OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile
This superlatively good audio thriller, a first novel by the accomplished screenwriter Søren Sveistrup, is made almost unbearably vivid by narrator Peter Noble. The story hits all the usual gory marks of the genre but is also something more, psychologically richer, better written, and surprisingly moving. A chestnut man is a doll made in autumn by Danish schoolchildren, used here as the creepy signature of a particularly devastating serial killer. That you feel a sneaking sympathy for the murderer’s rage when you finally understand what has triggered it says volumes about Sveistrup’s skill, and the power of narration. Noble performs this demanding plot with total investment in the story, as if he were as caught in its grip as the characters. Impressive and haunting. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2020 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 07/01/2019
Sveistrup, creator and writer of the TV series The Killing, makes his stellar debut with this classy procedural, a revenge saga played out in present-day Copenhagen by characters—both police and villains—excruciatingly true to life. By-the-book detective Naia Thulin hopes for advancement to the national cybercrime center, but she currently works under the opportunistic head of Copenhagen’s Major Crimes Division. As a horrifying serial mutilation-murder wave begins, she’s saddled with seedy, authority-scorning Mark Hess as her temporary partner. Almost immediately, forensic evidence links the killer, who leaves a spooky doll made of chestnuts by each of his victims, to the year-old cold case of Minister of Social Affairs Rosa Hartung’s 12-year-old daughter, kidnapped and presumed dead. With rapid-fire cinematic cuts from one brutal scene after another, Sveistrup illuminates the complexities of urban police work amid abundant inefficiencies, a plethora of red herrings, and government corruption. This one cries out for a sequel—and a film adaptation. Agent: Sofie Voller, Politiken Literary Agency. (Sept.)
A.J. Finn
A full-throttle thriller in the tradition of classic Stieg Larsson, drenched in atmosphere and charged with adrenaline. Buckle up. You’ll gulp down every word. I loved this book.
Financial Times
A tension-charged debut. . . . Incendiary.
Jeffery Deaver
This might just be the thriller of the year. The Chestnut Man grips you from the opening page and never lets go, as we’re pulled into a haunting whirlwind of secrets, deception and the dark side of the soul. The policing is top-notch, of course, and the characters—good and bad—are so real we’re sure we’ve met them before. Brilliant!
OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile
This superlatively good audio thriller, a first novel by the accomplished screenwriter Søren Sveistrup, is made almost unbearably vivid by narrator Peter Noble. The story hits all the usual gory marks of the genre but is also something more, psychologically richer, better written, and surprisingly moving. A chestnut man is a doll made in autumn by Danish schoolchildren, used here as the creepy signature of a particularly devastating serial killer. That you feel a sneaking sympathy for the murderer’s rage when you finally understand what has triggered it says volumes about Sveistrup’s skill, and the power of narration. Noble performs this demanding plot with total investment in the story, as if he were as caught in its grip as the characters. Impressive and haunting. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2020 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-07-15
In a debut novel by the creator of the television show The Killing, a serial killer in Copenhagen targets young mothers as part of a complex scheme that seems to have ties to the apparent murder of government minister Rosa Hartung's 12-year-old daughter, Kristine, a year ago.
The homicidal Chestnut Man, named after the chestnut and matchstick dolls he leaves behind, is a grisly operator who amputates the hands of the women he abducts while they're still alive. A pair of mismatched investigators are reluctantly on the case: Naia Thulin, a local cop who, tired of what she thinks of as "tedious" assignments with Major Crimes, eyes a promotion to the cybercrime unit, and Mark Hess, a disheveled Europol agent on temporary leave from the Hague to serve "penance for some blunder or other." The big complicating factor is the absence of proof that Kristine, who disappeared, is dead; when her fingerprints turn up on the chestnut dolls, hopes stir that she is, in fact, alive. It takes a little time for the novel to set itself apart from other such thrillers. What are the chestnut dolls if not an imitation of the diabolical snowmen in Jo Nesbø's The Snowman? But with its densely layered plot, chilling settings, and multiple suspects with murderous grudges, Sveistrup's epic rises above any such comparisons. This is a page-turner that will make you hesitate before turning the page, so unnerving is the violence. One of the best and scariest crime novels of the year, it adds to its rewards by promising us at least one sequel.
A tantalizing, un-put-down-able novel by an instant master of the form.
