The Chestnut Man

by Søren Sveistrup
516 pgs

The Chestnut Man is the debut novel by an author whose work I was already a big fan of. Søren Sveistrup is a Danish screenwriter who wrote the series that was adapted into The Killing here in the United States. The title of the book comes from the nickname given by the Copenhagen police department to the killer who leaves behind a small doll made of matchsticks and chestnuts every time he commits one of his grisly murders.

One year ago, the 12-year-old daughter of Rosa Hartung, a high-ranking government minister, went missing. The investigation into her disappearance led to the eventual conviction of a man now locked up in a high-security mental facility, but her body was never found. Now, one year later, a series of killings involving young women seems inexplicably tied to the Hartung case. At each of the sites where a body has been found, a small chestnut doll has been left, and each of the dolls bears the fingerprint of Rosa Hartung’s daughter. The two investigators on the case, Naia Thulin and Mark Hess, are faced with catching a killer who always seems to be two or three steps ahead of them.

I couldn’t put this book down. The fact that the chapters are short made it all the harder to do so. I‘d get to the end of one and think I really should stop reading and accomplish something, but then I’d flip through a couple more pages and realize I could read another chapter in a just a couple minutes more, and I’d decide to do just that—over and over again.

I’m excited by the fact that Sveistrup has tried his hand at writing a novel. The Killing was a fantastic series for the short time it ran, and all of the qualities that I enjoyed about it are found in The Chestnut Man as well. Hopefully it’s the first of many more books to come.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★