What is Mine by Anne Holt

This is a fantastic book. And it's not just me. I loaned it to a neighbor who loved it. And her daughter read it and loved it as well.

The story is taut with suspense, filled with interesting characters and fast-paced action, and thrilling to the very end. It's the first novel by Anne Holt I've read but I will definitely be looking for more.

The writing is superb and the characters totally believable and interesting. The only drawback, and it bothered my neighbor more than me, was the Norwegian names. She and her daughter had a hard time keeping the characters straight in the beginning and she ended up creating a cheat sheet to refer to. She read it over a couple of weeks though because it was at a busy time in her life. I read it quickly and had no trouble keeping the names straight.

The story: 2 children have been kidnapped in Norway. Then one of them is killed and the body is returned to parents' cellar with a note. The police inspector Stubs asks for help from a former FBI profiler, Johanne Vik, now a lawyer and psychologist, whom he'd seen interviewed on TV. She, meanwhile, has been asked by an elderly lawyer to look into a 40 year old case. A man was accused, found guilty, sentenced, then inexplicably set free a few years later. The elderly lawyer is dying and would like to know what happened. When a third child is kidnapped, Vik agrees to help out.

The personalities and interplay between her and Stubs and her child and his memories are fascinating. The two cases proceed forward, one in the present and one in the past.

This is author Holt's English language premier. The book jacket says it's the first of a 3 part series and you can be sure I'll be reading the others as they are released.