Killed by Thomas Enger #BookReview #BlogTour

Crime reporter Henning Juul thought his life was over when his young son was  murdered. But that was only the beginning…

Determined to find his son’s killer, Henning doggedly follows an increasingly dangerous trail, where dark hands from the past emerge to threaten everything. His ex-wife Nora is pregnant with another man’s child, his sister Trine is implicated in the fire that killed his son and, with everyone he thought he could trust seemingly hiding something, Henning has nothing to lose … except his own life.

Packed with tension and unexpected twists, Killed is the long-awaited finale of one of the darkest, most chilling and emotive series you may ever read. Someone will be killed. But who?

I am absolutely thrilled to be on the blog tour for Killed by Thomas Enger today, my heartfelt thanks to the author, Orenda Books and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me and for my advance copy of the novel.
At the beginning of this month I hadn't read any of the five books in the Henning Juul series by Thomas Enger. I tried to read the books in order and almost succeeded but unfortunately time constraints means I didn't manage to fit the fourth book, Cursed in. I will be picking it up the moment I've finished writing this review though - my FebJuulary readathon isn't quite finished yet!
I would recommend reading this series in order if you can, Thomas Enger has written them so they can be thoroughly enjoyed as standalones but to really appreciate the intricacies of the plot they deserve to be read consecutively.
Killed finds crime journalist, Henning Juul finally closing in on the people who were responsible for the death of his young son, Jonas. The events between the first book in the series, Burned and this one actually take place over just a few months in 2009 which creates an intense immediacy to the plot; the reader has followed him from his first tentative steps back into work two years after the devastating fire which left him scarred and his son dead, to this point where he has become the determined investigative journalist who will stop at nothing to discover the truth about that fateful night in 2007. The previous books in the series have seen Juul looking into other cases while simultaneously trying to come to terms with his grief and find out who killed Jonas. In Killed, Henning has become far more single-minded but over the course of the previous few weeks he has regained something of the man he was before and has started to allow himself to feel again. However, the book opens with a dark and ominous prologue that suggests life is shortly going to become deadly serious for Juul once again, I had to restrain myself from skipping the pages to find out just what leads him to what seems to be a hopeless place.
Thomas Enger's books should never be skim read however, regardless of how desperate I was to discover the truth, I allowed the action to unfold before me as I savoured this truly wonderful book and series. There are so many different strands to the story but as the puzzle pieces fall into place, what is created is a truly superlative novel - Killed is the outstanding swansong of a series that showcases the very best of Scandinavian crime fiction. The complexity of plot of the overarching series and Henning's investigation in this novel with its large yet distinct cast of characters, shocks and red herrings, and the tense sense of foreboding meant I couldn't tear my eyes away from the page. I must also commend Kari Dickson for her translation, the book flows so naturally that it's easy to forget it was originally written in Norwegian.
Killed may be a compelling finale then but it's also a poignantly beautiful book that explores Henning's grieving process as he learns not only the truth about what happened in the past but also accepts the pain of his son's death and realises he can allow himself to feel again. There can't be many crime novels that I finish with the tears rolling down my face but then there aren't many that are so sensitively and evocatively written. This is a bittersweet review as it's the last in the Henning Juul series but it finishes exactly as it should and though I'm sad to reach the end I've had the pleasure of reading an unforgettable series. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Killed is published in the UK by Orenda Books and can be purchased here.

There are some fabulous blogs taking part in this blog tour, details are below.

About the Author

Thomas Enger (b. 1973) is a former journalist. He made his debut with the crime novel Burned (Skinndød) in 2009, which became an international sensation before publication. Burned is the first in a series of 5 books about the journalist Henning Juul, which delves into the depths of Oslo’s underbelly, skewering the corridors of dirty politics and nailing the fast-moving world of 24-hour news. Rights to the series have been sold to 26 countries to date. In 2013 Enger published his first book for young adults, a dark fantasy thriller called THE EVIL LEGACY, for which he won the U-prize (best book Young Adult). Enger also composes music, and he lives in Oslo.

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About the Translator

KARI DICKSON read Scandinavian Studies at UCL and then went on to work in various theatres. While working in the theatre, she was asked to do literal translations of two Ibsen plays, which fuelled her interest and led to an MA in Translation at the University of Surrey.  Having worked initially as a commercial translator, she now concentrates on literary translation, a good deal of which is crime fiction. Her translation of Roslund & Hellström’s Three Seconds won the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) International Dagger in 2011. She is also an occasional tutor in Norwegian language and literature, and translation  at the University of Edinburgh.