IN DUST AND ASHES Hanne Wilhelmsen, Book 10

Kate Reading's performance is elegant, cool, and beautifully responsive to the text in this tenth and apparently last outing for Hanne Wilhelmsen, a cranky Norwegian master detective in a wheelchair who must investigate remotely via an able-bodied partner, as Nero Wolfe or Perry Mason did. The fact that Hanne is married to a woman and has a child adds complexity to her situation, as does the balky personality of her partner, detective Henrik Holme. There's no need to have read earlier installments to understand or relish the plot, in which apparently unrelated tragedies, the long ago death of a child, the suicide of a lesbian right-wing blogger, and the kidnapping of a lottery winner's grandchild, converge for a nerve-shredding climax. Nordic noir at its best. B.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2018]