Streets of Death #1 - Inger Johanne Vik series

It's been a while since I posted about novels because these two that I'll be posting about now have been have what I've been reading for the longest, but yesterday there was such an incredibly nice weather (today too) during late evening that I just went to sit at a quiet park and read the rest while absorbing the wind and remaining rays of light from the falling sun while the skies were clear and blue. It was beautiful. It became slightly chillier as the hours went on (because of the strong puffs of wind every now and then) but I was almost shaking from the feeling of freshness. Ah, summer. I loved that... That was such a great way to get myself to finish reading these. I suggest anyone to just go sit out there during evening when it's not too hot or cold if you want to feel something special. Hell, maybe you'll get motivated to work on projects that you've had in the back burner for far too long.

Anne Holt is an attorney and a Norwegian crime fiction write known for her two fictional series, the first being a series of stories about an officer named Hanne Wilhelmsen who drives a pink Harley Davidson, and the second series Holt is known for is her Inger Johanne Vik series. Last year I managed to cop two-in-one for a measly 3.50 euros for the first two Inger Johanne Vik books, a story about a profiler that we'll go further in-depth of in this post. It's good to finally post about these, eh.

The two-in-one collection (about 835 pages) is translated into Streets of Death (Kuoleman Kadut, 2016, Finnish collection) and I've been holding back on finishing these books for far too long of a time now. I'm glad I finally mustered through them. They weren't bad or anything, but I'll explain my thoughts on my lack of motivation for finishing them here for sure.

I read the Finnish version of these stories.


Book 1 - What is Mine (Det som er mitt, 2001, / Minkä taakseen jättää in Fin)

What is Mine is the first story in the Vik&Stubo series. In the English version I believe Stubo's first name is Adam, but in the Finnish and the original versions it's Yngvar. Adam is kind of lame of a name for Yngvar Stubo in my honest opinion as well because of the type of character he is. What is Mine introduces us to the main character, an ex-profiler for FBI, Inger Johanne Vik. Inger Johanne is a woman in her 20's that lives for profiling (as a human, not a job). We also get to learn about her family; her ex-husband Isak, her daughter Kristiane who suffers from some sort of autism, her parents and the normal life problems she has with them.
We also get to meet the deuteragonist (in a sense), higher ranking police officer Yngvar Stubo from KRIPOs (Fin version of the department). Yngvar Stubo, if I remember right, lost her previous wife daughter in a really ridicilous way, where one fell from stairs and the stairs onto the other and both died. We also meet Yngvar Stubo's trusted subordinate, the large-built Sigmund.

The story of What is Mine is simple. It starts with Emilie, a young girl, leaving the school. While Emilie usually walks home with her friends, this time she did not as her friends left somewhere on a trip. Emilie was left alone to walk home that day. As she decides to go a shortcut alleyway, that she usually takes to get home, a man appears and asks her: "Are you Emilie?" -  "You are Emilie Selbu, right?" Emilie quickly passes by the man and then the last thing she remembers is that the man had put something over her mouth. That is where the cruel child kidnappings - and murders - in Norway begin as What is Mine starts. Yngvar Stubo and Sigmund along with everyone else from KRIPOs start a hunt to find a child killer. In this all as the police don't find anything quickly enough, Yngvar Stubo decides to ... somewhat stalk... Inger Johanne Vik, whom Stubo claims he knows as a profiler. Inger Johanne however tends to push Stubo away and correct him: she was only a profiler student under the best profiler teacher in America. Inger Johanne does not spend time profiling anything too much in this story, she's what you could call all hype no bite.

However, that's not all as the story has another side to it. There's a sub-plot that takes half of the book that Inger Johanne Vik is motivated in figuring out (probably because she's a mystery solver at heart). In the sub-plot that also starts at the beginning of the story, Inger Johanne Vik visits a nursing home where a woman named Alvhild Sofienberg (who smells like disgustingly strong onion for some reason) asks Inger Johanne to find more about a decades-old mystery that has been haunting and attracting Alvhild for ages. What Alvhild wants Inger Johanne to investigate is about a man named Aksel Seier. Aksel Seier was imprisoned for 8 years for raping and murdering a child, and Seier never pleaded guilty. Alvhild Sofienberg explains that she believes that Seier was not guilty because Seier's sentence ended and he was all of a sudden released in silence and Seier moved out of Norway.

Now, my thoughts about this is that What is Mine has some decent dialogue here and there and is not bad, but it is a mediocre story all things considered. The best part about it in my honest opinion are couple small dialogues Inger Johanne Vik has about what type of person the culprit could be that reflect back to the name of the book very well. I think that people who like to have the name of a book to be able to be deciphered from the story will like this first story for that reason. The pacing is fine for the most part but it doesn't have much life to it. The story feels kind of manufactured, unrealistic. Like stock-grade crime fiction. I don't really care much for the characters either. There's some romantic tension between Inger Johanne Vik and Yngvar Stubo but it's all done in inner dialogue type of way which Anne Holt likes to use a lot. Doesn't really work for me personally but I can understand if someone else would like inner dialog being used. The drama in the story is kind of boring. The wrap-up of the story is the worst thing about What is Mine. The killer was handled sadly in a bad way (the culprit felt unimportant, had lack of depth, etc.) and the ending is convenient as the plot threads come together in the most unrealistic ways possible (Anne Holt probably thought it'd make the stories feel more important if they were connected to the main plot element) but it was just too much and I can't suspend my disbelief for something that huge. The ending of the story didn't do any favours whatsoever for the story or the characters.

Anne Holt's writing style is interesting in how she forces the reader to remember the names of overarching and important characters by hammering their full name in the pages every time the characters are mentioned in the text. I didn't dislike that part of the books, it was interesting. The names of most of the characters are pretty memorable in the first place though.


Since this post turned out longer than what I intended it to be, the next book in this collection and the next half of this post will be talked about in the next blog post right after this one. I probably shouldn't split blog posts but I make too long ones too often so people lose interest. That's why I'll splitting the post out. Streets of Death collection has two different books in one anyway so it's the perfect time to try this split method out.