As a fan of The Killing i was really eager to read this book and i am glad to say that i was not disappointed. This is a chilling story and had me gripped from the first to the last page.
A new author for me and a debut book. WOW WOW WOW.
This is another of my favourite books of the year. It is packed to the rafters with tension and suspense and it is certainly a page turner. A fast paced thriller with so more twists and turns and a really nasty serial killer to boot.
This is my kind of book and an easy five stars. I hope that this book is not a one off as i definitely want to read more of this authors work.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and a MUST READ. This story would make a good film or series well i can hope can't I ????
I would like to thank Netgalley and Penguin U K- Michael Joseph for the ARC of this book in return for giving an honest review.

This is an amazing piece of writing, filled with a brilliant storyline that twists and turns, excellent characterisation, including a down-at-heel hero, who is an amazing detective, his partner, who has her own frailties, and a villain right out of Silence of the Lambs!

I loved the back stories, the pace, the settings and would recommend this highly to any lover of a fabulous detective story.

Sveistrup is a new must-read for me!

This is my first book of this genre, and I enjoyed it very much. It took a little while to get into but the characters are intruiging and I’m glad I stuck with it.
There were many twists and turns along the way that I didn’t see coming and it kept me gripped to the end.

A superb read. Quite unexpected and I did not see the end at all. Very likeable characters and a super story plot.

This is a chilling story that kept me gripped right to the very end. It is set in Denmark, but it is far from the image of hygge.
It starts when a government minister returns to work the year after her young daughter has gone missing.. Although the child's body has never been found, her murderer has been convicted. The politician tries to throw herself into work to distract herself from her grief, though she is constantly having to deal with tabloid journalists asking questions about how she is coping. In the following days several murders take place, each more horrific than the one before. The country is horrified as the news leaks out that a serial killer is on the loose. The murderer's trademark is that a model of a man made out of chestnuts with matchsticks for arms and legs is found at the scene. The horrific descriptions of the murders.contrasts with the poignant images of family life for the grieving politician and her husband and son. The mundane domestic arrangements, with school pickup being delayed by a father's drinking, show the remaining child feeling neglected as his parents each deal with their own private grief.
The way the detectives work with a forensic scientist to try to find a link between the murdered women, and then try to predict where he might strike next, goes to the heart of the story. In the race against time to stop the killer, The stresses and strains between police officers and politicians leads to more false turns. I didn't guess who the murderer was, or the connection between the victims until the very end.
I would recommend this book, but make sure you've locked your doors before you settle down to read.

Oh my gosh! This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I just couldn't stop reading it. The story was chilling and had me on the edge of my seat eagerly seeing what else was around the corner. I loved the main characters too and thought they were really well developed and interesting. I have my fingers crossed that this is not a one off and is the first in a series of books. Highly, highly recommend!

Crime serial-killer thriller genre is my personal choice of read.
This was my first foray into 'Scandi noir' Took a couple chapters to get to grips
with it, then was hooked.
The plot is very clever I couldn’t put it down. So many twists
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of the novel.

I’m finding this book difficult to get into. I’m not giving up, it’s a good story and with an interesting,plot.

What a great read!!

This is packed full of tension and suspense and the short, interwoven chapters would make this perfect for a TV series. This writer is excellent at both providing background to the characters and the separate strands of the investigations with the minimum of excess.

The story starts with an historic case and then moves to a murder investigation that is set in the present day. This case links with the abduction and supposed murder of the daughter of a prominent politician when her fingerprints are found on a chestnut man at the crime scene.

There was some overlap of characters from books that follow a similar thread; the determined policewoman with a tragic back story and the lone wolf type investigator who gets the job done by unconventional means, but this did not detract from my enjoyment of the plot line.

The story led in one direction but all the while the reader was aware that a deeper story could emerge and emerge it did. The history of some of the characters was explored and this made for an action packed ending. All the loose ends were tied up which I find satisfying, I would thoroughly recommend.

My thanks to Net Galley and Penguin UK/Michael Joseph for the opportunity to read THE CHESTNUT MAN.
Soren Sveistrup very quickly took me into a very dark place when I read this intriguing novel.. Set in Denmark during the winter, it's easy to become immersed in the atmosphere of gloom and damp which adds to the premise of the story.
Following Naia Thulin as she investigates the case that has more twists and turns than a corkscrew, her meeting with the much maligned Hess, an officer who has been temporarily kicked out of Europol begins a partnership of sorts where each is suspicious of the other, yet turns into one of grudging respect. They're following the trail of The Chestnut Man, a killer of women between 25 and 40 with a child or children, who leaves a doll made from chestnuts at each murder site. Thulin and Hess quickly realise there is a connection, but were is the clue that will lead them to find the person who has been pulling their strings. Child abduction in crime thrillers is not new, but I really liked the way the story played out, and was intrigued by the writing style. I'd like to read more cases with Thulin and Hess. There's always room for another dynamic duo!

A fast-paced thriller that keeps you gripped, even as it follows the usual formula of wrong turns, a renegade cop and an extraordinarily competent killer. You can tell the author has written for TV, as the murders were pretty gruesome for a book. The different characters and storylines took a while to get my head around, but they eventually wove together for a very satisfying ending. The Danish setting was a nice change from the usual British and American locations.

1989. Detective Marius Larsen travels out to Orum's Farm. Animals have broken through the fence, roaming the neighbour's fields. Farmer Orum needs to sort this out. When Larsen arrives at the farm what he is faced with is horrific...

Move forward to present day Copenhagen. Detective Naia Thulin works for the Major Crimes Division. Her boss, Nylander, tasks her with partnering 'the new guy'. A liaison officer named Hess, stationed at Europol's HQ in the Hague, ordered to Copenhagen for some blunder or other. They are faced with a brutal murder. The victim, Laura Kjaer, 37 years old, has been partly dismembered. A chestnut man figure lies nearby. Forensics uncover a fingerprint on its head. The print of Kristine Hartung. The 12-year-old daughter of Rosa Hartung, Minister for Social Affairs. The girl went missing less than a year ago and a few weeks later a young tech nerd was arrested and, given weight of evidence, he confesses to strangling and dismembering the body. No body parts were ever found. When more horrific murders occur the chestnut figures take centre stage. How can they all reveal a fingerprint of Kristine Hartung?

The Chestnut Man is a complex story with well developed characters. It is dark and disturbing with many horrific scenes. Perhaps though a tad too long as I found myself easily distracted. It did not anchor me to the pages and took me considerable time to read because of this.

Set in Copenhagen, this story follows young detective Naia Thulin, who is assigned a murder case whereby the killer leaves behind a doll made of Chesnuts. Soon afterwards, a second woman is found murdered along with a chestnut doll next to her body. Who is the killer? Will Thulin solve this case before somebody else loses their life?

I requested this book to read from Netgalley as the synopsis drew my attention and I really thought I would love it. Unfortunately, that was not the case! Upon first beginning the book I realised it was a translation however it was not translated brilliantly and I could notice that the first language this book was written in was not English. The poor translation put me off from the beginning. I also found that there was so much going on and so many characters and plots that I struggled to keep up and understand which character and plot the author was discussing. I also found that the plots would switch very suddenly in the middle of a chapter, with very little distinction which made it difficult to keep up with. It did not captivate me and took me a while to read as it felt more of a chore to pick it up. I feel like this is such a shame because the plot really does appeal to me and I feel like it could have been done so much better.

I ended up pretty thoroughly annoyed with The Chestnut Man. To be fair, it’s not a genre I would normally read and I wouldn’t have touched it if it hadn’t been by the man who created the excellent TV series The Killing. This means that fans of the serial-killer genre may like it far more than I did, but for me it was just a series of tired old clichés strung together, albeit strung together quite well for much of the book.

In Denmark, a series of sadistic killings (of women, naturally) is marked by the killer’s trademark Chestnut Man left at each scene. A maverick cop, sent back to the Copenhagen police after his insubordinate behaviour annoyed his Europol bosses, suspects that these killings may throw doubt on the solution to the murder of the daughter of a prominent politician a year before. There is a Race Against Time to catch the killer before...I’m sure you get the picture.

I read this while I was ill and needed brain-off entertainment. The first 400 pages didn’t do too badly on that, but I just ticked off the clichés as they went past: the maverick cop and his ill-matched partner who begin to form an attachment; the boorish, sexist police colleague; the vain, unheeding boss; the killer who is always One Step Ahead and Plays Games With The Police, child abuse as a cynical plot device, the female investigator under threat...and so on and so on. I could just about live with all that, but the final 100 pages became so silly that I lost patience, and I especially disliked the corny old Cornered Killer Climax In Which The Killer Explains Everything To The Victim scene (yeah, right), which in this case is largely repellent, misogynistic torture porn. The explanation scarcely holds together and the psychology is pretty silly, so coupled with the ludicrous implausibility of subsequent events it made me very irritated indeed.

I had expected something deeper and more thoughtful from Sveistrup, but The Chestnut Man is just another bog-standard Scandi serial-killer thriller. There’s no superbly original central character like Lisbeth Salander to lift it above the ordinary, and nor, of course, does it benefit from a brilliant screen performance from the likes of Sofie Grabol or Sofia Helin which made The Killing and The Bridge such classics. Fans of the genre may enjoy this, but I’m afraid I didn’t.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

A girl disappears and presumed dead and someone convicted for her murder. But, one year later her fingerprint is found on chestnut men found at murder sites. What does this mean, is she alive? What a brilliant thriller when you wonder how all these events and characters are linked together. A great read, enjoy.

What a rollercoaster of a read, it is a dark and sinister tale involving violent murders of young women, set in Copenhagen
A womans body is found near her house, one hand apparently sawn off whilst still alive. Close by a little figure made from chestnuts is discovered.
Forensics identify a finger print on it.. That of the daughter of Rosa Hartung, the minister for Social Affairs, who disappeared over a year ago without trace.
With the prints linking the two cases it seems the man serving time in a secure unit may not infact have murdered Rosa`s daughter, confession or not.
The police investigation delves into both cases and as more bodies turn up the race is on to discover the identity of the serial killer.
A complex plot that flows well, a totally engrossing chilling read with twists and turns to keep you guessing.
If your a fan of tense thrillers this is definitely one for you.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this as an ARC.

I'm a big fan of The Killing and Scandinavian thrillers in general so I was very excited to get on with The Chestnut Man. For the most part I enjoyed it, but I did feel that the narrative at times lost momentum and floundered a bit. There seemed also to be a rush job at the end to explain how the killer managed to pull everything off then an additional epilogue to wrap up loose ends. Our villain at times seems a little too far fetched and lucky to be entirely believable so sometimes I did struggle to stay invested. I thought it was a brave move to include such unashamedly evil characters and truly gruesome moments. I certainly won't look at chestnuts this Christmas in quite the same way.

I thought this was an excellent book. It was well written with interesting characters and full of suspense. There were red herrings, twists and turns and you never quite knew what was going to happen next, who suspicion was going to fall on. It is quite violent and maybe not for the squeamish. I felt very satisfied at the end. that the solution was plausible and not something pulled out of a hat. I would recommend it to all lovers of murder and detective stories.

The Chestnut Man is the first novel from the writer of The Killing. For the record, although I’ve heard everybody raving about The Killing I have never watched it, nor do I know the first thing about it, so I’m not going to be comparing to it in this review.

The Chestnut Man is your run of the mill detective story/police procedural but doesn’t completely commit. It’s supposed to be gritty, gory and with no reliable character to trust but in the end I wasn’t shocked or moved. There’s nothing particularly taxing about the novel, and the events were interesting to a point but I didn’t really care about any of it. It’s pretty formulaic in that every time you think you’re getting somewhere in the investigation, something throws a spanner in the works.

I’m not sure whether it was just the format that I read it in from NetGalley but it switched from one character to another so quickly that I kept getting confused, then decided to roll with it and stopped putting too much thought into what I was reading. It has enough twists and turns to keep me occupied but I cared so little about the characters.

Also, I’m not sure if it’s the translation but there were little British phrases that just didn’t fit with the way the characters were talking. I can’t comment on this novel culturally, as it’s set in Denmark and I have no experience of the literary or social culture there, but there seemed to be these casually sexist and racist remarks in the book too that made me feel uncomfortable. I’m guessing (hoping) they are supposed to be illustrative of a character’s personality but I felt they didn’t add anything to the narrative.

Overall I was completely indifferent to this book. I have to admit that I got to about 70% and skim read it to the end and it didn’t take that long. I’m not sure I’d recommend it. To give it it’s due the book is a debut and there is a tiny spark of talent hidden behind stereotypical characters, and with a bit more time I think Sveistrup could turn a good story.

As someone who predominantly reads crime novels I’d been expecting to enjoy The Chestnut Man, and I certainly did!
There are strong similarities to The Killing TV show, which was written by the author; a strong female single mother and a tenacious rebellious man are investigating, there’s a political element and there are sub-plots, red herrings and well rounded minor characters.
There are a number of grisly unpleasant details associated with the crimes but these aren’t dwelt upon and didn’t spoil my enjoyment of this complex thriller.
A great winter read!