The Hunting Dogs

A Disquietingly Credible Norwegian Police Procedural

The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst won the Norwegian Riverton Prize in 2012. The crime writers of Scandinavia awarded it their coveted Glass Key the following year.

Synopsis

Seventeen years ago, Rudolf Haglund was convicted for abducting the daughter of a fashion mogul, twenty-year-old Cecilia Linde. Judges have released Haglund from jail following an appeal. His legal council proved that somebody had fabricated the forensic evidence used to convict him.

Detective William Wisting’s superiors have suspended him for his role in the case. He is under investigation for planting the fake evidence that led to Haglund’s imprisonment. The media are baying for blood.

Meanwhile, an unknown assailant assaults Wisting’s daughter, an investigative journalist, whilst she probes the murder of a local man.

If Wisting hasn’t got enough on his plate, a second girl has disappeared.

Review

Wisting is unusual for a (fictional) detective. He doesn’t drink excessively, has a normal paternal relationship with his daughter, and has few skeletons in his cupboard. Horst — an ex-policeman — wanted to create a realistic representation of Norwegian policing. Whilst the resulting plot lacks cliffhangers and nail-biting drama, it wins as a rational and believable novel. This lack of histrionics makes the story’s thrills all the more suspenseful because of their credibility.

William Wisting is, without a doubt, a good cop; he is no Dirty Harry. The accusation of the fabrication of evidence and a fixation on a single possible culprit is a palpable slur on his character. It is also a shrewd observation of the realities of police work.

You find something that points in a certain direction and from there all further investigations are geared towards it. All other perspectives are neglected in the hope of finding out as quickly as possible. Everyone gets tunnel vision and looks for new information to support the central hypothesis.

What was initially an open-ended investigation is shockingly focused on one thing, one person. A broad-based investigation turns into a boiler run. ~Jørn Lier Horst (Krimi Forum)

Horst neatly mirrors this obsession with a single culprit in the original abduction case and the internal investigation into Wisting.

Horst enhances his tale by overlaying the police enquiry with the investigation by Wisting’s daughter. The journalists’ pursuit of a potential offender is a first-class set piece. It is easy to understand how Horst’s fans rate him alongside Henning Mankell.

The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst is the eighth of his William Wisting series, though when it was first translated, only the third to be available in English. Consequently, the book has a short preface that recounts Wisting’s history, parts of which play second fiddle to the main storyline. The only failing of the novel is that, as a stand-alone read, there is a slightly disturbing feeling that you are last to the party, though this doesn’t detract from the plot.

For lovers of Scandinavian police procedurals, William Wisting may be Kurt Wallander‘s successor.

Excerpt

Crows flapped like dark shadows across the flanks of brown ploughed fields. He pulled into the side at a sign pointing along the gravel track to the left, Gumserød farm, and halted where the witness on the tractor had said the white Opel had been parked. 

The young woman whose photograph Nils Hammer had shown him was in his mind, the one with the yellow bow in her hair. Linnea Kaupang. Somewhere, her despairing parents were waiting. Hammer knew what had to be done, but Wisting felt bad, not being able to contribute.

He forced himself to concentrate on seventeen years back in time. 

Almost all murders in Norway are solved, which brings its own pressure. He was not the only one who had felt the Cecilia case heavy on his shoulders. When Rudolf Haglund appeared it felt as if a burden had been lifted from them all and Wisting experienced the satisfying feeling of success: of finally making a breakthrough, having a name, a suspect on whom the investigation could focus. But all they had achieved was the construction of their own version. They had invested their professional pride into drawing a convincing picture of Rudolf Haglund as a murderer. 

Wisting had seen this before. Pressure and the demand to solve a case could lead to rash conclusions. The investigators formed their own impressions of how elements hung together based on the first evidence. After they drew their conclusions, an unconscious process had been set in motion by which they sought confirmation. They had developed tunnel vision and sought evidence to fit their theory, become like hunting dogs following the scent. All sidetracks and possible distractions were passed over. It was Rudolf Haglund they were after, and they circled round him.

The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst