by Devra King

Next of Kin by Elsebeth Egholm

 I began reading ‘Next of Kin’, with my inherent prejudice against the crime genre well intact, yet found myself neatly drawn into an interesting array of characters and events all taking place within a society I had previously known very little about.

The crimes, some horrifically and graphically violent and others of a more insidious kind, all take place in modern Denmark, where a relatively stable society is being rocked by fear and prejudice as a result of a seemingly fundamentaist excution style murder.

With significant levels of Muslim emigration to Denmark, in particular the arrival of labour migrants from Turkey that began in the late 1960s, Elsebeth Egholm finds rich fodder for political and sociopathic intrigue.

The characters in the book, whether members of the dogged police force, Government Intelligence,the multitudes of villians and heroes, and indeed the rather eccentric heroine, journalist Dicte Svendsen, are all to some degree or other forced to examine their own xenophobic reactions to the events in hand.

Egholm does this in a balanced and well researched manner allowing areas of contention such as freedom of speech and assimilation to be discussed via the relationships between her characters.  And although some of these characters, plots and solutions are a little heavy handed and introduced somewhat gratuitously,the ‘red herring’ suspects that send us down disturbing avenues and alleyways leading to pedophilia and abuse of almost every kind imaginable, keep the novel moving at a pace that will hold the attention of a lot of readers.

There may be an element of inferior translation and the added handicap of limited background information regarding Svendson and her partner and daughter and other characters appearing in the previous 3 novels,  but these are minor impediments to what looks like a new author for fans of pared down, minimalist style Scandinavian crime novels.