son, Jonas, in a domestic fire. As he returns to work, physically and emotionally scarred, Henning struggles to escape this past and to be taken seriously again as a reporter - by his colleagues, his ex-wife and the police.
A MYSTERY IGNITED
Told to cover the story of the woman in the tent, he finds an increasingly dangerous trail and, despite an early arrest, he is convinced that the story is more complex than the police think...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Enger's plodding crime thriller debut, investigative reporter Henning Juul returns to work two years after an unexplained fire killed his six-year-old son and left him with facial scars and an obsession with smoke detectors. When Henning looks into the murder of 23-year-old Henriette Hagerup, who was discovered half-buried and stoned to death with her hand chopped off inside a tent in an Oslo park, he learns the victim was scouting locations for a student film. Suspicion quickly falls on Henriette's Pakistan-born boyfriend, Mahmoud Marhoni, particularly after text messages from her are found on his phone that suggest she was seeing someone else. But the more Henning digs into Henriette's life and her work as a film student, the less he believes the case is an honor killing related to sharia, the Muslim code of conduct. While Henning's tortured psyche intrigues, it's by no means unique in this genre, and he makes a tepid hero at best.
Customer Reviews
Burned
Fast-paced from start to finish. The plots and threads are woven well around the central character, an equally well- worn journalist who is a bit of a disappointing cliche.
It is frequently brilliant and never boring.
Not in the mould of the current Scandinavian crime crew, but just as readable.