Death of the Demon

Author/Guide: Anne Holt

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2000s : The Third in the Hanne Wilhelmsen Series

ISBN: 978-0857892270
Translator: Anne Bruce
Genre: Crime, Police Procedural

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What you need to know before your trail

In an orphanage outside Oslo, a twelve-year-old boy is causing havoc. The institution’s ageing director, Agnes Vestavik, sees something chilling in Olav’s eyes: sheer hatred. When Vestavik is found murdered at her desk late at night, stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife – with Olav nowhere to be found – the case goes to Hanne Wilhelmsen, recently promoted to superintendent in the Oslo police.

Hanne suspects that Olav witnessed the murder and fled, and she orders an investigation of the orphanage staff. But this, however, is one case where her instincts are leading her astray.

Meanwhile, Olav makes his way to his mother’s apartment in central Oslo. When police finally catch up to him, Olav will lead them on a chase that will upend all of their assumptions.

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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.

This time there’s a keen insight into a children’s home and the kids inside it:

At that moment the director of the Spring Sunshine Foster Home, the sole institution in Oslo for children and young people, saw something she never had, in the course of her twenty three years of employment in child welfare services, seen before. Beneath the boy’s black slender eyebrows…[..]…hatred”

Newly promoted, thirty-six year old Hanne Wilhelmsen is on the case as is Billy T returning as a detective. This case of child welfare and murder delves into some dark Oslo corners.
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”

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.