“Into Thin Air” marks the beginning of a new Nordic Noir police procedural series. The police team of four work in the Joint Unit for Intelligence, Prevention and Investigation out of Bodø in Northern Norway. They are:
Jakob Weber – a police detective in his forties who has recently lost his wife to cancer. It has only been six months since her death and his grief is still raw. He lives alone with his Jack Russell Terrier named Garm. Then, an unknown, long-lost family member makes an appearance at his door.
Noora Yun Sande – The newest member of the team, has just moved to Bodø from Oslo. She is staying with an old friend while she searches for an apartment of her own. The reason she left her old life behind has to do with an unhealthy relationship that she is distancing herself from.
Armann Femris – father of a teenaged girl and a diligent, tenacious, and experienced investigator. He is a fan of rock music and sports a Motörhead tattoo.
Josefine Skog – is in a same sex relationship and is the mother of a young girl. ‘Fine’ is a policewoman who is struggling with her work/life balance.
The team are tasked with a missing persons investigation. A nineteen year old girl, Iselin Hanssen failed to return from her daily run. Iselin had just been accepted into the police college. This case has alarming similarities to previous cases where young woman have disappeared… Then a celebrity social media influencer disappears in eerily similar circumstances.
Told from various viewpoints, the story is a compelling crime thriller. We meet Pedar, a man who has physical disabilities who lives with his elderly mother. Pedar is the neighbour of Simon Michalsen, a man the reader comes to know as a person who commits atrocious crimes against women…
Modern policing in any country has its drawbacks. One of which is having members of the public use social media which might interfere with ongoing investigations. Jakob and his team face just such a challenge. In addition, they have members of the press putting pressure on them for updates in what is turning out to be very challenging investigations.
Anyone who enjoys reading crime thrillers that are dark and often disturbing will enjoy this book and this prospective series. With themes of crimes again women and serial murder, the writing is absorbing and the characters intriguing. Dark, atmospheric Nordic Noir. Recommended.
This review was written voluntarily and my rating was in no way influenced
by the fact that I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel from Orenda Books via Anne Cater.
ISBN: 9781916788503 – ASIN: B0DNTRCGZK – 369 pages
Published January 16, 2025 by Orenda Books
Ørjan Karlsson (b. 1970) grew up in Bodø, in the far north of Norway. A sociologist by education, he received officer training in the army and has taken part in many missions overseas. He has worked at the Ministry of Defence and is now head of department in the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection.
He has written a wide range of thrillers, sci-fi novels and crime fiction, and has been shortlisted for or won numerous awards, with a number of his books
currently in production for the screen. He lives in Nordland, where the Jakob Weber crime series is set, and Into Thin Air is the first book in his first
detective/police procedural series.
Connect with Ørjan Karlsson via his WEBSITE; Twitter and/or Instagram.
Ian Giles is a native British English speaker and also speaks Swedish to a native standard. He is a three-time graduate of the University of Edinburgh: and holds MA (Hons) in Scandinavian Studies, MSc in Translation Studies, and in 2018 he completed his PhD examining the impact of translated Scandinavian literature on the British literary market during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has been translating commercial and literary texts from Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish into English since 2010.
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