A review by siobhanward
The Tenant by Katrine Engberg

dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

 If there hadn't been a photo of the author in the back of the book, I would have sworn that this was written by a man... The amount of time devoted to describing erections and pointing out how gross one Jeppe's female colleagues was fully pulled me out of the story. I'm not sure if the author was trying to build tension between Jeppe and Anette, but it just came across as a disgusting woman trope. She ATE, she LICKED HER FINGERS, she LIKED DOGS... Like... ok? Other than her being there to be an idiot and have things explained to her (or explain simple things and be rebuffed for it by Jeppe) for the benefit of the reader, Anette served no purpose.

Anyway, the mystery was fine. Sad and very Danish, but fine. The writing was clunky in parts (usually the story moved between Esther and Jeppe, but there were a couple paragraphs that focused on other detectives for no real reason at all? Jeppe's personal life is a mess (as they always are in this kind of story), but the side plot about him sleeping with one of the witnesses was super unnecessary, especially since it played no actual role in the story, other than reinforcing that he did selfish things and almost ruined his case.

This was a very standard fare for a detective novel. Nothing special other than weird misogyny, unfortunately. 
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