The Tenant
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4.0, 42 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
#1 international bestseller
An Indie Next Pick
An O, The Oprah Magazine Titles to Pick Up Now
A People Book Pick
A New York Post Best Book of the Week
A theSkimm Best Book to Read This Winter
A BookPage Top Ten Books for February
A Parade Most Anticipated Books of Early 2020
A Bustle Most Anticipated Books of January 2020
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020
A She Reads Most Anticipated Thrillers of 2020
An electrifying work of literary suspense from international bestselling author Katrine Engberg, this stunning debut introduces two police detectives struggling to solve a shocking murder and stop a killer hell-bent on revenge.
When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous.
But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller.
Hailed as “inconceivably thrilling” (Fyens Stiftstidende, Denmark), The Tenant is a work of stunning originality that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For landlady and retired Copenhagen academic Esther de Laurenti, the protagonist of Danish choreographer Engberg's fast-moving first novel and series launch, the murder of her 21-year-old tenant, student Julie Stender, strikes alarmingly close to home. Not only was Julie attacked just two floors below Esther's flat, but key details of the crime, including intricate carvings on the victim's face inflicted while she was still alive, are sickeningly familiar to her because they're lifted from the manuscript on which aspiring mystery writer Esther is working. The sometimes uneasy juxtaposition of realistic characters like feisty Esther and the perennially bickering detective duo assigned to the case with the unabashedly artificial think a subsequent victim discovered mid-ballet in a theater chandelier runs throughout. The undertow from the overly ambitious plot drowns any sense of plausibility, but Engberg's sparkling cast and palpable evocation of a society U.S. readers will find similar yet foreign keep the pages turning pleasurably.
