Streets of Death #2 - Inger Johanne Vik series

"To write good history is the noblest work of man."
- 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...).

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.