Looking for a great weekend read? Look no further than Jørn Lier Horst’s latest, Dregs.
From the first pages to the final reveal, this freshly translated Norwegian crime offers that much-sought-after quality: authenticity. Jørn Lier Horst knows his stuff, and readers will be drawn into this darkly believable plot. There is no doubt that with Inspector Wisting in charge, the investigation is in safe hands.
When a severed left-foot washes ashore in his district, Police Inspector William Wisting knows this isn’t just the unfortunate victim of a fishing accident. After all, it’s the second left foot to wash ashore in under a week. Could they be the remains of missing nursing home patients? And what is the connection with care worker Camilla Thaulow, who has also mysteriously vanished? When another two left feet bob up, and connections with other crimes start to emerge, Wisting has a sinking feeling that, in this case, there’s no such thing as coincidence.
In the meantime, Wisting’s journalist daughter Line has her own investigation going – profiling some of Norway’s most notorious repeat offenders, most of them murderers. Pretty soon, though, Line’s story starts to knock up against her father’s increasingly complex case. And it’s going to take some serious police work to get to the bottom of it all.
Each well-drawn detail in Dregs feels like it might actually be happening, right now, in a seaside Nordic town. So it will come as no surprise that Jørn Lier Horst was a former senior investigating officer in the Norwegian police force – whose first literary outing was a successful true crime. Each exacting detail – from DNA testing, to witness accounts and criminal interviews – has the ring of truth about it. Which makes the twist, when it comes, all the more thrilling.
And while this is the first time Inspector Wisting has been translated into English, he has already well and truly won the hearts of Scandinavian readers. Each page of Dreg offers a new insight into the rigour of criminal investigations, through the eyes of an experienced member of the force.
Lovers of crime will find many gems here. Both Lier Horst and Wisting truly know this criminal world, inside and out.
Jørn Lier Horst is one of Norway’s most successful crime writers. His bestselling William Wisting series has been translated into 30-plus languages, and has sold more than half-a-million copies worldwide. Dregs is the sixth in the series and the first translated into English.
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