- John Dickson Carr
I digged a bit deeper as I wrote this post and learned that not only is she an attorney for graduating with a law degree and starting her own law business, but Anne Holt, the writer of these Inger Johanne Vik and Hanne Wilhelmsen books, both crime fiction series, has actually worked in Oslo PD (PD is short for Police Department) in the 90's, as a journalist and she also served as Minister of Justice. Anne Holt is thus pretty damn prolific when it comes to understanding the inner workings of the police and the justice system as a whole. Even though her books mostly showcase the police in more positive light than I believe they would be in reality (they do break laws but the cop characters feel like far too optimistic and good people). Anyway, now I finally understand why Anne Holt can describe anything to do with how the police works with such confidence in her books. Neat.
Another thing I noticed on my /wikipedia/ search adventure about Anne Holt was that she lived in Lillestrøm and Tromsø according to my sources. Those places (and couple other places) in Norway are well described in the Inger Johanne Vik stories as well.
This post will be talking about the second book in the Inger Johanne Vik crime novel series. The story is about an ex-profiler for FBI who gets caught up in murders in Norway as well as the superintendent cop Yngvar Stubo for KRIPOs. In the first blog post I talked about the book collection. The Streets of Death containing the first two books in the series. The first book review can be read here. This post will be the continuation and about the second book in the series.
Book 2 - What Never Happens (Det som aldri skjer, 2004, / Celebrity murders)
Four years have passed in the story since the first book.
What Never Happens, which also goes by The Final Murder in English print, is the second Vik&Stubo story starring these two characters except this time in a much more intimate light. Inger Johanne Vik has given birth to a new child right before the story of What Never Happens starts. That baby's name is Ragnhild (sounds viking-ish for some reason). Ragnhild is a child who, much like most babies, poops and cries quite a lot every time they are focused on. This time Inger Johanne Vik's older daughter Kristiane gets less screentime as Ragnhild gets her fair share of scenes. There is more drama in this book than in the first one as the father of Ragnhild is the previous book's higher ranking police officer Yngvar Stubo himself.
The story this time around is singular without sub-plots and it's about celebrities getting murdered. In Norway a famous talk show star Fiona Helle is found in her home, murdered. There is symbolism at play as Fiona Helle's tongue has been cleanly split in half and placed on top of a table for everyone to see. After Helle's death multiple other famous people meet their end one after another at the hands of a celebrity serial killer, and Norway is thus pushed under a wave of fear.
It all begins with a person [the killer] feeling confident at their art. We know from the beginning that the culprit is a female as well. While in style this story shares many similarities from how the culprit and the other characters and their thoughts are presented, the story of What Never Happens is definitely quite a bit different from What is Mine as it begins with Yngvar Stubo and his underling Sigmund already in the crime scene looking at Fiona Helle's body. However after getting no clues, Yngvar Stubo decides to ask her wife - the ex-profiler Inger Johanne Vik - some advice on what to do next. Inger Johanne is now off-work on maternity leave as her and Yngvar Stubo's child Ragnhild has recently born. Naturally due to the baby Inger Johanne tries to avoid the cases as much as she can but Yngvar talks her into it. Inger Johanne's profiling isn't that useful this time around either for the police but it is handled in a more interesting way for the reader when you reach the ending of this story and all things come together.
For the most part I felt that this story was about the same quality as the What is Mine, so not exactly something I like to read too much of, however there were no bad parts that would have felt too convenient unlike in the previous story. What Never Happens is a very solid story that still feels kind of lifeless and basic modern crime fiction however it does have a flair of professionalism in it. I could tell that Anne Holt really knows what she writes about. All the in-depth knowledge about life, police, writing etc. that she has gained throughout her life come together and shine in this book. There was only one noticeable problem I had with the story (aside from family drama that I didn't care for which took too many pages and which always went back to the plot in a sort of unnatural way) and it was about the first murder. In the end of the story they explain that the first murder is different from the rest but I just had to wonder then why was it pointed out that Fiona Helle's tongue was cut in a "clean and precise" manner fitting for a professional.
That aside, What Never Happens has two standout aspects about it. The first being the ending and the second being the main villain. The last 50 pages or so felt much more interesting than the previous book and this book together up until that point as the villain of this story appeared finally. While the culprit's existence and actions were hinted at throughout the story, it felt like this thing was truly progressing once the final parts of this story started and the culprit got active and got to the spotlight, quite literally in fact. Unlike in the first book where the villain was a letdown, in this one, while the villain appeared far too late into the story according to some complaints I've read, she had some real presence and affected the story in a very clever way. The ending of these celebrity murders had one of the better endings I've read so far in general and I wonder whether the culprit will become an overarching character, though I most likely won't be actively looking for the next installments in the series.
I can say that even thought the culprit's motivations at first felt kind of lazy, Anne Holt managed to make it much better by the end of it all as she went in-depth about who the villain was and how the story changed them so that the ending of the story itself also transformed along the way. I could understand the culprit and also be entertained by what type of character she was despite doing ruthless murders.
Last tidbits: In the book's afterwords for What is Mine (book #1), Anne Holt explains that while she was in a restaurant during spring of year 2000 she had heard a story that had happened in 1938, a story about a man named Ingvald Hansen who was convicted to a lifetime in prison for raping a murdering a seven year old girl named Mary.In the afterwords Holt says that from what she'd heard, it's more than likely that Hansen experienced what's called juridical murder, something that happens when people get sentenced despite clearly being innocent.
Juridical murders happen a lot in different ways and they affect anyone in various ways and are life-destroying events more often than not. It's not rare to lose a high position at work and never get work again for being sentenced for something, after all. A juridical murder will literally change your life to the worse with the snap of a finger.
In the afterwords Holt also explains that she investigated Ingvald Hansen more by reading a newspaper article written by Doctor of Jurisprudence Anders Bratholm (Tidsskrift for lov og rett, 2000, p. 443 ff, printed in 2000). Apparently the article goes over interesting facts about Hansen, one of them being that the man died couple of years after unexplainedly and suddenly getting released from prison. Hansen's case also mentions about a judge, Anna Louise Beer, who never forgot about the case and who knew that Hansen was innocent but couldn't at the time showcase the proof for it. In the 1990's Anna Louise Beer tried to track down the papers regarding Hansen's case, but they had all disappeared.
The story she had heard about Ingvald Hansen was what inspired Anne Holt to create Aksel Seier for What is Mine. It's interesting that the side character was what most likely kicked off the Inger Johanne Vik series. Seier's story resembles Hansen's in various ways and Judge Anna Louise Beer is thus the inspiration for What is Mine's Alvhild Sofienberg as well. Lastly, the 'perfect murder' used to kill the kidnapped victims in What is Mine was created by Anne Holt's brother, Even, who described a perfect murder method in his doctoral thesis.
I know this should be posted along with Streets of Death #1 blog post which was about What is Mine, but since it's a collection post I'll be adding this here because it shows how Anne Holt is rather knowledgeable when it comes to analyzing and prolifing real life stories. It's also OBVIOUS that the culprit in What Never Happens is based on Anne Holt herself so I thought this afterword for What is Mine fits with the ending of What Never Happens when trying to understand what interesting type of person this attorney-author Anne Holt truly is.
I'm glad I finally got these out and can move forward to hopefully better things. Right now I've set my goal to get to 50 posts on this blog for some reason so I'll try to post 3-4 more blog posts about something after this. I've been thinking of going through all the Detective Conan movies once more and rating them but I don't want to burn myself out (I already know which ones I prefer the most after all and don't want to ruin the fun of watching the next movie (23rd) about Makoto and Kaito Kid by potentially over exhausting myself from doing many rewatches! It seems that I should watch episodes instead, hmm...).
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