Overall I really enjoyed this book. It is the first in a series and I’ll definitely look for the second when it is published into English. The story is a good solid police procedural with a likeable, if flawed, protagonist. There is a good sense of place with the description of Doggerland, a fictional island, and the plot moves on at a good pace. There are moments when a little too much detail is given, which some readers may find a little slow, but I didn’t find this a problem. It’s a good engaging book.

Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby has worked hard to get where she is and is one of the few female police officers in Doggerland, having to put up with the usual behaviour of a mainly male force. When she wakes up next to her boss Jounas Smeed in a hotel room, she knows that things are bad, what she doesn’t know is they are about to get a whole lot worse as his ex- wife is found murdered and she is put in charge of the investigation.
Karen knows that if there was anyone else, they could have picked they would have done but this seems to make her more determined to solve the case. She is also desperate for no one to find out what had gone on the night before the murder even though she is the best alibi her boss could get.
As she tries to piece together who would want to kill Susanne Smeed, she finds that although it was well known that she not a very likeable person, nothing seemed to point to a motive to her murder. She is put under pressure to find the killer and clear Jounas so that he can return to work and take back control of the department. Despite the animosity from colleagues and some of her superiors, she is determined to get to the bottom of what went on and is convinced that the answer may lie in the past.
This is a book that has quite a few twists and turns that will keep you guessing right until the end. It was hard not to like Karen and all her flaws. Its these that make her seem real. The fact that she is willing to take on the prickly estranged daughter of Jounas for no other reason than it is the right thing to do shows that she has a compassion others and will do what is right even if it is not strictly within the rules.
Although Doggerland is a fictional island somewhere between the UK and Denmark, you would not have guessed it. Maria Adolfsson has managed to create that perfect blend of close-knit community, that seems to know everyone, yet has a distrust of outsiders or those that may not have the same ideal of living as they do. This is not a fast-paced book and the first half is certainly a slow burn as the author sets the scene and builds up to the pacier second half. As this is the first in the series, I am hoping that further books are translated into English soon so that I can continue to discover more about Doggerland and its female DI

Putting this one down to something lost in translation.
I found it slow and couldn't really get into it.

Not for me.

A good story but a laborious read
The story starts with a great hook. The lead character, Detective Karen Eiken Hornby wakes up after a. Drunken night in bed with her boss and sneaks out to do the walk of shame. Unfortunately her boss’s ex wife is found murdered several hours later as Hornby sleeps off her hangover.
What follows is a story of Hornby being given the lead of the murder investigation whilst her boss is suspended.
The team is split, some like her others resent her taking the lead
So why do I say the book is a laborious read?
I found myself skimming whole pages at a time. For example there are times when the author will spend pages describing a room which has no other place in the story than somewhere an interview is taking place.
As a genre I love Scandi-noir, and as a story I would have enjoyed this one, it just needed a little less detail, and that’s something I never thought I’d say about a book