Book Review

By Derryll White

Holt, Anne (2012). Blind Goddess.

This is Anne Holt’s first Hanne Wilhelmsen novel. Hanne comes off as a hardworking, intelligent and inspired Detective Inspector in the Oslo police force. She is attractive and considered mysterious by her colleagues, largely because she has a beautiful female partner and she keeps her work and private life separate so that her fellow officers are not privy to that fact.

Anne Holt gives indications in ‘Blind Goddess’ that very little is to be considered sacred. She is hard on lawyers, reporters, politicians and her own police force. She writes with authority because she has spent time employed in all of those segments of Norwegian society and knows them intimately. Her clear views on injustice give the reader pause to think of how these things operate in Canada also.

For a first novel this work is well-written, follows a clear plot line and develops the characters well. It is clearly understood that Hanne Wilhelmsen will be a force to contend with in the future. She is believable, questions her actions and motives but consistently moves through self-doubt to action.

This volume was published in 1993 in Norway and gives clear indications of why Jo Nesbo calls Anne Holt “the godmother of Norwegian crime fiction.” The reader will unquestionably enjoy this new figure in the growing and exciting world of modern crime fiction. Translations of Holt’s previous work are now being released frequently.

****

Excerpts from the novel:

KAREN’S DREAMS – Last night she’d woken at two, drenched in sweat. She’d been sitting in an aeroplane with no floor, and the passengers were having to balance without safety belts on little projections attached to the aircraft walls. After clinging on tight until she was faint from exhaustion, she felt the plane go into a sudden, steep descent towards the ground. She woke as it crashed into a hill. Dreams about plane crashes were supposed to be a sign of lack of control over one’s life. But she didn’t feel that could apply to her.

HANNE’S WORLD – … and she loved her job.

At the same time she feared it. She had begun to notice what was happening to her soul as a result of this daily contact with murder, rape, violence and abuse. It clung to her like a wet sheet. Even though she had got into the way of taking a shower when she came home from work, she sometimes thought the smell of death stuck fast, like the smell of fish guts on the hands of fishermen.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

Article Share