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The Collector

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
For fans of Katrine Engberg and Lars Kepler, the second chilling novel in Anne Mette Hancock’s #1 bestselling Danish crime series is a psychological whirlwind that explores the nature of truth and what it means when we can no longer trust what we know to be real.
When 10-year-old Lukas disappears from his Copenhagen school, police investigators discover that the boy had a peculiar obsession with pareidolia—a phenomenon that makes him see faces in random things. A photo on his phone posted just hours before his disappearance shows an old barn door that resembles a face. Journalist Heloise Kaldan thinks she recognizes the barn—but from where?
When Luke’s blood-flecked jacket is found in the moat at Copenhagen’s Citadel, DNA evidence points to Thomas Strand, an ex-soldier suffering from severe PTSD. But then Strand turns up dead in his apartment, shot in the head execution style.
What did the last person to see Lukas really witness that morning in the school yard? Was it really Lukas, or an optical illusion? Can you ever truly trust your eyes?
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    • Kirkus

      September 1, 2022
      The apparent kidnapping of a schoolboy kicks off a second grim outing for Det. Erik Sch�fer and investigative journalist Heloise Kaldan. Heloise thinks she's having a really bad day when she goes to see Dr. Jens Bjerre to confirm her in-home pregnancy test and get help securing an abortion. She's distressed to find that her troubles, serious as they are, are jolted into perspective when she hears Bjerre get a phone call that informs him that his son has gone missing from Copenhagen's Nyholm School. In fact, it turns out that no one's seen 10-year-old Lukas Bjerre since his father dropped him off that morning, several precious hours ago, and that he could have been spirited far away in the meantime. A reported sighting of Lukas' corpse in a frozen moat leads only to the recovery of his jacket, whose bloodstains and traces of rat poison hint at a dark story. Erik and his colleagues in the Violent Crimes Unit work every lead, and they're both horrified and frustrated when the DNA found in the blood on Lukas' jacket leads them to a man who was shot to death very shortly after the boy's disappearance, or maybe even before. As Hancock shows the dragnet widening to include an ever wider array of characters, her story threatens to lose focus. But though it lacks the unforgiving intensity of The Corpse Flower (2021), Erik and Heloise's memorable debut, it closes the circle with a suitably nightmarish snap. Despite the colder weather, this slice of Nordic noir reads surprisingly like top-line American procedurals.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 19, 2022
      Danish author Hancock’s tense sequel to 2021’s The Corpse Flower finds journalist Heloise Kaldan, who’s five weeks pregnant and conflicted about her current relationship, visiting a Copenhagen abortion clinic. Just as her attentive physician, Jens Bjerre, is about to test her for hyperthyroidism, he’s interrupted by an urgent call—his 10-year-old son, Lukas, has gone missing after school—and in a panic he leaves the clinic. Heloise and her compassionate police detective friend, Erik Schäfer, investigate the disappearance of the boy, who was keenly interested in pareidolia, “a psychological phenomenon in which random patterns are interpreted as faces.” A recent photo on Lukas’s phone shows a barn door that looks like a face. The quest for answers presents Heloise and Erik with a host of social concerns that at times overwhelm the main plot line, including Denmark’s refugee problem, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, and even the American-led involvement in Afghanistan. Hancock, though, does a good job portraying her leads’ complex motivations. Scandi noir fans will want to stay tuned. Agent: Anna Frankl, Nordin Agency (Sweden).

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