WOUNDS

The Reactive Criminal Investigations Department in Odense, Denmark, takes on a set of disturbingly mirrored mysteries.

First comes the murder of Jørgen Andersen, a retiree who had a restraining order keeping him from approaching taxidermist Monika le Fevre that was rendered moot by whomever asphyxiated him. Good riddance—except for the scratchy, stitched-up wounds dotting his body, which eerily echo similar wounds in the unsolved murder of financial manager Jan Hansen. Next comes the vanishing of animal-rights activist Zenia Dybbøl, the 17-year-old daughter of Chief Constable Margrethe Dybbøl—a disappearance hard on the heels of the case of Amalie Vedel, another teenager gone AWOL from her parents’ home. Since Margrethe is so upset that she can barely bring herself to acknowledge Zenia’s absence, she’s not the best person to head the investigation. So under the supervision of DCI Liam Stark, Inspector Dea Torp reaches out to Inspector Lene Erikson, the rival who’s already heading the inquiry concerning Amalie, in hopes of figuring out what the two young women might have in common. The deeper they dig, the more likely it seems that “everything had started with [Monika’s] exhibition” of domestic pets treated like laboratory animals, which aroused more than one kind of outrage, triggering disagreements about animal rights and abuses that overflowed the debate stage and generated a series of violent and vengeful crimes. Unlike in the authors’ last collaboration (Dissolved, 2023), the perpetrator is so well-hidden that fans will probably forgive some laborious exposition and a truly epic wind-down after the mask comes loose.

Strong stuff for animal lovers prepared to be shocked by abusive behavior whose targets extend to humans.