Synopsis

Torben Helle – art historian, Danish expat and owner of several excellent Scandinavian jumpers – has been dragged to a remote snowbound Northumbrian mansion for a ten-year reunion with old university friends. Things start to go sideways when their host, a reclusive and irritating tech entrepreneur, makes some shocking revelations at the dinner table. And when these are followed by an apparent suicide, the group faces a test of their wits… and their trust.

Snowed in and cut off, surrounded by enigmatic housekeepers and off-duty police inspectors, not to mention a peculiar last will and testament, suspicion and sarcasm quickly turn to panic. As the temperature drops and the tension mounts, Torben decides to draw upon all the tricks of Golden Age detectives past in order to solve the how much money would it take to turn one of his old friends into a murderer? But he’d better be quick, or someone else might end up dead…

Review

Having really enjoyed Vagabonds, I was very excited to read Jensen’s murder mystery (although I was surprised it was a contemporary story and not Victorian).

Taking inspiration from Agatha Christie, Helle & Death starts off really well, with all of the ingredients we’ve come to expect from cosy crime. A group of old friends summoned to a dinner party in a big old house. During a snowstorm. No mobile phones allowed… oh and there’s a dead body.

Jensen is a good writer and the description is very atmospheric, with a fantastic sense of place and plenty of characters. However, because they are all Oxonians, there is limited variety to their attitudes; I actually struggled to remember who was who and even forgot about two of them, so would have liked a little more characterisation and differentiation.

After a strong beginning, the rest of the book’s pace is extremely slow. There are a lot of linguistic explanations, which are interesting at first but gradually become irritating. Torben is a very pretentious character and his grasp of English is clearly better than most native speakers, so his grasping for the right phrase did not work for me and added nothing to the story.

In fact the plot is quite predictable and lacks the red herrings and surprise reveals I love in murder mysteries. A few plot twists feel shoehorned in, particularly a secret relationship between two characters, which is entirely unbelievable and could have been handled better.

That said, it’s a decent – albeit long – story, but not one to rival the queen of crime.

Thanks to Viper Books for my advanced copy. Opinions my own.

Other books by Oskar Jensen: Vagabonds