My biggest draw back with this novel was that I didn't know it was the second in a series, so when I began, I felt like I was missing something when trying to understand who the characters were and how they had developed a relationship.

I do find that Scandanavian mysteries are a bit more procedural / emotionally cold that those of the states, that are more focused on the high drama wins. Not that that is a bad thing - I think it lends to really the true state of the story being told.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, just wish I had read the first one beforehand to have a better undertaking of the novel in the beginning.

I also loved that the narrators used Danish accents! It really helped to set the scene.

3.5/5

Thank you Dreamscape Media for the advanced listening copy!

It's a normal week day when 10 year old Lukas disappearances from school grounds, sending Copenhagen into a frenzy. We're taken through the investigation through the eyes of Detective Schafer, fresh off of a relaxing vacation, and Journalist Heloise Kaldan, young and in the throes of relationship turmoil. Secrets are uncovered and the most unlikely suddenly feels likely. One thing is for certain, nothing is as it seems in this mystery.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting read. Heloise was super likeable and I enjoyed her dynamic with Detective Schafer immensely. There are parts of this book that didn't make sense to me, and I found myself wondering "why was this included?" on multiple occasions. Despite that, I was enthralled with the story and eager to find out what happened to Lukas, and why. Hancock does a great job of intertwining the characters' stories and creating a complex web of relationships that is sure to keep you guessing.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for an advanced audio copy of this book. I LOVED this book. It is a good mystery. The author keeps the Danish places in the book enough to remind you that you are in Denmark but doesn’t overdo it with street names or places so that you feel like you need a map to read the book. Lukas is a 10 year old boy who disappears from his school. There are lots of people that seem to be suspects. Detective Shafer and journalist Heloise Kaldan each are looking for answers but their stories collide. This book reminds us that there are no clear answers in parenting or war, and that both can be the same. This book is a sequel to The Corpse Flower. You don’t necessarily have to read that but it is helpful

Wow, this book sucked me right in. Back in high school and into university I used to read all of Ian Rankin’s inspector Rebus novels and this immediately reminded me of the feel of those books.

When I requested this audiobook off @netgalley I didn’t realize it was part of a series. I saw that when I logged it into @goodreads and I’d actually had the 1st book (The Corpse Flower) on my TBR for a while too. However, there is definitely enough detail given in book 2 that I was totally able to follow the story without having read book 1. But I now also can’t wait to read book 1.

In The Collector, journalist Heloise Kaldan is at a crossroads in her relationship. She knows her boyfriend Martin wants things to get more serious but after the trauma she’s had she just wants it to stay casual.

She’s visiting her doctor when he gets a call that his son Lukas has been missing the whole day at school. He rushes off and when she goes to pick her friend’s daughter up from school, she realizes it’s the same one Lukas has gone missing from.

As Lukas’ case starts being investigated they come across evidence that doesn’t totally make sense. And now they have to start figuring out how these seemingly unrelated people are all involved in his disappearance.

I loved the writing style and the story had me so wrapped up, it was hard to stop listening. I can’t wait to continue the series! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you to the author, Netgalley and @dreamscape_media for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review. This book is out now!

I didn't realize this book was a sequel. There were a lot of references to Heloise and Schäfer's past that threw me and pulled me out of the narrative at times. That being said, I was captivated right from the first chapter when a hooded figure tosses 10-year-old Lukas over a bridge. The rest of the book follows Schäfer and Heloise as they both independently investigate Lukas's disappearance. The Copenhagen setting is fascinating, especially when the author compares Danish law and police procedures to American ones. There are several red herrings, and just when I began to fear the villain would turn out to be someone not previously seen in the book, it ends with a massive twist. My only criticism is a trope that's been overused lately, but the characters are rich and interesting, and the story has enough reveals to keep you guessing and engaged even if, like me, you didn't read The Corpse Flower first. The narration by Laura Jennings, whose voice reminds me of Holly Hunter's, made this a pleasurable read.

I was completely unable to get interested in this book and had to DNF. I really enjoyed The Corpse Flower and expected to really like this book but it seemed very differnt. Or maybe it was me. Either way, couldn’t do it.
Narrator was fine.

4.5 stars!
A 10-year-old boy, Lukas, goes missing after school. He has a strange fascination with pareidolia - seeing faces in random things. There is one lead suspect, but he is found murdered execution style in his home. The clock is ticking for Schaefer to find Lukas.

The second book in this series was a hit for me! I liked it even more than a first. I love a nordic noir as the setting is always something different from American/British thrillers. The journalist and detective relationship is super interesting to me and a pairing we don’t see often. The character development for Heloise and Schaefer was stellar and I got sucked right into their personal lives. It was short and sweet with just enough action! Thanks to @crookedlanebooks, @dreamworks.audio and @netgalley for my review copies. I will be eagerly awaiting the next!

While at the doctor's office, Heloise Kaldan's appointment is interrupted when her doctor gets a call that his 10-year-old son, Lukas, is missing. Heloise rushes to the school as her best friend's daughter coincidentally attends the same school. Freshly off his Caribbean vacation, Detective Erik Schafer is also in attendance, attempting to piece together the events surrounding the boy's disappearance. Was this a kidnapping? Is the boy a runaway? And things only get more confusing when Lukas' coat and books are found, but he is still nowhere to be seen.

What a twisty thriller. Just when you think you know what's going on, circumstances change again. Who is the Apple Man? Who is the woman Lukas was seen talking to near the playground? Is Lukas the kind, gentle boy he seems?

Sometimes foreign thrillers translated to English can be cumbersome, but this one was not. Perhaps it was because I just finished a book twice as long, but this was a solid, concise mystery. Just when I think I had it...nope. And that ending.... Holy shit. I will be looking for more of her books in the future.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books and Dreamscape Media for gifting me both a digital and audio ARC of the second in this series of Danish crime books by Anne Mette Hancock and wonderfully narrated by Laura Jennings - 4.5 stars rounded up! If you didn't read The Corpse Flower, this works well as a stand-alone, but much better together to see the character progression!

Ten-year-old Lukas disappeared from school and, unknown to his parents, he appears to have an interest in pareidolia, or seeing faces in inanimate objects. Journalist Heloise Kalan's friend was the last to see Lukas at school. Another of Heloise's friends, Detective Eric Schafer, is back from vacation and on the case to find Lukas. When is jacket is discovered in the river, DNA is traced back to a soldier suffering from PTSD. But things aren't what they appear to be.

I thought this book was even better than the first. It's a really intriguing look into what we see and how we process it. Just like Lukas' fascination with seeing faces in objects, how trustworthy are our eyewitness recollections? How easy is it to overlook something important in the mundane? This is a wonderful police procedural made better because it's a journalist and a detective, friends but with sometimes contrasting goals. I can't wait to read more books in this series!

So I really enjoyed The Corpse Flower so I had pretty high expectations for The Collector. Unfortunately I feel like I got lost a lot during the audiobook & couldn’t keep focus. I really loved learning more about Heloise, but the kidnapping of Lucas and that whole plot just sort of fell flat & was uninteresting throughout the book. Regardless of that Im still super excited for the series to continue & can’t wait to read the next book in the series!

I really enjoyed reading the Corpse Flower last year so I was excited to see that we’d be getting a second book in the Kaldan and Schafer Mystery series! While this can certainly be read as a standalone, I always encourage reading series like these in order as you tend to gain more understanding of the repeat characters and their backgrounds etc.

I don’t tend to read Nordic noir too often but always find that I enjoy it when I do! This one was such a compulsive story and I relished how it kept me continually guessing!

I was also completely fascinated by the Pareidolia angle and learning more about this tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern - so intriguing!

Goodreads shows more coming from this duo so I eagerly await the English translations!

The book was well-written and kept the reader engages. The book has some twists and suspense that were unpredictable but were mixed with some predictable elements so that you felt like you knew what was happening.

This book started out with such potential, and then I don’t really know what happened. It was all over the place. I honestly forgot what the main case was more than once - until it would come back up in conversation or something big would happen with it.

It was an okay listen. Thanks to NetGalley I was able to listen to the audiobook and I did finish it in one sitting. It was quite fast paced, but there was definitely too much going on for my liking.

I’d still recommend it though. This is definitely a story that I can many people really enjoying.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

I received an ALC of this from Netgalley and Dreamscape media in exchange for my honest review.

I went into The Collector not realizing that it was a sequel to The Corpse Flower, a very popular novel that I have unfortunately not read. Despite this I did enjoy the overall story, but I definitely felt out of the loop on some things. Following the disappearance of ten year old Lukas, an investigation begins that will keep you guessing to the very end.

In a lot of ways I really did enjoy this, but I did have some issues with the transphobic comments made by the lead detective. But I will point out that his old fashioned views were met by a much more progressive mindset, and the queer character was not written in any negatively stereotypical manner. It just stuck in my mind and made me really dislike the detective - especially since I lack a connection to the character based on not reading the first in the series..

Overall I enjoyed listening to the audio, but I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much as a dedicated read.

I really enjoyed this one!

I loved the characters and the writing, everything was awesome!

My only criticism is that it didn't really get into the beauty of Copenhagen. It's such a beautiful city and I love to see it described the way it is in a lot of the Nordic Noir. I would have loved to hear the scenic setting described so you could really picture yourself there.

From my blog: Always With a Book

This is the second book in Anne Mette Hancock’s new Danish crime series and dare I say I loved this one just a bit more than the first book in the series, The Corpse Flower, which I really enjoyed! This is the perfect book to read for #NordicNoirNovember and I cannot wait to get my hands on the next book in the series!

While this book could definitely work as a stand-alone, there are references to the previous book, so of course I would recommend reading that one first. There are a few threads involving Heloise’s personal life that will make more sense if you do read book 1, but that’s not to say that you can’t read this one first and then go back and read The Corpse Flower after.

I was hooked from the very beginning with this book and never felt that intensity let up. Missing children aren’t necessarily my favorite trope, but the way this one played out, with so many moving parts, kept me fully engaged. There was another storyline also playing out involving the murder of a former soldier and I was so eager to find out how these two cases would intersect – because you just know they are going to at some point.

I had never heard of pareidolia before and loved that I was able to learn a bit about it. It’s touches like this that add such depth to the story. Again, we see that the characters we meet are as complex and layered as the story is which makes for a much more exciting and dynamic reading experience. And I found that nothing is as it seems – and I find these are my favorite kinds of stories to read!

This book really kept me on my toes and I loved that I had no idea where it was heading. There are many twists and turns that will make your head spin. I was completely surprised by the way it all came together and that ending totally blew me away. I hope the next book is translated into English soon because this is a series I need to continue sooner rather than later!


Audio thoughts: This series is so good on audio and I was thrilled to see that the same narrator from the first book, Laura Jennings, was back to narrate the second one. I’m such a big fan of consistency when it comes to narrating series, when it makes sense, which it does here. Laura does such a great job bringing this book to life, especially with all the pronunciations of places and names. I hope she continues to narrate this series for as long as it goes on.

The collector is the second book in the Heloise Kaldan and Eric Schafer series. I did not read the first book and I enjoyed this one as a stand-alone.

I really did not like the character of Heloise Kaldan. I do wonder if I read the first book if there would have been more backstory to get me to like her but with just this book to judge her on, I feel she is unlikable from start to finish.

The story was very interesting. A 10-year-old boy goes missing and on the trail to find the boy there are a lot of connections to link all the characters together. The book deals with a lot of heavy topics like PTSD, abuse, and alcoholism and it deals with them well.

While Heloise was extremely unlikable to me, Schafer and his wife Connie were very likable. Schafer looks after Heloise like a daughter and seems like a great person. He and his wife were really the only redeemable characters in the story.

With not liking the majority of the characters it surprised me how much I enjoyed the story. The way everything plays out had me fooled all the way to the end. I’m thinking I may check out the first in the series to see if it changes my opinion of Heloise.

What an emotional rollercoaster!

I was so excited to get a chance to revisit Heloise and dive into a new case. It’s been over a year since I was first introduced to Anne Mette Hancock and I know I’d like to read more.

This is the story of a missing boy, Lukas, and the hunt to find him and figure out how some other incidents and his case weave together.

This story flowed so easily and quickly that I hadn’t realized how fast I was getting through the book. That is a great sign for me; when I get so engaged with the story that it doesn’t feel like I’m spending forever to get all of the pieces together to solve a crime/get through it.

What Hancock does well is show all the layers of the psyche. She’s clearly done her research where psychology is concerned and showcases how a person is a grayscale of thoughts and emotions rather than being completely black and white/extremes. This really adds to the story because it in turn makes you question your own thoughts of morality and who you trust/think you can trust within the world in the tale.

With that in mind, in the end, who has solved the crime? Was it solved? Was it solved “properly”? What’s next for these characters in the future? How will this particular case affect them moving forward? There are so many questions I have, which makes me look forward in the hopes for more stories for these characters.

Thanks to the author, Anne Mette Hancock, Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for this audio arc copy of The Collector!

The Collector: Kaldan and Scháfer Mystery Series, Book
Anne Mette Hancock (Author), Laura Jennings (Narrator)

You don't have to read the first book in the series to enjoy this second book but reading the first book can help you understand why journalist Heloise Kaldan thinks she has the right to browbeat everyone she knows about being honest. She is very hypocritical about this since she says and does things that aren't open and honest while still thinking everyone else should expose their inner life to the world regardless of how it might blow up their lives and the lives of others. Maybe I'm being hard on her but I couldn't help wishing she would back off on a lot of fronts.

Then there is her good friend Detective Erik Schäfer who went through a lot with her in the past. He's very by the book and pretty much lives his job while also devoting his heart and spare time to his wife. He can't help looking forward to retiring somewhere else though, giving this life up for something calmer, although whether he could really do that is up in the air.

A boy is missing and the case gets messier the farther it goes. Schäfer is the lead investigator and behind the scenes (and behind Schäfer's back) Kaldan is covering the case for her newspaper. She has several other things she is dealing with such as a relationship dilemma, nagging her lifelong best friend to the point that the friendship could implode, and sticking her nose into dangerous places. No one is perfect here and with the large cast of characters that we meet throughout the book there is no way I could guess what was going on. We don't even have the knowledge to figure out what is going on until it happens.

There is very much a small world feel here as we see how so many people are intertwined. With the story being a translation and with it located in Copenhagen it's hard for me to really understand how all the pieces can be so linked so I just go along and enjoy the story. This is very much a police procedural, complete with time spent at an autopsy table. So far, I've never been able to feel comfortable in this series and I don't think we are supposed to be comfortable. We are getting to see the darkest and most brutal corners of the world. A third book has already been published and I look forward to it being translated to English eventually. Laura Jennings narrates and I appreciate that the story is told in mostly unaccented English so it is easy for me to understand.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for this ARC.

Not as captivating as The Corpse Flower, but as I've admitted before, I have trouble with Nordic noir on audio. Maybe it's just one more thing on top of the translation.

One of you recommended I learned a Scandinavian language. The thing with practicing those is, once you reach Sweden/Norway/Denmark, everyone knows you're not one of them and immediately breaks out into perfect English. Have you seen that vid making fun of this?

Missing children is always a difficult topic. Not that murder isn't. This one has added bits of alcoholic and abusive parents. The worst.

I don't really feel the Nordicness of this one, maybe because Denmark feels more European than Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. The other four feel a bit further removed. When stories are set there in the dead of winter, you know you've got an excellent noir coming.

Anyway, what do we learn here? Don't always be tricked by the red herring. The seemingly bad guy isn't always bad. The family man? Oh yeah. Don't trust him.

I usually don't continue series where I give books three stars, but I think I'll just do the next one on print or ebook. I have better luck there with translations.