Book Review | The avenger sows fire and destruction in the novel of a Swedish crime reporter

Culture|Book review

Novel

Tina Frennstedt: Burning Revenge (Skärseld). Jonja Rajala, Finland. Like. 414 s.

Svenska Dagbladet– and worked as a crime reporter for Expressen Tina Frennstedt (b. 1969) writes Cold Case Tess Hjalmarsson, a forty-year-old criminal investigator in Malmö investigating unsolved old crimes.

Three books have been published in the series, all of which have now been translated into Finnish. I haven’t read the first two, nor have I Burning revenge after which you might want to. The third detective story of Frennstedt, who is highly praised in Sweden, is rather slow and distracting, and ultimately does not reach the emotional dimension that the author aims for.

In many it is a thread in the Nordic detective stories today that the police have a personal connection to the crime, through which they and the reader are involved in the criminal investigation through emotional ties. I saw that too In burning revenge.

Tess Hjalmarsson’s group is asked to help investigate the arson attacks in Österlen that have killed people. Soon, Tess is able to link the crimes to the murder and arson that occurred 15 years ago, after which the victim’s five-year-old son had lived with Tess for some time.

The victims of the arson do not seem to have a connection to each other at first, but when one is revealed, Tess finds herself partly bound by her past and memories. Tessa’s new female friend’s jealous ex-husband adds to the situation.

Burning revenge is not directly a bad crime novel, but it is rather mediocre. The characters are more thinly sketched, and a little drag on the advancing story doesn’t really suck.

The culprit is revealed surprisingly quickly, and only to allow Frennstedt to build an emotional icing on the story – which, too, is eventually revealed in a flat form.

If you didn’t know Burning revenge to be an original novel, one might think of a script from a TV series as a quickly drawn detective. Perhaps Frennstedt’s stories would work better as a TV series in which the Actors would bring flesh and bone to the characters.