
Publisher | Corgi |
---|---|
Date Published | 17 October 2020 |
ISBN-10 | 0552170925 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0552170925 |
Format | paperback |
Pages | 384 |
Price | £ 8.99 |
The Boy in the Headlights
by
Detectives Holger Munch and Mia Krüger are in search of a serial killer who targets random ordinary people. The pair struggle to predicts his next move but must deal with their own demons to stop the murders.
Review
The Boy in the Headlights reunites a pair of detectives at different points in their lives, initially reluctant to get involved in another investigation. Their backstory has been fully explored in previous instalments of Samuel Bjørk’s series. I’m Travelling Alone and The Owl Always Hunts at Night proved to be tense, gripping and powerful police procedurals, focusing on personalities and terror. Even if you haven’t read the books, the author builds the narration around new shocking events and snippets of information that both add drama and invite you to go back to the earlier novels.
Here, in a smooth translation by Charlotte Barslund, Oslo’s Special Investigations detectives Holger Munch and Mia Krüger work on a case that baffles everybody. First Vivian Berg, a young and promising ballet dancer is killed, her body found floating in a mountain lake far away from the city. Then Kurt Wang, the jazz musician, is found dead in a hotel. Finally, a teenager, Ruben Iversen, dies in a car.
As Mia discovers that the lenses of the camera have a number scratched into them, the team expects that a solution to the motives and finding the perpetrator might be close. However, it’s a costly illusion. Even though the methods appear the same, the vicious randomness of the targets perplexes the police, excites the press and terrifies members of the public. When a cocky journalist becomes a messenger for the killer, the superior powers-that-be get involved, too.
The relationship between the main duo is painted in all shades of professional and personal nuances, including Mia’s suicidal thoughts and deep trauma following her sister’s death from a drug overdose, and Holger’s messy fractured family life and outdated attitude to technology.
Reviewed 14 March 2020 by Ewa Sherman