Two new crime books to read this week

Hunted by Arne Dahl

It begins, as these things so often do, with a letter. In this case it is sent to detective Desiré Rosenkvist in Stockholm: “Someone’s spying on me. I’m in darkness,” it says. Meanwhile, in deepest Lapland, two disgraced cops called Berger and Blom — the former in hiding from a rogue member of the secret services who has already framed him for murder — are hunting a serial killer who targets mothers and sons. 

It takes far too long to reunite Rosenkvist and Blom and then an unconscionable amount of time to identify and catch the killer.

Arne Dahl’s novels have sold more than three million copies worldwide. Hunted provides no clue as to why this might be. The main problem is that this story relies far too much on the first novel in the series, Watching You. Constant recaps kneecap the confusing narrative. Then, to cap it all, Islamic State pops up in the final pages. Enough already!

The result feels synthetic, second-hand and clunky. Perhaps style is what gets lost in translation. There’s a lot of high-tech talk, the requisite torture scene (naked woman in grave danger), blizzards of endless questions and “snow, snow and more snow”. It certainly left me cold.

(Harvill Secker, £14.99) Buy it here.

The Whisperer by Karin Fossum

Inspector Sejer, Karin Fossum’s long-term detective, has fans in more than 40 countries even though he’s not exactly a barrel of laughs: “I’ve never been that bothered about happiness.” This gripping tale does not, however, represent business as usual. It comprises a series of interviews in which Sejer attempts to discover what made mousey shop assistant Ragna Reigel, 46, do a Very Bad Thing.

A botched throat operation has left Ragna unable to speak normally. As she reluctantly opens up to the kindly cop, a picture is painted of a dreadfully circumscribed life. The redhead’s parents are dead, her son has long since left Norway for Berlin and she lives alone in quiet desperation. One day, returning from work, she finds a note in her letterbox: “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE”.

In Ruth Rendell’s hands this story of a mind unravelling would provoke horrid laughter but, perhaps, irony is what gets lost in translation. Instead The Whisperer is a grim psycho-shocker, not without sympathy for its protagonist, in which Fossum gradually reveals the “natural and unavoidable consequence of a long series of events.” The final page will make your jaw drop and your heart stop.

(Harvill Secker, £12.99) Buy it here.