Hunting Game

By: Helene Tursten, Paul Norlen - translator

Narrated by: Stina Nielsen

Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

The first installment in Helene Tursten's brand new series featuring the strong, smart Detective Inspector Embla Nystrom.

From a young age, 28-year-old Embla Nystrom has been plagued by chronic nightmares and racing thoughts. Though she still develops unhealthy fixations and makes rash decisions from time to time, she has learned to channel most of her anxious energy into her position as Detective Inspector in the mobile unit in Gothenburg, Sweden, and into sports.

A talented hunter and prize-winning Nordic welterweight, she is glad to be taking a vacation from her high-stress job to attend the annual moose hunt with her family and friends. But when Embla arrives at her uncle's cabin in rural Dalsland, she sees an unfamiliar face has joined the group: Peter, an enigmatic young divorce. And she isn't the only one to take notice.

One longtime member of the hunt doesn't welcome the presence of an outsider and is quick to point out that with Peter, the group's number reaches 13, a bad omen for the week. Sure enough, a string of unsettling incidents follow, culminating in the disappearance of two men from a neighboring group of hunters. Embla takes charge of the search, and they soon find one of the missing men floating facedown in the nearby lake, his arm tightly wedged between two rocks. Just what she needs on her vacation. With the help of local reinforcements, Embla delves into the dark pasts of her fellow hunters in search of a killer.

©2014 Helene Tursten, 2019 English Translation Paul Norlen (P)2019 Recorded Books

Excellent Read!

The book was very Swedish and very different than American novel. It reminded me in its descriptions of the Sweden I visited. Some of the conversations may have sounded stilted to an English speaker, but it is how my Swedish relatives speak English.

3

This book is fun. Once it gets going it just buzzes with
excitement. If you are looking
for the brooding Scandinavian
detective novel. this is not it.

Pretty solid story.

This was the kind of Nordic noir that doesn’t feel like a true crime podcast.

Surprisingly bad

I love Tursten's Irene Huss series and wanted to like this book, but nothing has happened and there has been little character development by chapter 6! The narrator's style is fairly monotone and although she does try to express some emotion here and there, it was just not working.

Strong stomach needed

The style of writing is slow and boring - not very engaging. Then, when the descriptive scene of the fox that had chewed off most of its leg that was caught in a trap came up, I bailed. There are much better books out there.

A disappointment

I anticipated a great read but was sorely disappointed. A combination of contributors. The translation was stilted and repetitive. The narration is key to a great read and simply didn’t work. She read with a strange and monotonous lilted and continuous cadence that was became difficult to listen to. I believe that this book if read in the original language would have been much better. It had good character development and lots of potential.