Review: The Tenant by Katrine Engberg

When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller.

*The above synopsis is as found on Goodreads.

Thoughts:

This was a slow building mystery with a somewhat interesting premise, but it failed to fully captivate, wow, or surprise me. The two lead detectives within the story had an interesting dynamic, but the character development as well as the dialogue fell flat. I did finish the novel but I think overall the execution needed some fine-tuning. My true star rating falls somewhere between 2.5-3 /5

A complimentary copy for review was provided to me by Simon and Schuster Canada and Scout Press/Gallery Books. All opinions expressed here are honest and entirely my own.

If you would like more information on the author or this novel, visit the publisher's website here.