Today's Read: The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup

Imagine you're a police detective in Copenhagen with bigger ambitions than your current job in the major crimes division. Now imagine you've been partnered with a man you don't like to solve a high-profile serial killing spree involving the mutilation and murder of woman and with possible ties to a government official.

Here's how detective Naia Thulin's story starts.

Red and yellow leaves drift down through the sunlight onto the wet asphalt, which cuts through the woods like a dark and glassy river. As the white squad car tears past, they're spun briefly in the air before coming to rest in sticky clumps along the edge of the road. Marius Larsen takes his foot off the accelerator and eases up for the bend, making a mental note to tell the council they need to come out here with the sweeper. If the leaves are left too long, they'll make the surface slippery, and that sort of thing can cost lives. Marius has seen it many times before. He's been on the force forty-one years, senior officer at the station for the last seventeen, and he has to prod them about it every single autumn. But not today--today he has to focus on the conversation.

—The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup, translated by Caroline Waight (Harper, Sept. 3, p. 3, galley)

Quick Facts

• Setting: Copenhagen, modern times
• Circumstances: Police detective Nania Thulin and her temporary partner Mark Hess have to stop a violent killer from terrorizing the city. Nania wants out of major crimes and into cyber-crime, and Mark, a Europol agent, has been sent to Denmark as a kind of punishment. The killer they're after is a violent murder who plants a calling card at each crime scene. When one of the chestnut dolls found with a body contains fingerprints that match the kidnapped and (until now) presumed dead tween daughter of a government official, the case becomes more complicated.
• Genre & themes: contemporary Scandinavian crime fiction in translation
• Why I want to read it: I love thrillers in translation, especially books set in Denmark. This one is supposed to be told from a variety of perspectives: the government official, the two police detectives, other police, possible suspects, and victims. From the first three chapters, I can tell this is going to be dark.
• Extra things to know: Author Sveistrup is the man behind the television show The Killing, one of my favorites. This is his first novel, and it has been winning a lot of praise and starred reviews (though I have seen a few negative comments, mostly related to the length of the book).
• Acknowledgments: Thanks to Harper for the review copy of The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup.