The Killing 2

By: David Hewson

Narrated by: Christian Rodska

David Hewson's The Killing 2 is the novelization of the second series of the hit Danish crime drama, The Killing.

It is two years since the notorious Nanna Birk Larsen case.

Two years since Detective Sarah Lund left Copenhagen in disgrace for a remote outpost in northern Denmark.

When the body of a female lawyer is found in macabre circumstances in a military graveyard, there are elements of the crime scene that take Head of Homicide, Lennart Brix, back to an occupied wartime Denmark – a time its countrymen would wish to forget.

Brix knows that Lund is the one person he can rely on to discover the truth. Reluctantly she returns to Copenhagen and becomes intrigued with the facts surrounding the case. As more bodies are found, Lund comes to see a pattern and she realizes that the identity of the killer will be known once the truth behind a more recent wartime mission is finally revealed . . .

With different narrator could have been five stars

I had to restart dozens of times to get accustomed to speed of narration. Foreign names usually are not a problem for me but this is read so fast it ended up being gobbledygook. By the second part, my ear had adapted somewhat and was able to finally distinguish the different characters. Very difficult listening! But good enough story to soldier on in spite of narrator….

He writes stories about people who could be real.

Would you listen to The Killing 2 again? Why?

I might listen to Killing 2 again. I've listened to parts of it 2 or 3 times already. The author packs a lot of stuff in and I missed parts of it on the first pass. His characters are believable. I know we should engage in the willing suspension of disbelief when we read/listen to fiction but sometimes the characters are so unbelievable that it hurts. The plot is very interesting. It is a story that I would listen to with my son or my sisters with. The character dialog has the "F" words but that doesn't bother me personally. They sometimes use phrases like "Oh, for "f" sake" which I find amusing. There were one or two brief sex events that I would fast forward through if I were listening to it with my son or sisters. But the brief sex scenes/scene were part of the character development. The author didn't set the main evil characters up to be Christian which is refreshing. The author wasn't preachy about social issues.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

The plot kept me on the edge of my seat after I got into the story. The way it started I thought it would be your typical detective story and I was tuning it out until I realized it wasn't it. I got the story because I was very impressed with the author's work as a co-author in "Macbeth The Novel." The story seemed plausible and the characters seemed real and I just kept listening to more and more as the story unfolded.

What does Christian Rodska bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narrator was very good. He was very understandable and didn't have any voice traits that took my mind off of the story.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

There was one moment that particularly moved me but I don't want to give away the story by describing it.

Brilliantly done

Very exciting. I've seen all of the original Danish TV productions (and they are riveting) and yet David Hewson does such a brilliant job that I thoroughly enjoyed this amazing novelization. By the way, Audible also offers the third and last series (again written by Hewson), but not the first book - that situation needs to be addressed without further delay! I should also mention Christian Rodska's excellent narration (including his crusty old men vocalizations; he would make a great Rumpole!).

1

Author gets one point for the long
book. It is awful! Narrator sounds as if he might be reading
names in an old phonebook. it sounds like he repeats the same line several hundred tines. author's fault, not his. what a boring book.