2 Stars
This book,
the first of a trilogy, has been a #1 bestseller in Austria so I requested an
ARC of its English translation to be released on August 25. I cannot understand why it was a bestseller.
Brünhilde
Blum, the anti-heroine of the novel, is a mortician. After the death of her adoptive parents, Blum
is happy until her husband Mark, a police detective, is killed in a hit-and-run
accident. When she discovers that he was
in fact murdered, she sets out to avenge his death. To do so, she must track down five men who
are responsible for that crime and other heinous acts as well (abduction,
unlawful imprisonment, assault, rape, and murder).
It is the
character of Blum that will immediately catch the reader’s interest. She chooses to be called Blum, “Just Blum,
because she hated her first name, she’d never been able to bear it. . . . A
name that had nothing to do with her . . . A name that she had banished from
her life. Only Blum now. No Brünhilde.” And it is not just her name that she
banishes; like a cross between Dexter and Lisbeth Salander, she has no
difficulty removing people from her life.
She is a damaged individual brimming with hate and a desire for
revenge.
The book has
a strong opening, but its initial promise is not kept. The plot becomes very improbable. Blum must find five men known only as the
photographer, the priest, the cook, the huntsman and the clown, yet she manages
to track them all down with minimal difficulty.
Everything just falls into place.
She is repeatedly able to break into homes and kill and dismember people
without being caught; it’s almost as if she commits the perfect crime over and
over because any problems are easily removed.
And she is able to do all this even when she takes unbelievable risks
such as watching to see who will find a decapitated head she has left in a very
public place. She is successful even
though abductions are not planned very carefully. For example, only once a man has been
abducted does she begin “looking for the perfect house, a house with a drive
they can disappear down in broad daylight.”
Some of the
events make very little sense. One
minute a co-operative witness says he doesn’t recognize the name Dunya : “’Don’t know her. There were so many of them,
the whole staff hostel was full of foreigners. . . . I never paid attention to
the names.’” Then later he says that a particular
man “’was often at the hotel when Dunya worked there’”? A man described as the “village pastor” lives
at the presbytery of the cathedral in Innsbruck? He is abducted near his home but then his
car, not used in the abduction, is found near the Italian border? Someone intent on blackmail wouldn’t have
extra copies of photos, especially in the age of digital photography? Would a photographer bother printing photos
when they can be kept on a computer? One
minute, Blum pleads with a man, with whom she has already had sex, “’I just
want to see you,’” but then when they meet, she pushes him away, telling him
“he must understand that she is thinking only of Mark.’” She doesn’t expect this man to suspect her
motives but she later worries that he is going to be suspicious of someone else
whom he has no reason to suspect? Would
the smell of urine escape from a casket?
After gagging and tying up an unconscious person and wrapping blankets
around him before placing him in a coffin, is it logical to put “tape around
the casket to make sure there is no chance of escape”? One minute, Blum learns about an actor’s
whereabouts from “media reports” but then blames his “production company” for
that information?
The writing
style is weak. Sometimes there are
lengthy conversations between two people, conversations not interrupted with
identifiers, so the reader has to keep track of who is saying what. At other times, there is needless
repetition. For instance, at the end of
one conversation, Blum observes that the man with whom she had spoken is not
guilty: “He didn’t know what she was
talking about . . . He was surprised. He
racked his brain and found nothing, his astonishment was genuine.” Later, after a second conversation, she
thinks, “Briefly, she believed in his guilt.
But now she realizes that he had nothing to do with it. . . . His face had
given that away. In the restaurant and
now here, his astonishment had been genuine, as had the confusion in his eyes.” And I have rarely read about such expressive
eyes and hands. There are statements
like, “She says these things without words, only with the touch of her
fingertips” and “Blum knows that she has made a mistake, she was thinking only
of herself; she knows she will hurt him if she tells him to go away. She knows that, and his fingers can feel it”
and “That’s what his raised hands say and his eyes” and “his eyes said no” and “Only his eyes say she reacted
too slowly.”
I read the
following statement about the author: “Writing
with breakneck narration and rapid-fire dialogue, Bernhard Aichner is poised to
follow in the steps of Jo Nesbo, Camilla Läckberg, and Jussi Adler-Olsen to
become Europe’s new breakout star in crime fiction.” Having read and enjoyed Nesbø, Läckberg, and
Adler-Olsen, I will be genuinely surprised if this prediction comes to pass. Something was lost in translation?
Note: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
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