‘Personal’ is a cute wordInspector Irene Huss is good at balancing home and office but some cases cannot be contained in the files at office. When parts of human torso start washing up at beaches, it looks like just another serial killing at first glance but when Huss tries to solve the case by pulling some old and new ones, she discovers a puzzle with roots deeper than she could imagine. With one corpse being identified as a girl she knew and another corpse being identified as son of another woman known as Huss, she feels how much personal it is this time for the killer and herself.Now that is an excellent story premise. But sadly the book delivers less than promised. First of all, the length. The book drags so much (more at the first half) that it could have shed about 30 pages easily. Lets give an example, "Maybe it would have been more elegant if the shoe had had a bit of a heel to go with the nice pants, but if you were one hundred and eighty centimetres tall without shoes, you don't wear heels. A short pass with lipstick would have to do as a means of freshening up her makeup. On the way down the stairs she twisted her arms into a new trench coat-style jacket. It was blue, the color of her eyes." Not so frustrating yet? Ok, now imagine paragraphs after paragraphs written about how our heroine had to face the problem of changing clothes quickly because someone was at the door or how she had to face the problem of changing her sweaty bra. There are things like these scattered among a crime thriller about serial killer investigation. It is so frustrating and boring that even if you just say, "Meh" and skip 2-3 pages you won't feel that you have missed something important.But even after all these frustration, the book still manages to keep you interested because the mystery is very good and because Inspector Huss is damn good at what she does. I almost felt like vouching for the book to be better when it ended.To be frank, I want to read more of Inspector Huss mystery series but I am also very much afraid.
I do love the Scandinavians, and this one was not nearly as bleak as the type trends, despite the really rather grisly premise of this mystery. You can guess the killer's MO from the title. The writing is fine, and the main character terrifically likeable and mentally whole, unlike many of the popular police inspectors introduced in many mysteries today. I was loving the experience of reading about Göteborg and Copenhagen and was liking the characterizations, but a false note was introduced late in the story and it was so discordant that I started to look at the book more critically.This being a life-and-death story, one simply must trust the main character, in this case, Police Inspector Irene Huss, will make reasonable judgements regarding the investigation of a murderer. I did notice that even as the body count was rising precipitously (and perhaps preposterously), the detectives would go home every night and eat on time at nice pubs. This may just be a cultural habit, which I find more interesting than something to be critical about, coming from a culture where work is more important than any bodily function or relationship. But at one point Police Inspector Huss does not warn a potential victim about his safety, and at another point allows her daughters to travel alone on an overnight when the killer is actually stalking her and her family. Since death, and a very grisly death indeed, is the probable outcome of a mistake at this point in the story, I find it hard to believe that such a reasonable person as Irene Huss has proven herself to be would make this kind of choice. Unfortunately, Tursten then became for me just an ordinary writer instead of a magician. But I do like her main chancter enough to make another attempt.
What do You think about The Torso (2007)?
Gruesome. You don't get to know the victims enough to be upset, so the appalling gruesomeness is not my main complaint. I considered the author a good writer when I read her first book, but in this one her plot fizzles out after the perp is identified but before he is dealt with. The cop never exchanges as much as one word with the perp -- very unsatisfying. She also implausibly reveals critical information to a friend, and that causes problems. I don't think I will read another by Tursten even though I like reading about Sweden, where my son-in-law comes from.
—CarolineFromConcord
Helene Tursten’s The Torso was published by SOHO Crime way back in 2006. SOHO Crime is, purportedly, an independent publisher of crime fiction. It is not tied with Vintage, Grove Press, or even Penguin Books. The aforementioned are, of course, some of the most prominent publishers in the world. SOHO Crime is commendable for bringing non-English writers to a more mainstream reading market. For one, Ms. Tursten is Swedish and it would seem that it may take forever to have her books translated in English had we waited for somebody else. So, we extend a debt of gratitude for SOHO in bringing other crime fiction writers of note to a bit more fame (if Batacan is published by them, I hope it would be for a worthier effort and not the execrable Smaller and Smaller Circles which I have the displeasure of reading five or so years ago).The book’s strength is obviously the character of Irene Huss working in the male-dominated society of police work. The Torso also shows the dark underbelly of mainstream Swedish society. This is a grisly police procedural, murder for sexual gratification of mutilating bodies and others. Tursten also does a fantastic job of vividly describing not only the physical area of Copenhagen but of social dynamics within that society. Overall, a compelling, and satisfying read (read it in a span of 5 hours of nonstop reading).Police procedurals generally aren’t my cup of tea. I find them a bit boring (for somebody who enjoys reading Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Muller, conflicts within are my thing). However, this one actually made sense. The twists never defied logic which has been established in its continuity. I guess this is the polar opposite of the ‘mind of a serial killer’ novel which has saturated the market for years now.
—Joel
This is the second book translated from this author and it starts out with a torso in a bag being found on a beach in Sweden. The only clue to the identify of the body is a tattoo, and the body, as well as dismembered, has been horribly mutilated.This crime is soon connected with a similar mutilation murder in Denmark, so the investigation moves between Goteborg, Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark with Irene Huss and her colleagues working closely with Danish police. The mutilations are pretty graphic and the violence is extreme, but strangely there are suddenly a series of what seemed to be connected murders, although the mutilation is not as severe. The murderer seems to be very close to Huss and her movements.Huss is a great character - a bit grumpy, a bit dismissive, prickly but not self-indulgent with it. The supporting cast of characters are also well drawn out and Huss's family life is interwoven into the story but not to the point where it distracts from the investigation itself.The first book in the translation series is Detective Inspector Huss, which I've got but haven't read yet. I picked this one up because of an upcoming discussion at 4_Mystery_Addicts and now I'm really going to have to excavate the earlier book.
—Karen
