After living with a pandemic for nearly three years, and almost two years after the first vaccines arrived, most people have returned to normal life, even if it is a different normal than before covid. I don’t worry about going to stores or restaurants unmasked, I hug people I love, and we enjoy large family dinners. However, the worry is always in the back of my mind, manifesting as anxiety in very crowded spaces. It is not difficult to recall the loneliness—for some, isolation—that the pandemic brought.
Katrine Engberg’s new installment
of her Korner and Werner series, “The Sanctuary,” written during covid, deftly captures
the pain of loneliness, not from pandemic lockdown, but from the usual trials
of life.
After Copenhagen police find a
suitcase with half of a body in it—the left half—detective Anette Werner
travels to the tiny Danish island of Bornholm following clues to try to
determine the victim’s identity and find his killer. While working on the case,
she has to contend with missing her husband and toddler daughter, and her
three troublesome border collies.
Anette’s partner, Jeppe Korner,
has been on a leave of absence for months after a painful breakup. He’s on
Bornholm working as a lumberjack, living alone, and socializing only with his
shut-in neighbor. Since he’s already on Bornholm and acquainted with many
locals, Anette asks Jeppe to find out what he can as she sets up her
investigation out of the local police station. This is Anette’s first time to
head up a homicide investigation on her own, and she is both anxious and
missing her partner.
Jeppe’s friend Esther also
arrives on Bornholm, grieving the recent death of her roommate, Gregers. She’s
there working on a biography of a famous anthropologist—Margrethe Dybris—now
deceased. She was invited to stay in the woman’s home by the woman’s daughter,
who is also staying there. Meanwhile, Anette learns that the suitcases that the
two half-corpses (the second one being found a few days after the first) once
belonged to the famed scientist. Anette and her team begin to suspect that the scientist’s
missing son is the victim.
The story alternates between the
present investigation and Dybris’s life, which we learn about through Esther
reading her correspondence. Dybris eschewed marriage, electing to adopt two
children, live modestly, and pursue her work. While her daughter attended
college, married, had a career, her son struggled in school and got into
trouble—pranks and mischief mostly. However, at his eighteenth birthday party,
his pregnant girlfriend died from a mysterious fall. Suspicion fell on the son,
and his life began to spin out of control, leading to drugs and petty crime.
The plot is intriguing as Anette
and her team meticulously and methodical investigate the gruesome murder. There
are plenty of suspects, and readers are treated to some action and suspense at
the climax.
I am very much a fan of Nordic
Noir, which can be quite dark and somewhat disturbing—even disturbed. Readers
who may not be comfortable with the gloomy, unsettling stories in most of the
genre will enjoy this series. Despite their loneliness, grief, and pain, the
characters find connection or reconnection with others by the end of the
book—happy endings for all but the killer.
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