The Katharina Code

Notes

The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst won the 2019 Petrona Award (an award for the best Scandinavian crime novel). It is the twelfth novel in Horst’s William Wisting series.

The judges described it as “an outstanding and thrilling police procedural” in which “the author takes established tropes – the ‘cold case’, the longstanding suspect, the dogged nature of policework – and combines them in ways that are innovative and fresh.”

Publisher’s Synopsis

Twenty-four years ago Katharina Haugen went missing. All she left behind was her husband Martin and a mysterious string of numbers scribbled on a piece of paper.

Every year on October 9th Chief Inspector William Wisting takes out the files to the case he was never able to solve. Stares at the code he was never able to crack. And visits the husband he was never able to help.

But now Martin Haugen is missing too.

As Wisting prepares to investigate another missing persons case he’s visited by a detective from Oslo. Adrian Stiller is convinced Martin’s involved in another disappearance of a young woman and asks Wisting to close the net around Martin.

But is Wisting playing cat and mouse with a dangerous killer or a grief-stricken husband who cannot lay the past to rest?

Set between the icy streets and dark forests of Norway, The Katharina Code is a heart-stopping story of one man’s obsession with his coldest case.
Atmospheric, gripping and suspenseful; this is Nordic Noir at its very best.

‘Jørn Lier Horst is one of the most brilliantly understated crime novelists writing today’ Joan Smith ~ Sunday Times

‘Up there with the best of the Nordic crime writers’ Marcel Berlin ~ The Times

‘Horst, a former Norwegian police detective, is often compared to Sweden’s Henning Mankell for his moody, sweeping crime dramas’ ~ The New York Times

Read a full review of The Katharina Code by Jørn Lier Horst at Book Reviews to Ponder