by Peter Høeg [translated from the Danish by F. David]
Denmark, 1992
If you just finished season one of the juicy Danish TV series The Killing and are now looking for another Copenhagen-centered crime drama to keep your genre buzz going, this novel might do the trick in a pinch. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. "Readable" but increasingly implausible crime caper that essentially prostitutes its complex, anti-social title character--a bicultural 37-year old Inuit/Danish loner prone to making trenchant observations about how Greenlandic culture fits in with the post-colonial West in general and post-colonial Denmark in particular--by pimping her out in the service of a not particularly happening storyline which begins with a potentially interesting investigation into a neighbor child's mysterious death and ends with a laughable adventure involving meteorites, otherworldly parasites and mad scientist Bond villains. Noted hack/annoying overactor Tom Wilkinson appears in the late '90s film adaptation of Smilla's Sense of Snow, so it's possible that the movie--now long forgotten by me--is even more of a mixed bag than the book. In other news, spoiler alert! (www.randomhouse.co.uk)
Peter Høeg
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