Many thanks to Muswell Press and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the advance copy of "The Woman in the Wall" for review. This book is the fifth in the Jensen series of mysteries featuring Copenhagen reporter sleuth Jensen and her motley crew of helpers.
What do I look for in a great mystery? Intriguing and multifaceted characters that I care about, unforeseen plot twists, a dash of misdirection, and an ever-increasing level of suspense. "The Woman in the Wall' satisfies on all fronts. I haven't read the previous books (yet) but Amsinck provides enough background that I always felt well situated in the story.
On the first day of May in Copenhagen, a burst pipe in an apartment building leads to a gruesome find: a mummified body inside a wall. Detective Inspector Henrik Jungersen is called to the scene and is looking forward to a new case. Due to some thorny personal issues, Jungersen derives great satisfaction from his job; it's the only part of his life where he feels in control.
When Jungersen arrives, Detective Sergeant Mark Søndergreen leads him to the body. The pathologist concludes that it's a young woman who was pregnant at the time of her death. Jungersen muses about releasing some information to the press before the juicy story leaks. And when Jungersen thinks about the press, he's really thinking about Jensen (known only by her last name). She's an investigative reporter for daily newspaper Dagbladet who's currently on maternity leave. Her daughter is "an unintended consequence of her failed relationship with a homicidal nutjob." In other words, the father is a murderer who tried to kill her and is in jail awaiting trial. The married Jungersen has some complicated feelings about Jensen, and their interconnection provides a welcome emotional subtext to the story.
The apartment where the body was found belongs to a man named Andreas Lund. Based on the forensic evidence, the body was walled up after Lund had lived there for a few years. He's been out of town but when he returns, claims to be shocked by the news. The police are suspicious; how could someone break through a wall, hide a body, and patch it up without Lund knowing about it? The body is so decomposed that clues will be hard to find, which presents Jungersen and his team with a tricky challenge.
Detective Sergeant Sarah Funder, who reports to Jungersen, comes to him to discuss a proposal she submitted called "Operation Polaris". Working on her own time, Funder has a theory that a string of particularly violent rapes across the country over the past 30 years could have been committed by the same person. She's asking for six months to re-interview people and review the case files to see if she can find more evidence. The team is stretched thin and Jungersen doubts whether he can get approval from his boss, Liv, but promises to try.
The story turns to Jensen. While out shopping with her daughter Ea, Jensen sees the latest Dagbladet with the headline "REMAINS OF A WOMAN FOUND BEHIND WALL IN BREDGADE". She finds the headline irresistible and the story sparks her curiosity, but she's on leave and the story belongs to someone else. No matter; Jensen's due for some excitement of her own. She sees a young woman running toward her and Ea on the path, blood coming from her forehead, screaming for help. Her name is Karo, and Jensen comes to her rescue by taking her back to her apartment.
Karo tells Jensen that she's living with an abusive boyfriend who doesn't yet know she's pregnant, a situation that Jensen empathizes with due to her own daughter's paternity. It's this commonality that prompts the typically cynical Jensen to offer refuge to Karo. She even lets Karo stay in her apartment and babysit Ea while she's working. It's a leap of faith she comes to regret.
While on leave, Jensen's been working on a mystery of her own. Her mother Marion, an artist living in North Jutland, has never told her who her father is. This has driven a wedge between the two because Jensen is fiercely curious about his identity. Recently, Valde Brix, a well-known Danish author, has contacted her, claiming to be her father. Although her mother flat out denies it, Jensen agrees to meet Brix so she can ask him for a DNA sample. He lives in a ritzy part of the city with a wife and three kids.
After some chitchat, Brix tells her that he's being stalked by someone who threatens to reveal him as a rapist. If he doesn't publicly confess in a week, they will out him. He wants her to find out who the stalker is. Jensen is torn; did he contact her as a father, or a desperate man who needs a professional investigator? In a quid pro quo, she agrees to help him out if he gives her a DNA sample so she can do a paternity test. To start, she asks him for a list of women he's slept with. Much to her dismay, the list shows that Brix is a prolific adulterer. He's been with so many women he can't even remember all of their names. Nevertheless, he swears that all the affairs were consensual. I shared Jensen's doubts about this claim.
The cases begin to link up. Valde Brix's "literary agent, man Friday, and fixer", Andreas Lund, is the man behind whose wall the dead body was found. Brix is his only client. Many years ago, Brix lived with Lund and another woman in that very same apartment. The woman's name sounds familiar to Jungersen; the roommate was Jensen's mother Marion. The murder investigation now includes both Brix and Lund as suspects, and Jensen has strong links to the case.
Detective Inspector Jungersen and his team haven't gotten anywhere with the body found in the wall when he's called to another crime scene. A woman named Jane Dahl-Thomsen has been brutally beaten, raped, and left for dead in a public park. She can't speak yet and the team can't find any clues at the scene. When Detective Funder hears about the case, she's convinced the details match the other attacks she's been tracking for Operation Polaris. If she's right, the serial rapist she's been tracking has been hunting women down for years.
When the police look into Dahl-Thomsen's life, they discover that she was a sales rep for one of Denmark's largest publishers. Guess who the company's most famous and lucrative author is? All of the cases point to Valde Brix's involvement, if not his outright guilt. A third woman is found, also brutally attacked. When Jensen cross-references the list of affairs Brix gave her with the names of women who were attacked, there are too many matches for it to be a coincidence.
Jensen's becomes consumed with the thought that the man who claims to be her father could be a serial killer. Her fiercely protective nature is otherwise preoccupied, which puts her and Ea in great danger. As far as the police, Jurgensen and team are stymied by the lack of physical clues while under tremendous pressure to find the killer. As the bodies pile up and the cases converge, Amsinck intensifies the suspense until I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
The intricacies of the plot make "The Woman in the Wall" a thrilling and enjoyable read. In the last third of the book Amsinck's talent for misdirection really shines. Her success also lies in making the main characters so relatable that I became emotionally invested in their fates. I found myself suspecting one person, then another, until I realized I was on the wrong path altogether! Reading and reviewing this book has prompted me to add the other mysteries in the series to my "To Be Read" list. If you enjoy "The Woman in the Wall", I predict that you'll do the same.
Heidi Amsinck received the Danish Criminal Academy’s Debut Award for My Name is Jensen (2021), the first book in a new series featuring Copenhagen reporter sleuth Jensen and her motley crew of helpers. The second Jensen novel, The Girl in Photo, was published in 2022, with the third, Back from the Dead, out in 2024, followed by Out of the Dark in 2025. The fifth in the series is The Woman in the Wall. Her protagonist, Jensen, recently featured in a Book at Bedtime special, Jensen: The Bellevue Poltergeist, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2024.
Amsinck spent many years covering Britain for the Danish press, including a spell as London Correspondent for the broadsheet daily Jyllands-Posten. She wrote numerous short stories for BBC Radio 4, such as the three-story sets Danish Noir, Copenhagen Confidential and Copenhagen Curios, all produced by Sweet Talk and featuring in her collection Last Train to Helsingør (2018).
Please buy/order "The Woman in the Wall" from your local independent bookstore, or go to bookshop.org and order there. They now offer ebooks as well.
For audiobooks, go to libro.fm.
