Blessed Are Those Who Thirst

Author/Guide: Anne Holt

Why a Booktrail?

1990s: The second in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series

ISBN: 978-0857892263
Translator: Anne Bruce
Genre: Crime, legal/political, Police Procedural

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What you need to know before your trail

The detective hunts down a serial rapist – but can she find him before a father devastated by an attack on his daughter takes the law into his own hands?

The Oslo police are baffled. Crime scenes are being found covered with blood, but there is no victim. Only an odd series of numbers is left behind.

When a girl is brutally raped in her apartment, Detective Hanne Wilhelmsen is charged with solving the case. Hanne quickly notices strange similarities with the blood-stained crime scenes. But the victim’s father has started an independent hunt for the rapist… and Hanne will have to race against time to prevent a victim becoming a vigilante.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Oslo

Anne Holt’s Oslo is a very special kind of city. It’s is a mix of cold cases, tough streets and calculating killers.

The book’s opening line sets the tone:

“It was so early not even the devil had managed to put on his shoes”

The police and legal team work from the police HQ in Gronlandsleiret 44 “which has no historical resonance unlike the previous building in Mollergata where the HQ used to be. The police seems to be bothered that their block is unlike the smart government buildings of Victoria Terrasse nearby”

Here, despite it being Oslo. it’s springtime and so there is a little warm in the air

“In the west, the heavens showed that intense hue only a Scandinavian sky in springtime is blessed with – royal blue on the horizon and lighter towards the meridian, before dissolving into a pink eiderdown….”

Cases always seems to involve a conspiracy or two operating high up in the Oslo legal system and since Ms Holt was Norway’s Justice Minister, there is a keen sense of accuracy and realistic dialogue and other plot background within every book.