Haven’t read anything quite like this, or, should I say, "quite like these". Håkan Nesser's, The Darkest Day is a bit of a mashup. Starts off every bit the novelization of one of those dysfunctional-family, fraught-get-together movies you can’t get away from over the Holidays. The love-hate dichotomy is on full display. Angst abounds along with the usual mix of self-loathing, morbid fantasies, and overindulgence. There is humor, albeit in that minor key that is so typically Swedish, and the char...

”Life is a meatball.”An IKEA meatball?The setting: A family reunion. A joint 40th and 65th (“105th”) Birthday celebration. The home of Karl-Erik & Rosemarie Hermansson.The attendees:The adult children of Karl-Erik & Rosemarie: Ebba, Robert and Kristina. Along with son in laws Leif and Jakob, and grandsons Henrik and Kristoffer.The location: Kymlinge. A small town in Sweden.The season: Winter. The night of December 19.The problem: The family scandal...The atmosphere: Tense.Karl-Erik Hermansson an...

A weird start to a new series. 200 pages before the detective arrives on the scene. 200 pages of a dysfunctional family getting together for a birthday celebration. Two go missing on successive nights and it if fairly obvious what happened. A saccharine story of stereotypical middle class people.

Karl-Erik Hermansson and his daughter Ebba are celebrating their 65th and 40th birthdays with the one big family get together. The party is to take place in the quiet little Swedish town of Kymlinge before Karl-Erik and his wife Rosemarie pull up sticks and move to Spain. Both have recently retired from teaching.Dark impressions are formed almost immediately when in the very first chapter Rosemarie starts having thoughts about killing her husband or herself. It seems one of them must die. Howeve...

Loved this addictive story

The Darkest Day – Another Classic from the Swedish MasterThe Darkest Day, is the latest twisted thriller from the Swedish Noir Master, Håkan Nesser and once again he proves to at the top of his genre. This is a multi-layered thriller that touches subjects of mental health and close family relationships and things are not often what they seem.Karl-Erik and his wife Rosemarie Hermansson have recently retired from teaching and Karl-Erik, a dominant and overbearing husband has decided that in the sp...

Pretty good book about the destructiveness of families. A couple of retired teachers invited their children to visit them in their small city. The visit ended with two murders - one of a son who embarrassed himself on national TV and was desperate enough to accept an invitation of an unknown woman - a woman who was crazy and who held a grudge against him. The other of a boy who was embarrassed enough by the notion of his parents discovering he was a homosexual that he agreed to sleep with his au...

I've read some of the previous Nesser series, but really like Barbarotti, this other detective. A different style - Colombo meets Christie - makes for a refreshing read.

NOT a Barbarotti book at all! What a strange way to introduce a CHARACTER-Based mystery/police series! The Darkest Day is a strange mystery in that the book focuses more upon what is going on psychologically within the Hermansson family to solve the mysteries (two murders within their family within two days in holidays before Christmas) than upon Police Inspector Barbarotti's attempts to solve the mysteries. This book touched me deeply even though I did not care much for any of the members of th...

Just like with Tana French, this was quite different than what I’d expect from a supposed crime novel. It’s really not a whodunit in a traditional sense (that part is obvious pretty early on) but rather a family drama, a story of a pretty screwed up family to begin with that gets torn up entirely by a double disappearance/murder on the darkest days of already grim Swedish winter. “So the brainteaser ran as follows: We have two individuals, an uncle and a nephew. Along with a number of other re...

The Darkest Day, or Man Without Dog in Swedish, is the first book in Hakan Nesser's Inspector Barbarotti series. It's the story of a family reunion gone wrong, and a persistent detective's efforts to unravel a knotted mystery.Buddy read with Nat, Nataliya, Mark, and Neale. Thanks for the great buddy read, it was fun!Some reviewers have complained that The Darkest Day takes too long to introduce the crime, and protagonist. Indeed, it's the first crime novel I've read where act one is devoid of bo...

As several people mentioned it is rather slow starting. However, once I thought about it I had a question. Is the book slow starting or have we come to expect instant action. Books used to be slower reads and build, (Rebecca, Dr. Zhivago, Jane Eyre, Gone With the wind, etc.) but now readers expect drama in the first few pages. I'm not sure of the answer, just a question that entered my mindAnyway the first 100 or so pages is learning about the Hermansson family The wife, Rosemarie, does seem to

To fans of Nordic noir, Hakan Nesser needs no introduction. As a crime author he is right up there with the very best. The Darkest Day scored as well as the top books that I finished in 2017, and was the last one, taking my total to 130 on the last day of an excellent year for reading.The story is based in the small Swediah town of Kymlinge where the Hermansson family have gathered to celebrate father Karl-Erik and daughter Ebba's 65th and 40th birthdays respectively. The family is overshadowed

The Darkest Day by Hakan Nesser is a totally rivetting read. Thanks to Nattington for inviting me and William for running this group read. I am so thankful, as you’ve introduced me to a terrific author. An author I have already created a shelf for no-less, as I am certain this won’t be my last Hakan Nesser experience.The story revolves around a Hermansson family gathering in a small Swedish town to celebrate the birthdays of Dad, the boorish Karl-Erik, and the favourite daughter, uber bossy Ebba...

Wow - What happened here? After finishing several other thriller series, I was so looking forward to being able to start with the Barbarotti series. On top - a scandinavian author.. Wasn't he a bestseller? Could it become any better? Probably not - but I hadn't taken into account it could become a whole lot worse than my expectations and hopes aswell. Briefly: the first 50 pages are that boring that I wanted to give up. Literally nothing happens, only a stereotypical description of a whole set o...

A terrific Nordic crime thriller with a little less gore than usual. Karl-Erik and his wife have just retired from their teaching jobs and are moving to Spain to get away from the scandal their son Robert created on a reality television show. Before they leave, they are having a last birthday celebration for Karl-Erik. But just before the festivities end, two members of the family have vanished; Detective Barbarotti investigates this mysterious disappearance and discovers a family with a lot of

(I read this book in Danish, but I'm reviewing in English. The book is available in English, but not listed on Goodreads yet. See nesser.se for the names of the English version of the Barbarotti series.)I did not expect to start a 458-page book on a Friday evening and finish it on a Sunday morning. By the time I was about 25% of the way through the book, I was hooked and just wanted to sit and read it straight to the end. I credit Nesser's style of writing for all that. I look forward to the nex...

This was just dull. I was intrigued by the character/situation setup that took up most of the first 150 pages, but as soon as Inspector Barbarotti came in, it might as well have ground to a halt. Because in reality, he pretty much brought nothing to the table. His quirks weren't interesting, he never seemed to have a good handle on what was going on, and without him the story would probably have ended up exactly the same. What a waste of an interesting subject. Add to that the fact that most act...

This Swedish crime novel situates its dark deeds within a family setting. Three generations come together to celebrate the double midwinter birthdays of Karl-Erik, who will be turning 65, and his eldest daughter Ebba, 40. In disgrace is Ebba’s brother Robert, who has committed a highly embarrassing and newsworthy act while taking part in a reality television show, while at the other end of the spectrum we find Ebba’s son Henrik, always a winner and now a university student for whom great things

The Darkest Day (The Barbarotti Series Book 1) by Håkan Nesser and Sarah Death...The Darkest Day is the first novel in the five part Inspector Barbarotti series from renowned Swedish crime author Håkan Nesser.Waited for years for a translation of this series to finally pop up!After the Van Veteran series, books and tv series, this first of five is a very, very peculiar and different read! Takes ages to get going as the reader is introduced to a rather dysfunctional family and their children and