The undertaker's daughter

Sara Blædel

Book - 2018

"Already widowed by the age of forty, Ilka Nichols Jensen, a school portrait photographer, leads a modest, regimented, and uneventful life in Copenhagen. Until unexpected news rocks her quiet existence: Her father--who walked out suddenly and inexplicably on the family more than three decades ago--has died. And he's left her something in his will: his funeral home. In Racine, Wisconsin. Clinging to this last shred of communication from the father she hasn't heard from since childhood, Ilka makes an uncharacteristically rash decision and jumps on a plane to Wisconsin. Desperate for a connection to the parent she never really knew, she plans to visit the funeral home and go through her father's things--hoping for some insi...ght into his new life in America--before preparing the business for a quick sale. But when she stumbles on an unsolved murder, and a killer who seems to still be very much alive, the undertaker's daughter realizes she might be in over her head ..."--

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Subjects
Genres
Thrillers (Fiction)
Suspense fiction
Published
New York : Grand Central Publishing 2018.
Language
English
Danish
Main Author
Sara Blædel (author)
Other Authors
Mark Kline, 1952- (translator)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
326 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781455541119
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

INSPECTOR IAN RUTLEDGE haunts Charles Todd's mysteries like an unhappy ghost, wandering among the living but more at home among the dead. In THE GATEKEEPER (Morrow, $26.99), the shellshocked veteran of World War I is investigating a murder in Wolfpit, a village that once served as a holding pen for trapped wolves. But by the winter of 1920 the place has evolved into a comfortable cage for trapped souls, notably the wounded veterans and grieving widows who make up much of its shrunken population. "This wasn't the usual village murder," Rutledge notes when Stephen Wentworth, the proprietor of the town's bookstore, is shot dead by a stranger who accosts him as he's driving along a country road in the dark of night. According to a note left in the inspector's hotel room, "Stephen Wentworth is a murderer. He got what he deserved." Not even his mother has a kind word for him. "He was always a disappointing child," she tells Rutledge, "and he grew into a disappointing man." Every decent detective feels obliged to bring about justice on behalf of a murder victim. Here Rutledge is honor bound to restore the good name of a young man who may not have been guilty of the homicide that, even in death, hangs over his head. And the only way to do that is to find the real killer. As always in this singular series, the mother-and-son team who write as Charles Todd position their mystery within the broader context of a nation frozen in postwar depression. Viewing the world through Rutledge's eyes, we can't help noticing that there are very few able-bodied young men left in the village. Even young women are in scant supply, many having been lured to the cities by the well-paid work offered by factories in need of laborers while the men were off on the battlefield. The melancholy tone that distinguishes the Rutledge series is a reminder that war never ends for the families and friends of lost loved ones. It just retreats into the shadows. ELVIS cole is the kind of private detective a woman would turn to if her teenage son started wearing a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that retails for $40,000. In THE WANTED (Putnam, $28), Robert Crais's superior specimen of tough-guy hero rides to the rescue of a single mother, Devon Connor, who's worried sick about 17-year-old Tyson. Cole quickly determines that the kid is running with some "crash-and-burn children" whose wealthy Los Angeles parents have no idea that their offspring have committed a string of burglaries and are selling the goods at the Venice flea market. Unfortunately, a laptop they've stolen is worth money and human lives to someone who has sent a pair of hired guns to retrieve it. After they murder one of the young thieves, the others become Cole's headache. Crais writes choice dialogue for those hired guns, Harvey and Stemms. In fact, their heated discussion about the shower scene in "Psycho" is so entertaining you wish they didn't have to go the way of all secondary characters in hard-boiled crime novels and, you know, die. PARADISE, ACCORDING to Frank Tallis in MEPHISTO WALTZ (Pegasus, $25.95), is an exact replica of early-20th-century Vienna, "where celestial coffeehouses lined the principal approaches to the Pearly Gates." That would make angels of the psychoanalyst Dr. Max Liebermann and his friend, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt, the brainy sleuths in Tallis's erudite series of historical mysteries. He seizes on the singular appeal of this period, from the luscious apfelschmarrn and topfenstrudel served in the fashionable cafes to the lively intellectual discourse of their learned patrons. ("The Viennese were so highly strung, so nervous, even symphonies got them agitated.") A disfigured corpse discovered in the workshop of a derelict piano manufacturer leads to revelations about the city's dark side, an underworld of anarchists plotting to assassinate Emperor Franz Josef. A woman who has built a bombmaking factory in her basement makes a memorable appearance, as does Dr. Sigmund Freud, who advances the argument that "a political party is just another form of crowd" and politicians are dangerous because they're "buoyed up by the people who stand behind them, carried forward on waves of feeling." ILKA JENSEN IS nothing if not resourceful. In the first novel in Sara Blaedel's new series, THE UNDERTAKER'S DAUGHTER (Grand Central, $26), Jensen leaves her home in Copenhagen and flies to Racine, Wis., after her estranged father leaves her an undertaking business in his will. On her first day, Jensen must add pet dogs to the plans for a funeral service, pick up a severely mangled body at the morgue ("Bring along some extra plastic. It sounds like it might be a mess") and come up with $60,000 to keep the I.R.S. from freezing her assets. To make this new life complete, the police inform her that one of the bodies in her freezer is probably a murderer. Most amateur sleuths hold down professional jobs to support their unofficial detective work. Blaedel has come up with an especially challenging occupation for Jensen, but this 6-foot-tall Viking goddess is strong enough to carry it all by herself. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 4, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review

Ilka Jensen travels from Copenhagen to Racine, Wisconsin, to settle her estranged father's estate and satisfy her curiosity about his American life. In a disappointing turn, Ilka inherits her father's funeral home along with its crippling mountain of debt. Determined to keep the business afloat until it sells, Ilka dives in, handling mortuary pickups and proving surprisingly competent at planning funerals. It's going pretty well until their latest pro bono burial revives a notorious cold case. Mike Gilbert, the deceased, had fled Racine after becoming a suspect in his girlfriend's murder. When Gilbert's body is abused during a bizarre break-in at the funeral home, police discover that the matriarch of a rival funeral home had paid Gilbert to leave town. If Gilbert was guilty, why would Phyllis Oldham pay him to flee? And why did he return? Resourceful Ilka is positioned perfectly for the mystery to unravel around her. This series debut has a lighter, cozier touch than the author's award-winning Louise Rick procedural series, set in Denmark; fortunately, Blaedel's astute storytelling also works outside the Nordic gloom.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

When Ilka Nilsen Jensen, the heroine of Danish author Blaedel's disappointing standalone, learns of the death of her father, Paul, who abandoned her and her mother when she was seven, she leaves her school photography business in Copenhagen to settle his affairs in Racine, Wis. In Racine, Ilka discovers that she has inherited Paul's debt-plagued funeral home, and she decides to run it for the time being. Along with Artie Sorvino, the morgue assistant and artist who helps make the dead presentable, and Sister Eileen, a predictably taciturn nun with nebulous duties, the funeral home limps along, as does the weak plot. The appearance of the body of a local man who has been missing for years, long believed to have murdered his girlfriend when they were teenagers, breathes a little bit of life into the story. Unfortunately, Ilka is much less engaging than Blaedel's complex series heroine, Louise Rick (The Lost Woman, etc.), and her relationship with her estranged father is the stuff of half-remembered memories. Hopefully, Blaedel will return to form next time. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Ilka Jensen, a school portrait photographer in Copenhagen, is shocked when her estranged father dies and leaves her his funeral home in Racine, WI. Hoping to understand the parent who abandoned his family 30 years before, she heads to Wisconsin. She soon learns that the business is days away from bankruptcy, suppliers have stopped delivering, a national chain is threatening a hostile takeover, and as heir, she is solely responsible. Ilka and her staff are thrown into the middle of an unsolved murder case when the body of an unknown man is brought to her. It turns out to be the man who left town after being accused of killing his girlfriend 12 years earlier. As strange events begin to occur at the funeral parlor, it's clear there is more to the cold case than the police initially thought. VERDICT The first volume in Blaedel's (The Forgotten Girls; The Killing Forest) new series seems at times more setup than stand-alone story. While Nordic noir is often dark and dreary, this is a lighter entry that doesn't lose any of the suspense that marks the genre. A great start for mystery lovers looking to dip a toe into international intrigue. [See Prepub Alert, 8/13/17.]-Portia Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A Danish woman desperate to find out more about her father's past receives an unexpected inheritance in Blaedel's (The Killing Forest, 2017, etc.) mystery.When Ilka's long-estranged father dies, she leaves Denmark for Racine, Wisconsin, where he lived. She assumes that this is her last opportunity to find answers about why he left her and her mother when she was only 7 years old. Her memories are mostly a confused jumble of times at the racetrack, for her father loved horses and gambling. In Racine, surprises await: her father has left her his businessa funeral homeand he has left that business in crushing debt. Ilka has only a few days to decide whether she wants to do the logical thing and sell the business to another local mortuary or do the seemingly crazy thing and try to keep the place running. Her only support comes from Artie, the reconstruction artist, and Sister Eileen, a grumpy nun, both of whom seem to oppose the sale to the Golden Slumbers Funeral Home. And then there are the mysterious break-ins and body desecrations directed toward a dead man with a checkered past. The murder of a young woman 12 years ago still haunts Racine's collective memory, and it's possible that Ilka has walked right into danger. The premise of this novel is undeniably intriguing, and Ilka's physical and emotional awkwardness make her a likable character. But the writing is somewhat bland, and the mystery is not particularly well-developed. Part of this issue may stem from Kline's translation. Ilka's baffled musings on the American business of death interestingly emphasize flaws in the system from a European viewpoint, but the novel chiefly exists to entertain.The appealing weirdness of the setting does little to build effective atmosphere. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.