won't you be my neighbor?

Esther de Laurenti, retired from her work teaching at a university, is enjoying her life. She owns a building with several tenants and even a coffee shop on the ground floor. She hosts dinner parties with artists, she’s even started writing a crime novel. But when one of her young tenants, a young woman named Julie Stender, is murdered, with elaborate cuts across her face, Esther is stunned.

Recently divorced Jeppe Korner, Copenhagen police detective, is chosen to lead the investigation, along with his partner Anette Werner. As they look into the crime, finding suspects, looking into the lives of Julie and her roommate, logging evidence, Korner and Werner discover that solving this murder will be more difficult than they first thought.

When the main suspect turns up murdered as well, and the crime seems to be following the crime novel Esther had been writing, the clues seem to lead the police in several different directions. It’s only with meticulous fact-checking and attention to details that they figure out who really did kill Julie. But did they figure it out in time to save the next victim, or will there be another body on their hands?

The Tenant is the first of Katerine Enberg’s bestselling novels to break into the American market, and I hope there are more. This twisted mystery is quote a ride through ups and downs as you try to put the pieces together, only to find yourself scratching your head when it all falls apart again. The detectives Korner and Werner were fully human, facing the darkness of the case with frustration, concentration, lust, hope, despair, alcohol, coffee, and junk food.

I was fascinated by The Tenant. I don’t get a chance to read many books about Denmark, so this was fun in a mini-vacation sort of way. I thought the crime was especially well plotted, with lots of red herrings to twist my thinking and make me change my theory of the crime over and over. But mostly I really loved the characters, especially the police, and how they interacted with each other and with their witnesses and suspects. I can’t wait to see what Katerine Enberg brings us next!

Galleys for The Tenant were provided by allery, Pocket Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.