Jorn Lier Horst - Closed for Winter

William Wisting has a new case to solve during the off-season. 

Ove Bakkerud, newly separated and extremely disillusioned, is looking forward to a final quiet weekend at his summer home before closing for winter but, when the tourists leave, less welcome visitors arrive. Bakkerud's cottage is ransacked by burglars. Next door he discovers the body of a man who has been beaten to death.
Police Inspector William Wisting has witnessed grotesque murders before, but the desperation he sees in this latest murder is something new. Against his wishes his daughter Line decides to stay in one of the summer cottages at the mouth of the fjord. Wisting's unease does not diminish when they discover several more corpses on the deserted archipelago. Meanwhile, dead birds are dropping from the sky.

Comment: I've purchased this book at a book fair last year, and although it was the 7th of a series, I decided I would still want to try it. Since it isn't a long book, I was sold.

In this book we follow Norwegian police detective William Wisting as he goes about investigating another case. When a man who traveled to his vacation house finds it robbed, he decides to check the neighbors' as well and realizes it might have been a calculated crime and calls the police. Things are especially dire because there is one dead person in one of the houses. As the investigation continues, William and his team find out that there are more clues they should add, especially when Line, William's daughter, breaks up with her boyfriend and decides to spent some time thinking at their own vacation house,and she also discovers a dead body. The police is starting to think there's more to this case than what they anticipated and perhaps there's more than one crime to bear in mind here... but how to connect the dots?

My Portuguese edition of this book was quite informative, for even before the first chapter, the editor decided to add a little bit of background to key elements of past books, so the reader who would find this book (like me) would understand some details better. Of course this was done because, from what I could see, this is the first book in the series the publisher picked up, but as a secondary effect it is quite nice to have context.

The author is also Norwegian and it seems he is quite well liked, and this series in particular well received. While reading, the style reminded me of authors like Michael Connolly and Jeff Abbott, authors I've tried before and whose books were entertaining but not fully engaging to me. This is to say that I did like this book, I don't think this being the 7th affected my overall enjoyment, for I have the idea the plots must be independent from book to book, and the development of the main characters' private lives more an addition than a need to the books, but the final result is one of competence, not exactly brilliance.

I would love to have been immersed in the lives of the characters and in the development of every situation in the book but while reading this story was a quick activity - the book isn't long either, to be fair - it wasn't difficult to stop when I had to, for instance. I did like learning about Norway and some society behaviors, some police procedures and that kind of stuff. However, the writing is to the point, quite assertive and without much room for reflections and musings. This doesn't have to be a negative aspect, quite the opposite; but I was not as dedicated to the story and when everything was explained, I cannot say I was blown away by the sequence of events nor about the way the detectives got there.

Portuguese cover

I have to say some details were intriguing, such as the fact some birds kept dying and some characters commented on this from time to time and I could not see why it would matter, so when they explain why this was actually intentional, I was like... ohhh, but even this supposedly strange information was given in such a clinical way... I can see the author isn't interested in a more complex prose, but sometimes it might improve the reading experience.

At some point of the plot, William has to travel to Lithuania, which is admittedly a country not often mentioned in the news, so I have to confess I don't know much about it, just like William didn't. I suppose the author has his own views on travel, emigration and immigration but I was a little discomforted when he wrote things, from William's POV, on Lithuania and the people, about why people would travel to other countries to commit crimes... he even went on to mention the European Union's decisions if the EU accepts more countries... OK, I won't go into it because one situation leads to the next and this isn't a blog on politics, but I think there were other ways to write about this subject without coming across as he has. I just felt he wasn't being very fair, since he was mentioning a certain group of people and it can be true some people are universally bad, no matter where they come from, but this felt like an unfair generalization.

Anyway, this aside, I actually had a good enough time reading. Nothing felt truly exciting nor vibrant, but competence is certainly much better than not having it at all. There were, indeed, two different crimes to investigate and one of them was not interesting to my preferences, whereas the other was but it wasn't dealt with in the same way, since it was almost like an afterthought, just one little thing to bring closure to the whole investigation. I wish this sub plot, kind of, had been the key one, I think the book might have been more appealing to me if it had been so.

I can't say if I would look for the next book on purpose. Perhaps if I find the other books with discount at another fair or even at the library... it's entertaining at least, yes.

Grade: 7/10