Sara Blædel

Ilka Nichols Jensen is a forty-year-old Danish widow who has never come to terms with her past. Her father, Paul, was a compulsive gambler who left her and her mother, Karin, thirty-three years ago. For quite a while, Karin had to struggle to earn enough money to support herself and her daughter. When Ilke learns that Paul has died and that she is mentioned in his will, she flies to Racine, Wisconsin, hoping to find out more about the man she loved but never really understood. Much to her shock, she finds out that she is the new owner of her father's funeral home.

"The Undertaker's Daughter," by Sara Blaedel, translated from the Danish by Mark Kline, is an odd tale of a woman who is uncomfortable in her own skin. Much of her unease stems from her failure to persuade her father to maintain contact with her. She wrote many letters to him over the years, but he never replied. Although we empathize with Ilka's pain, she is irritating, immature, capricious, and not particularly likeable. Among her personality flaws is her inability to make up her mind. Will she stay in Wisconsin and try to resuscitate her father's failing business?

This novel is an awkward mixture of family drama and murder mystery. In addition to Ilka's financial and legal woes, Blaedel throws in a subplot about a former resident of Racine named Mike Gilbert, who was suspected of killing his girlfriend but disappeared before his guilt could be established. Now, his badly beaten corpse has been found and the police are looking for Mike's killer. The threads of Ilka's and Mike's stories loosely intersect, but the author fails to link the book's disparate elements plausibly or satisfyingly. "The Undertaker's Daughter" is disjointed and bleak, but it does have some redeeming features. The author captures the atmosphere of an economically depressed town, where small entrepreneurs are being swallowed up by their more prosperous competitors. In addition, Blaedel poignantly depicts the ways in which skilled and compassionate funeral directors lend support to grieving relatives. Ilke eventually comes to realize how rewarding it is to help devoted family members bid a final and meaningful farewell to their loved ones.… (more)

Danish authors Blædel and Nordbo team up to follow the search for a kidnapper who’s snatching victims from greater Odense at a truly alarming rate.When Claus Laursen turns up to report that his wife, Charlotte, is missing, Inspector Liam Stark’s first impulse is to reassure him: It’s only been a few hours, his wife isn’t a child, any number of things could have prevented her from picking up her own children. But 3-year-old Oliver Laursen has Down syndrome, and Claus can’t believe his wife would’ve broken the routine Oliver depended on unless she was stopped. When she still hasn’t returned the next morning, Stark and his colleagues begin a search, and by nightfall, Kasper, the friend who provided mechanic Dennis Sørenson with an alibi when he was accused some time ago of breaking into Charlotte’s house, has also vanished. What particularly troubles the police are the pages left behind with Quran verses condemning particular sins of which different victims are presumably being accused. The abductions continue unabated on a daily basis, eventually encompassing all the sins enumerated by the Ten Commandments—not an idle comparison for Peter Løve, pastor Beate Nielsen’s husband and the father of the child she’s expecting, since he’s laboriously working on a proof that Allah is identical to the Christian God. Readers hoping for a glimpse behind the curtain for an update on the victims should beware of what they wish for, since the fate that awaits the victims is both horrifying and physically revolting.

Though the motive is more interesting than the identity of the perpetrator, the co-authors keep up the tension to the end. Source: Kirkus

I really liked the book. It is only the second Sara Blaedel book I've read. It is definitely dark and moody.… (more)