The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup

Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup! Thanks so much to Jenny for organising the tour! Don’t forget to check out the posts by the other wonderful bloggers taking part too!

The Synopsis

THE DEBUT NOVEL FROM THE CREATOR AND WRITER OF THE KILLING

One blustery October morning in a quiet suburb of Copenhagen, the police make a terrible discovery. A young woman is found brutally murdered in a playground and one of her hands is missing. Above her hangs a small doll made of chestnuts.
Ambitious young detective Naia Thulin is assigned the case. Her partner, Mark Hess, is a burned-out investigator who's just been kicked out of Europol. They soon discover a mysterious piece of evidence on the chestnut man - evidence connecting it to a girl who went missing a year earlier and is presumed dead - the daughter of politician Rosa Hartung.
The man who confessed to her murder is behind bars and the case is long since closed.
Soon afterwards, another woman is found murdered, along with another chestnut man. Thulin and Hess suspect that there's a connection between the Hartung case, the murdered women and a killer who is spreading fear throughout the country. But what is it?
Thulin and Hess are racing against the clock, because it's clear that the murderer is on a mission that is far from over . . .

My Review

At around 500 pages, The Chestnut Man is definitely one of the longer reads I’ve enjoyed recently, but let me tell you, it is worth every single one of those pages and more. They’re all completely transfixing and the book is absolutely impossible to put down. In fact, the writing is so engrossing that I didn’t want to look away for a second, even whilst I was reading the most gruesome scenes. Although just a warning, the gory scenes are very unsettling and dark so this book isn’t for the faint hearted!
There are lots of twists and the book is well plotted too and while there’s quite a lot going on, everything comes together really, really well.
While I enjoyed the first half of the book very much, it was at about the half-way point where this book really came into its own for me. I felt that the tension intensified even more and I really didn’t see the ending coming.
Overall, I’m giving The Chestnut Man 4.5 out of 5. It’s unsettling, transfixing and impossible to put down. I’m really looking forward to seeing more from Søren Sveistrup in the future!

The Chestnut Man is out tomorrow! (10th January)

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About the Author

Søren Sveistrup is an internationally acclaimed scriptwriter of the Danish television phenomenon The Killing which won various international awards and sold in more than a hundred countries.
More recently, Sveistrup wrote the screenplay for Jo Nesbø's The Snowman. Sveistrup obtained a Master in Literature and in History from the University of Copenhagen and studied at the Danish Film School. He has won countless prizes, including an Emmy for Nikolaj and Julie and a BAFTA for The Killing.