Holt's U.S. Debut Is Excellent Mystery

What Is Mine by Anne Holt

The United States has no monopoly on the thriller genre. This is something Europeans, in particular Norwegians, have known for some time. But then, they've been reading Anne Holt for years.

Anne Holt is one of Norway's most successful crime writers and her most recent book, What is Mine, make its American debut this year.

What is Mine is a serial killer crime novel, the first in what is to be a series featuring Johanne Vik and Adam Stubo, both middle-aged professionals who are caught up in a series of child abductions and murders.

Johanne is a professor who prefers not to talk about the time she spent in the United States learning to be an FBI profiler. Adam Stubo is a police detective whose career has taken a permanent staff following the bizarre accidental deaths of his wife and daughter. He entreats Johanne to help the Norwegian police solve the series of crimes that are deeply affecting the country and changing how their children live their lives.

What Is Mine takes a deliberate pace, one that allows us to become intimate with several different characters-from the protagonists to the killer and his victims. Each character is thoroughly drawn and Holt's constant switching of perspectives lets us see a more complete picture than any one character is able to see. It also allows the pacing to be succinct at the end, giving the reader far more explanation than the police will ever have.

Where the switching perspectives work especially well are two chapters between Johanne and her ex-husband Isak. The reader is able to understand the viewpoints of the estranged parents and to see exactly why the breakup occurred. Their perceptions are about as opposite as you can get. In a novel that centers on the disappearance of children, you see two parents who are totally unalike in how they think a handicapped child should be raised-and yet both equally love their daughter.

The book is very accessible to American readers, though there are certain colloquialisms that may be unfamiliar to them. It is also a novel that works because of where it is set. The ending would be far too coincidental and wouldn't play at all if it were set in the U.S. However, Holt emphasizes what a small country Norway is, which makes the reader more willing to suspend disbelief.

The story does end up being solved more through chance and accident than through effort on the part of the protagonists. Even though the highly speculative profiling that Johanne eventually offers turns out to be quite accurate, it does little to help solve the crime.

These are flaws, however, that one is willing to forgive because it is a well-told story with a great deal of suspense. Holt uses words like a master and gives us characters that are sympathetic and easy to relate to.

There is also something appealing about the innocence of a nation where serial killings are rare. These are crimes that shake the entire nation to its core-crimes that start out as the disappearance of two children. Holt shows us how people start to change their behaviors, curtailing the freedom of children to explore, increasing their supervision, and living with a fearfulness with which they were previously unfamiliar.

I look forward to the next two books in the series and hope that they too will see U.S. publication.

--B. Redman