Thank you to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Tenant.

I was excited when my request was approved because I enjoy Nordic fiction, especially if the lead detective is female.

In The Tenant, a woman is found brutally murdered in her apartment with intricate lines carved into her face. Detectives Korner and Werner are assigned to the case where they discover eerie similarities between the case and a murder mystery the landlady, Esther, is penning.

As the detectives delve deeper into the victim's past, Korner and Wener discover the suspect may be closer than they think and truth is always stranger than fiction.

I love police procedurals and this was exactly what I was looking for; detectives pounding the pavement, speaking to witnesses and potential suspects, deciphering clues and probing for information.

I wished I had liked the detectives; Korner is your typical sad, depressed, divorced man mourning the loss of his wife after a recent divorce and self medicating. He allows his baser desires to override his common sense and, like some men, allow his manhood to act in place of his brain.

Werner is an excitable woman, happily married, but a bit schlubby, from how the author describes her. She didn't strike me as someone I would want to be investigating a high profile case.

The detectives didn't come off as incompetent, not entirely, but I didn't have much faith in their skills.

I found myself liking Esther, the landlady, more than I expected. She was resilient, independent, smart, flawed and looking to expand her creative horizons by penning a mystery novel.

The writing is good and there is decent character development though most of the characters, including the victim, came off as unsympathetic.

There are some twists and turns, some of which I figured out.

The identity of the culprit, the puppet master behind the murders, was a bit hard to suspend disbelief for, but overall, the ending was satisfactory.

The Tenant
by Katrine Engberg
M 50x66
Lou Jacobs's review Aug 27, 2019 · edit
it was amazing

An amazing debut novel that made Engberg a Danish sensation in 2016 is now in English. A rare
complex and twisted murder mystery that is told in literary prose.
Julie Stender is found brutally murdered in her apartment ..... brutalized both before and after her bludgeoning death. With no signs of break-in she must've willingly opened the door to her death.
Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned the investigation. Jeppe recently cuckolded and divorced is barely able to function and overcome his depression and drinking.
Nonetheless, a linkage is uncovered between Julie and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti - who obviously is too fond of red wine and yet aspires to publish her first mystery novel. Her evolving manuscript is shared on-line with two other members of a writing group. Somehow the unfinished novel proves to be the blueprint for Julie's demise.
Engberg proves to be a master storyteller and weaves a convoluted narrative involving vengeance, deceit, and undying love for your progeny into a thrilling but unexpected denouement. Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Publishers for providing an Uncorrected Proof of this gem in exchange for an honest review .

I had a good time reading this book by Katrina Engberg. It was a fast-paced crime novel, with dark Nordic overtones and filled with the requisite flawed detectives. The writing is suspenseful and engaging throughout and the setting of Copenhagen masterfully described. I’ll be looking forward to more Korner and Werner installments in the future as they are made available. This title was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoy Scandinavian mysteries and this is no exception. The usual dark, cold and snowy is changed into summer in Copenhagen.
A woman is murdered with some strange markings on her face. There is someone else in the building who might be connected to this, it needs to be unraveled.

I like the conflicted detective but am a bit tired of the broken marriage- devastated cop.

The strings all come together in the end. Give it a read.

The Tenant by Katrine Engberg was such a fast paced, can’t put down thriller that I devoured it in one single sitting. Thank you Katrine Engberg, Gallery Books & NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for my Honest Review!

This book is set off entirely in another place than the US & I thought that would create differences that would cause me trouble understanding either through language or explanation of things I’m not familiar with or that the scenic places in Copenhagen, Denmark would be too foreign for me. Boy I was wrong. Everything flowed smoothly and this well written novel was so descriptive and detailed that it now has me yearning to go visit the country that sounds so pristine & beautiful.

The book starts off with the horrifying murder of Julie Stender in an apartment complex owned by an aged, usually on the bottle; landlady of the property, Esther de Laurentis. Esther is also a budding author with an artsy, high class and reserved group of friends. She has taken on a motherly instinct type role for Julie and for another gentleman that she finds dear.

Suddenly after another death, Detectives Korner & Werner are wondering if it’s not just coincidence after all; maybe they are dealing with a cold blooded serial killer. But how does Esther tie perfectly into the deaths? The people intertwine as they all are being murdered or all that are becoming suspects based on one person, Esther de Laurenitis. And Esther discovers that the deaths are occurring almost identical to the manuscript of the new novel she has been writing on a private computer. Is it Esther, someone in her circle, someone from Julie’s past, someone setting her up or perhaps a sick twisted serial killer seeking revenge? You will be sucked in so deep, you won’t want to miss a moment away. A definite 5 star Thriller! I loved it!

#TheTenant #NetGalley #GalleryBooks @GalaryBooks @engbergkatrine #katrineengberg

In Katrine Engberg's "The Tenant," a young woman in Copenhagen is found brutally murdered and disfigured. When the police start to investigate, the case becomes more and more complicated, and the body count starts to pile up.

Since the appearance of "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow," Nordic Noir has taken off in a big way. Fans of the genre, and of Miss Smilla in particular, will enjoy walking the streets of Copenhagen again, although the style and mood of "The Tenant" is very different. It's a straightforward, if cleverly plotted, police procedural/serial killer novel. The main character, Jeppe, is a recently divorced police detective with a bad back and an OxyContin problem. We also get chapters from the perspective of his partner Anette; and Esther, the retired professor who owns the building where the first murder takes place--and who turns out to be intimately involved in the case.

The movement from view point to viewpoint heightens the best aspect of the book, which is its plotting. The mystery at its heart is convoluted, and the reveal is handled well, with information provided in small doses, deepening the mystery before explaining it. This is a book that will definitely keep you reading to the end in order to find out what happens.

The writing style, on the other hand, is very plain, almost flat. I don't know if it's the translation or if the translation reflects the style of the original, but either way, some readers will probably like this aspect of the book, since it makes it very easy to read and follow along. Other readers may prefer a lusher, more expressive prose style. In any case, this is "Nordic Noir" for the mainstream international market, written and translated in a way that provides few barriers for the American reader. Fans of police procedural and suspense novels in general, as well as Nordic Noir, are likely to enjoy this book.

My thanks to Scout Press and NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

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.

I love a Nordic crime mystery. Instead of the usual bleak scenes in the dark, cold, snowy winter, this novel is set during summer in Copenhagen. The little quirk of the author is to open many scenes between the two detectives with food - it was both amusing and served as a personality marker for each detective.

As is typical, the crime is solved before the end of the book - but that leaves room for the WHYs of the crime. Entertaining twists, right up until the end.

I received an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This novel has several layers. There are the characters who live in a small apartment building that is shared with its elderly owner, where people are found murdered. There is the layer of seemingly pot-boiler mystery, in which the author periodically pokes fun at herself for choosing some fairly way-out there plot points. There is the whole recently-separated-cop-mourning-his-failed-marriage trope, where the conflicts are presented rather well. And there is the gradual reveal of who the actual murderer is too. I liked how she pulled together these various threads into making the whole cloth of this novel, and highly recommend it to mystery fans.

At first it was a little different due to it being scandinavian so some of the terminology was a little different. So we have someone murdered and mutilated and all these characters. We meet Esther the landlady and an author and she shows the police that this murder is like the book she has been writing and has not finished. and man does take off, all these secrets start coming out, but the questions do as well. Is her story fiction, or is for real the twist and turns it takes will keep you on your toes..

A standout Nordic thriller! The Tenant has the traditional sparse style I have come to love in this genre, yet the character development was still robust. Even minor characters were multi-faceted and memorable. The writing was incredibly engaging, which can be hard with a slow burn thriller, but it never felt slow or meandering- I was enthralled from start to finish. The mystery was well developed and free of plot holes, avoiding the trap of an unbelievable explanation which ruins the endings of many psychological thrillers. I recommend everyone get a copy of this book when it is released!

Review: The Tenant by Katrine Engberg

Thank you to Scout Press and NetGalley for providing me an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review.

I love a good murder mystery/cop drama. The Tenant checks all the boxes for me. There were enough murders involved to keep me interested. I really liked the fact that the novel begins with a bang. Not literally, but you can expect to be drawn into the story from the first page. The story behind the first murder is complicated, but Ms. Engberg discloses information at just the right pace so that the story is easy to follow and not even a little convoluted. I am also happy to report that I was unable to positively decide on the guilty party until the author was ready for me to make this logical step. I like that. It is no fun to know “who dun it” too early in the read. Once the murderer is revealed, there is enough of the novel left to wrap up the lives of all the remaining characters. I do not feel that anything was left undone.

There are a lot of characters in the novel. But, again, Ms. Engberg does a great job of making each character interesting and easy to remember even though most of the characters are connected in some way. The main characters (not counting the dead) are Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner. Jeppe and Anette are the main detectives on the case. I really enjoyed their relationship. It was not messy with veiled sexual tension between the partners like some authors use to complicate the story. I learned just enough about their private lives to make both Jeppe and Anette interesting and to come to know what to expect from each of them as the story unfolds. I like being comfortable with the main characters of the novel I am reading, and I felt this way about Jeppe and Anette.

The Tenant is definitely a page-turner. Yes, I lost some sleep and didn’t get some things done around the house, because I couldn’t put this one down. It was worth it!

My stars rating for The Tenant: 4.5

A young woman is brutally murdered in her apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. 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 who is also novelis.

But Esther’s role is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprid? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the puppet-master. This is an electrifying thriller. It will keep you on the edge and won't be able to put it down!!

What the publisher has to say about this book:
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.

What I have to say:
This storyline was riveting, and I really enjoyed the way the characters were written. I highly recommend this nail-biter!

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for the eARC.
This is a very good Scandi Noir read, I enjoyed it a lot.
A young woman is found dead in her apartment with knife markings on her face, thought to be inflicted while she was still alive. Her landlady is in the midst of writing a mystery that exactly mirrors the killing of her tenant. Is she the murderer?
Jeppe and Anette are the two main detectives trying to solve this and the subsequent murder, but it seems an impossible task. I liked both characters, especially the prickly and refreshing Anette, who doesn't seem to have a filter when she talks.
All in all it was a great read and I will definitely read the next in the series...hope it doesn't take too long before it's translated and published!
Highly recommended.

This took me ages to read. I couldn't get into it at all, and, just when I was able to climb in a little bit, any one of the tremendous number of awful typos made me want to put it back down again.

I loved this book! Creepy? Yup! Scarey? yup! Well written? VERY! The characters were flawed in all the best ways and I am hoping this is a series. Is it?

Those drawn to Scandinavian novels will lavish in the writing style of Katrine Engberg. She stays true to the Danish undertone by providing a rich story line, descriptive setting, and by enlisting a slow burn, detailed-oriented narrative. Those looking for a shock factor or that intense trepidation that many American novelist utilize will be disappointed. This is a great book for the genre and something a bit different. 4 stars.

Thank you to #NetGalley for this ARC of #TheTenant, which I read and reviewed voluntarily. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A gritty, intense, fast-paced, riveting, artful melding of stunning psychological thrills and nail-biting suspense. Truly a MUST for your TBR list!

#NetGalley #TheTenant

*I received a complimentary ARC of this book from NetGalley & Gallery, Pocket Books in order to read and provide a voluntary and honest review, should I choose to do so.

Highly enjoyable crime thriller. The characters and plot are interesting and the plot held my attention throughout the whole story.

Absolutely loved this book. Loved the main characters, Investigators Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner. I do hope this book is the first in a very long series with these two in it.

The plot was great. A few twists and turns that us crime-thriller-mystery readers like. The minor characters all reminded one not to judge a book by its cover. The ending with the reasoning of the killings was quite good.

It starts on August 8 which was fun for me as thats the day I started reading it. If I didn't have life getting in the way, I could have easily read this in one day.

Please give me more from Katrine Engberg. She's one to watch.

Thank you Gallery/Scout Press and NetGalley for this arc.