Customer Reviews

The Final Murder

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Three problems that no other reviewer seems to have mentioned:

First, the two protagonists are not very likeable characters, especially the wife Johanne. They both keep interrupting one another in their conversations, which makes the dialogue often very jarring and disjointed.

Second, the author often writes what the characters are thinking, but it appears as if it were dialogue because their thoughts are always in quotation marks and sound like someone speaking, because they are articulated in complete sentences. This is, at best, a questionable literary device and, at worst, distracting.

Third, the nine-year-old daughter who has an undiagnosed psychological/developmental problem is another irritating distraction from the flow of the novel. Nothing is resolved about her. She's simply a peculiar, unpredictable interference.

Anne Holt is a relatively new name for mystery aficionados in the United States, although she is well known in Europe and particularly in her native Norway. She has an extremely impressive vocational background, having worked as an attorney, television anchor and, most notably, Minister of Justice. She has also compiled an impressive bibliography as a mystery writer, having authored some 10 books since 1993. WHAT NEVER HAPPENS was originally published in 2004 and, for a number of reasons, is only now hitting the ground here in the U.S. It's the follow-up to WHAT IS MINE and the second installment in the Stubo and Vik series.

Adam Stubo is a homicide detective and his wife, Vik, a retired profiler. They have an infant daughter together, and Vik's 10-year-old girl, Kristiane, is from a prior marriage. Kristiane has a behavioral disorder that doesn't fit neatly into any particular diagnosis. Stubo provides a nice balance, being almost unflappable from a domestic standpoint. However, he is obsessed with police work and finds it difficult to leave his cases in his office desk drawer. Vik, for her part, hates being described as a profiler, even if it's what she does. The two somehow make their personal and quasi-professional relationships work, if not always well.

Which brings us to WHAT NEVER HAPPENS, in which Stubo is brought in to investigate a series of bizarre murders. The victims are all celebrities and theatrically posed. A talk show hostess is found with her tongue cut out, mutilated and lovingly arranged; the head of a political party is crucified, with a copy of the Koran inserted in her nether regions; and an acerbic literary and political critic is bludgeoned and stabbed in the eye. There are absolutely no clues, and any connections that Stubo can make among the slain only confuses matters.

What is most interesting is that Vik --- distractions of motherhood notwithstanding --- realizes that the murders are hauntingly familiar to her. This forces her to confront an incident in her past that is her greatest secret, one she keeps even from Stubo. Ironically, it is this secret that ultimately holds the key to his murder investigation. Even more ironic, however, is that Stubo, once he gets a solid suspect, finds that he has inadvertently established the suspect's innocence --- even as he becomes certain that this individual is the murderer.

While the conclusion of WHAT NEVER HAPPENS is not a cliffhanger, Holt does leave the reader hanging and wondering what's next.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Having been mildly disappointed at the unfulfilled promise of Norwegian author Anne Holt's previous Vik/Stubø "profiler" mystery, "What Is Mine" (also published under the title "Punishment"), it was with some hesitancy that I gave the next book "What Never Happens" a try. My patience was rewarded: this book was far superior to the debut novel, and kept me hooked for the 2 or 3 days that it took to rip through the novel around my busy schedule.

The author has taken the police detective/researcher team of the last book and married them, bestowing upon them an infant and a dedicated family life, as well as a tight emotional bond that is frequently tested by the nefarious deeds it is their lot to unravel. Briefly put, the ghosts of profiler Vik's past return to haunt her as an ongoing series of celebrity murders seem to emulate a very specific group of cases she studied at the FBI Academy when she lived in the United States. The logical outcome points directly at her and her new husband as being the final victims in this gory reconstruction. The killer in this case is a hardened professional, who is literally paid to kill - but in what way she has committed her previous murders, and how she gets paid is a twist that is strikingly original for a novel like this, and makes an ironic connection to the unholy lure of the TV crime commentator's instant celebrity.

In short, I was impressed as well as relieved to know that the off-taste of the first book had been largely left behind, though there were still a few false notes. Vik's daughter from her first marriage is developmentally disabled - as a fictional character, an autistic or mentally retarded person's speech is one of the hardest things to capture convincingly, and I felt that Holt still has far to go on that path. There were also some unnecessary histrionics - I can't believe that a police detective would interrupt his profiler wife's attempt to finish the sentence "The murderer has decided to kill because he -" with an unrelated emotional outburst. And maybe it's a Norwegian literary thing, this habit of not identifying the other person in a conversation for two pages, leaving the reader wonder who the hell the detective is talking to? I can't say, I've never read another modern Norwegian author. Whether it is or not, it is damn distracting and frankly idiotic to force the reader to interrupt the flow of reading to skip ahead to see what's going on. But otherwise, it was a very satisfying read, and elevated Holt closer to the heights of the finest of Scandinavian crime fiction writers such as Henning Mankell and the team of Maj Sjöwall/Per Wahlöö. She could be on a par with them if she had their discipline.

"What Never Happens" (also published in Europe as "The Final Murder") is the middle book of a trilogy about a Norwegian Cop (Adam Stubo) and a woman (Johanne Vik, now his wife) who studied profiling at the FBI. They met and married in book one and now have a child together, and a quirky ten year old daughter from her first marriage. In this the second book, Johanne has just given birth and both she and Adam are suffering from new baby fears and lack of sleep.

In a short period of time, four 'celebrity murders' are committed. A talk show host is found with her tongue cut out, a politician is found crucified to her bed, a critic/essayist is found with his pen in his eye, and a biathelete is found with a bullet hole in a target pinned to his chest. Vik ties these back to a symposium at the FBI where the same types of murders were 'profiled' and the last was the burning down of the house of the detective (with him in it) that investigated the murders.

How do you protect yourself from someone who has committed the perfect murder? Though the crime scenes are painstakingly gone over, not one clue as to the identity of the murderer is ever found. We know that the murderer will be coming after Stubo, but when and how is anybody's guess.
To tell anymore about the mystery would give away too much of the plot but it does seem to do what all second books do, slowly lead us into book three.

That is actually my only complaint about this book, and that is, it is really slow at some points. Now I don't know if this is just the problem of all 'second acts' or of this writer. I've read other Norwegian writers, specifically Jo Nesbo, and his books NEVER flag, but he is exceptional. Holt is famous for another series "Hanne Wilhelmsen" (seven books) that has never been translated, so it's hard to make a comparison to her other works. This trilogy was specifically written to introduce her to the English language market. The third book is finished and publish in 2006, and is due to be published later this year.

What is interesting is her diatribes about Norwegian culture, the way that immigrants (referred to as foreigners) are treated, how Holt dispenses comments on religion, politics, and Norway. Her story is very dark and the people (Norwegians) seem to act like automatons. With the cradle to grave economy, there doesn't seem to be any reason for anyone to put themselves out there, you just cruise through life. BORING! She even makes light of lawyers who become writers (her) and that gays and lesbians (her again) are out in the open all over the place. The name of one of her murder victims is Fiona Helle whose husband's first name is Berndt.

I'm looking forward to the third book and seeing some of the other series translated.

Zeb Kantrowitz

What Never Happens is the second offering in Anne Holt's series featuring Johanne Vik, a former profiler trained by the FBI, and Adam Sturbo with Norway's NCIS Unit. When the story opens, Johanne and Adam are now married with a brand new baby girl. Adam is at home on a month's paternity leave, helping his wife care for their expanded family which also includes his stepdaughter, Kristiane, who suffers from an undiagnosed autistic-like disorder. However, when a television celebrity host is found dead in her suburban home with her tongue cut out and neatly displayed in an origami wrapping, Adam is lured into assisting with the case. He also convinces his wife to contribute her profiling skills to the case, which quickly expands to include several more well-known victims.

If you approach this series expecting a mystery featuring a truly professional profiler, you will be disappointed. (I sometimes think Holt uses the character of Johanne Vic to surreptitiously poke fun at the whole profiler craze that has swept through crime fiction.) But if you read a mystery series as I do, as much for the ongoing story of the crime-solvers as for the mystery plot itself, then you will enjoy sharing in the struggles of Johanne and Adam, two people who are emotionally haunted by past disappointments but finding new hope through each other. The various family relationships--with Johanne's parents, her ex-husband, Adam's son and grandson-form an even larger part of the story in this book than in the first, as does Johanne's past with the FBI. The murderer's motivation also raises some interesting questions for the reader to ponder, while the end is truly a cliffhanger.

I enjoyed the first two books in this series enough to purchase the third, A Death in Oslo, with the alternate title of Madam President, from an online book broker.

Read first 100 pagees, still waiting. Dialogues and situations often apparently disconnected. Not sure I'll finish it. Certainly doesn't hold my attention like Mankell, Indridasen, or Larssen.

Review based on Norwegian original 'Det som aldri skjer' (That which never happens). Also, the names are Yngvar and Inger-Johanne, not Adam and ... . A translation that deletes Scandinavian flavor can't be very good. Lørenskog is a boring suburb, a short train ride east from Oslo toward Lillestrøm.

In Oslo, the first victim is Fiona Helle, talk show hostess of On the Move With Fiona, whose tongue was carefully and neatly severed. The next to die is politician Victoria Heinerback crucified in her bed with a copy of the Koran partially shoved up her vagina. The third fatality of this serial killer was a nasty critic who received a stab wound through his eye.

Married detectives Adam Stubo and Johanne Vik investigate the homicides, but for several weeks find no links except for the viciousness of the serial killer; that is until Johanne finds a nebulous connection between Helle's children and the victims. With something to go on, Adam seeks a motive that he believes will uncover the diabolically clever killer.

This is an entertaining Norwegian police procedural that provides the audience a taste of Oslo to enhance the serial killer plot. The look at Norway is done through the eyes of the victims and the killer, which also distracts from the investigation. Still fans will enjoy this fine thriller as Stubo and Vik work a difficult case (see WHAT IS MINE for their previous investigation; not read by me).

Harriet Klausner