The Tenant by Katrine Engberg
Length: 368 Pages
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
Trigger Warnings in this book for Ableism and Ableist Language, Murder, Gore, Blood and Statutory Rape (Relationship between fifteen year old and older men)
I've been back in a Nordic Noir mood, and wanted something to read to go along with that vibe. A while back, I spotted The Tenant by Katrine Engberg at my local bookstore and thought that the cover, along with the description, sounded intriguing! My mother also happened to read this book, and when I asked her what she thought of it, she couldn't remember anything about it, which I think says more about this book than I ever could. But I'll try.
Told in between three POVs, that of Detectives Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner (yes, they rhyme), and an older aspiring author, Esther, who just so happens to own the building where the first murder occurs, The Tenant starts off promising enough. A young girl has been killed in her apartment, the killer stabbing her and then carving a strange pattern onto her face, reminiscent of the traditional Danish Easter paper cuttings called gækkebrev.
Unfortunately, I think the characters are the biggest downfall here, and while the mystery itself is interesting enough with a pretty satisfying conclusion, I couldn't help but just really dislike most of the principal players. Jeppe is the least offensive, along with Esther, but Anette was the worst of them--brash, rude, and the Queen of making off-color comments. No one was out of bounds for her, not Jeppe and his "girly" hair that she can't take seriously (it's only bleached blond), not the backwards and provincial Faroese, not even one of the main suspects, a boy with Autism called Kristoffer.
It was the handling of Kristoffer that was truly the kiss of death, here. He is called "creepy", a "weirdo", a "nutjob" and more, and the fact that he was in a relationship with the victim and that he "wouldn't give her space" and so on and so forth, and I simply couldn't abide it. There are so many instances of things like this in the book, not just in regards to Kristoffer, that made it obvious it wasn't just unlikeable characters like Anette, but perhaps a bit of the author's own biases coming through. On another note, one of the antagonists mentions that he has had sex with "maids and whores [...] black, yellow and red", not to mention several teen girls. Yikes!
Not the mystery, nor the writing, which was not my style at all, could make amends for these faults. It is really disappointing, because I so looked forward to maybe getting into a fun and exciting mystery series!
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