The Man Who Watched Women By Hjorth & Rosenfeldt

Though I love reading, I have put reading on the back burner for more than seven months. I picked up The Man Who Watched Women by Michael Hjorth and Hans Rosenfeldt a couple of days ago and was so engrossed by it that I was able to finish the 500 over pages book within a couple of days. It has become the first book that I have read in 2023. And I immediately started reading another thriller Merciless by Mary Burton.

Written by Michael Hjorth and Hans Rosenfeldt and translated by Marlaine Delargy , The Man Who Watched Women is a very suspenseful serial killer thriller with a fluid plot development that will keep you hooked till the final page.

Stockholm, beset by a summer heatwave,  has been hit by a series of brutal killings of young women. The national police homicide unit, Riksmord, realises early on that the ritualistic killings are copycat crimes that mirror perfectly the macabre handiwork of Edward Hinde, who has been locked up 15 years ago with the help of expert psychological profiler Sebastian Bergen. It appears that Hinde is somehow orchestrating the murders from the inside but that does not seem possible as he is entirely cut off from the outside world and is not allowed internet access in the prison.

Chief Inspector Torkel Höglund considers bringing back Sebastian Bergman, who was instrumental in nabbing Hinde, but Bergman is a notoriously difficult maverick. Bergman is a troubled person who is now  a shadow of his former self. He loses himself in alcohol and one-night stands. He harbours a burden of deep grief from losing his wife and child in a tsunami. It is no surprise when he obsessively stalks his newfound daughter, born out of his womanising, who happens to be Vanja Lithner, an accomplished detective herself and member of Riksmord.

Bergen recruits another former member of the team, ex-cop Trolle Hermansson – a corrupt, muckraker with a nose for dirt – to dig up information to discredit his daughter’s adoptive father.
As Bergman struggles with his personal life, he attends a therapy session with counselor Stefan. A woman he meets at the session, whom he sleeps with that night, winds up as the next murder victim the following morning.

Faced with no progress in their investigation, the homicide team reluctantly recruits Bergman to help nab the killer before he strikes again.

Upon rejoining the crime squad,Bergman realises the copycat murderer is not only being controlled by Hinde, but that all the murdered women had slept with Bergman himself. Hinde, the master manipulator, wraps the new governor of Lövhaga Prison around his finger and uses him as a tool for his own master plan.

Bergman is forced to seek out all the women he’s been with in the past but that is not easy as he has slept with so many women, many of whom he cannot remember. Although he is finally back in his element, he faces an inevitable showdown with Hinde, who has escaped from prison.

When Bergman realises that the escaped Hinde is targeting his daughter Vanja as his victim to seek revenge against Bergman, Bergman plunges into an all-or-nothing gambit to protect Vanja who does not know Bergman is his real father and who detests Bergman immensely.

I highly recommend this thriller!