Happy Friday bookish people! I hope you are all doing well today. The most recent book I have read is Helle and Death by Oskar Jenson and today I am bringing you my review for it. This review will probably include spoilers so if you haven’t read Helle and Death and still want to, I’d suggest reading my review after not before.
With all that said, on with the review!
Blurb/Synopsis:
A snowstorm. A country house. Old friends reunited. It’s going to be murder…
Torben Helle – art historian, Danish expat and owner of several excellent Scandinavian jumpers – has been dragged to a remote snowbound Northumbrian mansion for a ten-year reunion with old university friends. Things start to go sideways when their host, a reclusive and irritating tech entrepreneur, makes some shocking revelations at the dinner table. And when these are followed by an apparent suicide, the group faces a test of their wits… and their trust.
Snowed in and cut off, surrounded by enigmatic housekeepers and off-duty police inspectors, not to mention a peculiar last will and testament, suspicion and sarcasm quickly turn to panic. As the temperature drops and the tension mounts, Torben decides to draw upon all the tricks of Golden Age detectives past in order to solve the how much money would it take to turn one of his old friends into a murderer? But he’d better be quick, or someone else might end up dead…
This witty murder mystery puts a modern spin on the classic country house whodunnit. A must-read for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman and Janice Hallett.
My Review:
Helle and Death is a book that, on paper, has all the ingredients to make a great murder mystery novel. However, in my opinion, I don’t think all of these things worked. A snowstorm keeping all the suspects locked inside, great. A group of old friends with buried secrets, amazing. An old manor house where a murder takes place, perfect. Execution – missed the mark.
In terms of the characters, I thought for the most part they were well-developed and intricate. Their secrets well hidden as well. However, the main character you spend time with is Torben Helle and I did not click with him at all. Whether this was because of the third person, distant way it was written in his perspective or not I mainly saw him as just another suspect and it irked me how the main role of his personality was to state that he was Danish over and over. By the end of the novel that was really the only thing I knew about him.
Now, even with that I would have found the book okay and probably have given it three stars if not for the ending. Again I say if you haven’t read the book this is going to be a huge spoiler. I HATE when a book is listed as a murder mystery but it turns out to not include murder at all. Honestly, there were so many twists that could have been used to give this book a good ending but instead the author chose that ending. It was a big disappointment.
Star Rating:
If you have read this book, what did you think of it?
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