Nicely complex plot with a very slow reveal. Masterfully done and neatly tied together at the end. I'll read some more of Anne Holt for sure. Only one thing annoyed me. A habit of segueing between scenes with connectors like this: "As soon as she put the car back in gear once more, she felt less worried. 'You mustn't worry,' the Secretary said sweetly." I found this cute and clever the first time she did it on page 22, but it became a constant right up to page 477 by which time I was well beyond finding it tiresome and twee. Won't stop me reading her, though. ( )

Anne Holt writes a couple intersecting series set in Oslo as well as standalones, and they are one of my current favorite series even though I can’t point to an individual book that’s blown me away. I’m a fan because I’m fond of the characters and, of course, I want to know how Hanne Wilhelmsen was shot and paralyzed. Because the US books were published way out of order (1222, book 8 in the Wilhelmsen series came first in the US), I’m hooked.

But back to the Vik/Stubo series. Johanne Vik is an academic who trained as a lawyer and consults with the police, and she is married to Adam Stubo, a policeman who’s first wife and child were murdered. The home-life sections of the book are quite drama-laden, or at least there is a lot that’s happened in the past, as well as Vik’s understandable anxiety about her children, particularly her neuro-atypical daughter Kristiane who is threatened in this book. In some ways it reminds me of Camilla Läckberg with the home and work sections, but the Läckberg book I have read seemed too heavy on family life. The home life is very well-balanced by the rest of the story, which involves a series of murders that are meant to look as suicides or accidental deaths excepting the Christmas Eve murder of a very popular minister. The one thing that does feel out of balance in the book is the sheer number of characters and threads in the first half of the book. I mean, I expected them to be tied together, but it was a disorienting read for a long middle stretch of the novel.

There are a few things I really like about this series: I like seeing characters who are good at what they do. I like seeing investigators who aren’t just haunted by alcohol. I like complicated plots, but ultimately I was not blown away by this particular solution.

Finally, Hanne Wilhelmsen does make an appearance, and I’ve looked up other books that haven’t been translated yet and have discovered that the fact that Holt co-authored a few installments might be holding things up. In any case, I’m tracking down as many English translations as I can find.

Finally, a note about the title. The Norwegian title is Moneyman, which gives a better sense of the conspiracy involved in the book than the English title of Fear Not, which seems to focus just on the minister’s murder, which, while important, is not the entire story. Like I said, there is a lot of plot to be unravelled.

There is a perfectly good English translation of this book out there, but I read this version because I desperately need to practise my German. Hard to explain – but I really love reading books in a foreign language. You get the whole thing in slow-motion and it’s somehow intensified. It works particularly well with a book like this which creates many mysteries and leaves solving them to the very end. For the last week, while I read the final chapters, me, this book and my dictionary have been inseparable.

Sometimes it was a difficult experience – there are some notable information dumps, lengthy discourses on the subject of hate groups or police procedure punctuated only by repetitive references to characters taking a deep breath. But otherwise it was a very enjoyable read. It created a fascinating word in which women are mostly clever and resourceful, and men are buffoons who may well get lost on the way to the loo. There are so many characters – everyone can like at least one of them.

It was interesting that emails and letters written by an American character are represented in English with no translation offered. All readers are assumed to understand it. Quite humbling really: would an English book expect to get away with great chunks of untranslated German or Norwegian? I don’t think so.

It has taken me six months to read this and it has become part of my life...I feel quite bereft without it. I really must read more of this series – preferably in German. ( )

Es gibt eine ganze Reihe von Morden in Bergen und Oslo - oder besser Toten. Eine ermordete Bischöfin, ein toter Asylbewerber der aus dem Wasser gefischt wird, eine heroinsüchtige junge Frau stürzt aus dem Fenster, ihr Bruder wird in einem Park niedergeschlagen und noch ein, zwei mehr. Wer den Klappentext zuvor nicht gelesen hat, wird keinerlei Verbindungen erkennen, erste Anhaltspunkte tauchen ab der Mitte des Buches auf. Dort wird eine ominöse "Gruppe 25" eher beiläufig eingeführt, religiöse Fanatiker deren Ziel die Tötung einer bestimmten 'Art' Menschen ist. Doch erst nach 3/4 der Lektüre werden die Zusammenhänge klarer erkennbar, die zwischen all den Toten und dieser Gruppe bestehen. Bis dahin laufen die Ermittlungen unabhängig voneinander, wobei Kommissar Yngvar Stubø aufgrund der Brisanz des Falles in Bergen ermittelt, um dort den Mord an der Bischöfin aufzuklären. Insgesamt gibt es sicherlich sieben bis acht unterschiedliche Handlungsstränge, die mehr oder weniger zusammenhanglos nebeneinanderher laufen, bis dann im letzten Viertel des Buches sich alles ineinander fügt wie die Teile eines großen Puzzles (wobei das ein oder andere Teil übrigbleibt).

Gotteszahl war mein erstes Buch von Anne Holt und vermutlich auch nicht mein letztes. Denn eines steht fest: Frau Holt kann schreiben. Und zwar in dem Sinne, dass man es lesen möchte. Doch nach dem Lesen der letzten Seite bin ich mir immer noch unschlüssig: War das nun wirklich brilliant oder eher langatmig und zäh? Denn die typischen Eigenarten eines Krimis sind in diesem Buch nicht zu finden: Man fiebert vor Aufregung, wen erwischt es als Nächstes? Ist der/die ErmittlerIn auf der richtigen Spur? Liege ich mit meinem Verdacht richtig?

Vielleicht sollte man ein neues Genre einführen: Roman mit krimihaftem Charakter - dafür gibt es auch 4 Sterne :-) ( )

The fourth, and most successful, of the Vik/Stubo novels opens as a young girl wanders around Oslo city at night, drifting onto the tram tracks while lost in her imaginary world. As the trolley bears down on her, a man sweeps her up, saving her life. At the same time, the distraught mother comes rushing out of a nearby hotel, grabs her daughter and slaps the rescuer's face.

The woman is Johanne Vik, who has been attending her sister's wedding. Her daughter tells her that "the lady" is dead. Johanne thinks Kristina is confused and means the babysitter she employed to watch the girl during the late wedding party, but of course, the child is not that misguided, as later becomes apparent.

The story shifts to the tales of various characters - a woman priest is shockingly murdered, stabbed while out on a walk one night. Adam Stubo of the national crime investigation squad and Johanne's partner, is bought in to help the investigation, gently probing the priest's catatonic husband and grown-up son to find an explanation for this apparently deranged and illogical crime. The decomposed body of a young man or boy is found in the river, which forms a separate plot thread. In this mix is a self-made industrialist, whose story we slowly learn and who we gradually realise is intimately involved in these and other apparently unrelated crimes that are leaving the police confused.

It is Johanne, still officially on maternity leave, who instinctively begins to connect the dots. In the middle of the book, in a somewhat artificial but fascinating side-section, she meets with an old American friend from her days with the FBI. Together the two women talk about hate crime, and Johanne (who is writing a thesis on the topic) begins to piece together the motivation for the current crime wave and the threat she perceives to her daughter.

This is an excellent book - in a couple of the previous novels in this series, the author has left things hanging in the air a bit at the end. This is not the case here. FEAR NOT is a fully rounded novel that addresses the terrorist and fanatical elements that plague our contemporary society, but elects to do so in an intelligent and engaging manner rather than by indulging in melodramatics. Having said this, the book is certainly not a dull lecture; to the contrary it provides plenty of conundrums that do eventually turn out to have plausible solutions. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, not least for its contemporary relevance in terms of its treatment of hate-inspired crimes, and very much look forward to the author's next. ( )