Terror across Denmark

The crime novel expert and reviewer Bo Tao Michaëlis has got hold of two Danish crime novels, each of which in its own way revolves around terror, past and present.

 

By Bo Tao Michaëlis. Translated by John Mason
 

Terrorism is international. It is everywhere and it strikes anywhere around the globe. Not least in Denmark, for Denmark forms part of Europe and of the world – yes, is an important part of the world community for better and occasionally for worse. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of writer and journalist Elsebeth Egholm. In Nærmeste pårørende (Next of Kin), this free-standing novel that is the fourth volume in her series of political crime novels about the journalist Dicte Svendsen from Århus, she tackles the fact that international terrorism is just around the corner from the Danish backyard. The title of her thrilling latest novel is almost impossible to translate, as it can be read with a double meaning both as close family relations and as being involved and directly affected.

And the story does become extremely blood-related when Dicte receives an anonymous video. She watches the film with her partner Bo, a photographer, and witnesses with horror a bestial decapitation - the kind of execution generally associated in the world at large with Muslim terror. The victim is a Dane, and the mood in Denmark is whipped up in populist manner with shrill voices shouting for the reintroduction of the death penalty. In the mean time the sympathetic detective inspector John Wagner and his colleagues are put onto the case.

In the novel “Next of Kin” Elsebeth Egholm has written a political thriller that both addresses moral questions and keeps us on the edge of our seats with its plot peopled with police, intelligence agents, terrorists and native Danes and immigrants. This is a novel that is reminiscent in its design of both Leif Davidsen and Jan Guillou in the same international genre. And yet there is a rather different female touch  - in the midst of this wretched affair Dicte’s young daughter has a difficult and amorous relationship with an immigrant.

But terror does not only belong in recent times. In reality Denmark has lived through conditions of terror before. On 9th April 1940 Denmark was occupied by Germany. But right from the outset, from the sight of the first German soldier on Danish soil, there was a general simmering of popular resistance. Even among the police, whose task was to ensure peace, order and cooperation, there quickly arose contempt and hatred for Nazism. And with the progress of the war comes a groundswell of resistance towards the occupying force that increasingly makes use of organised terror carried out by Danish agents. In his series of novels about the detective constable Poul Bjørner during the German occupation, the writer Ole Frøslev has now completed volume three, Slagteren fra Ryesgade (The Butcher of Rye Street), which takes place in the winter of 1942. The first two volumes, “The Green Bar” and “The Horse Thief” dealt mainly with the fight against the twilight world of criminals in the pay of the Gestapo. In this volume, however, attention switches to the black market, to the shortage of commodities and to the increasing terrorism taking place in the city. The hidden war between the resistance movement and the Germans aided by their Danish collaborators escalates and a price is also paid in innocent lives. “The Butcher of Rye Street” provides us, therefore, with two thrilling narratives, one about the price paid by ordinary people for the world war and the other an exciting story of cops and robbers in the shadow of terrorism. This is a modern historical detective story which in style and mood is reminiscent of similar works by the Scot, Philip Kerr, or the English writer, Robert Harris.

"What do we know about him? What kind of man was he? His politics? His family, friends, neighbours, colleagues?"
Read extract from Elsebeth Egholm's "Next of Kin"

"It had been the longest and the coldest winter in living memory. The third arctic winter in a row. There had been no sign of spring. So why should summer suddenly have arrived?"
Read extract from Ole Frøslev's "The Butcher of Rye Street"