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Although Nordic crime fiction has gained an incredible prominence on the world stage, Denmark has never been at the forefront of this movement. Among countless others in the field, Sweden has its Henning Mankell, Stig Larsson, and Sjöwall & Wahlöö; Norway its Jo Nesbø and Helene Tursten; Finland its Matti Yrjänä Joensuu; and Iceland its Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdadottir, but contemporary crime authors from Denmark have yet to gain renown as part of this current wave. One could speculate, however, that Danish authors are having their moment now: 2011 has seen the publication of English translations of THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE by writing team Lene Kaaerbøl and Agnete Friis, THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES by Jussi Adler-Olsen, and CALL ME PRINCESS by Denmark's "crime queen" Sara Blaedel. CALL ME PRINCESS finds its tough, sailor-swearing, workaholic police detective Louise Rick tracking down a brutal serial rapist who targets women he meets through online dating websites. Having gained his victim's trust after weeks of email correspondence, the rapist sets up what appear to be a perfectly chivalrous date. After a long, fancy dinner, the perpetrator returns to the woman's apartment, where he then subjects her to mental and physical abuse. When CALL ME PRINCESS opens, one of this man's victims has reported the crime. Just a few weeks later, the perpetrator murders his second victim, making it even more pressing that Louise and her colleagues make an arrest. The story itself clips along at a reasonable speed, interspersing scenes of the ongoing investigation and its myriad dead-ends with short interludes in Louise's daily life—her close friendship with ambitious crime beat reporter Camilla Lind (who ever so conveniently has started dating someone she met online) and Louise's failing relationship with her live-in boyfriend Peter. The dialog sounds a bit tinny and the characters are by-and-large rather flat, but as Barbara Fister remarks in her review of the novel on this site, in its efficient-but-shallow approach, reading CALL ME PRINCESS is much "like watching an episode of a fairly entertaining television mystery." Unfortunately, there are two significant problems that loom over the story. For one, the plot is pervaded with head-smacking coincidences and the kind of farcical investigative ploys that anyone who has watched a few episodes of LAW AND ORDER will recognize as completely unworkable. For instance, police detectives don't take civilian crime victims to help stake-out their attackers mere weeks after a crime has taken place. The most obvious reason is that this sort of situation would be dangerous for both the police officers and the victim. Moreover, this kind of set-up is completely devoid of empathy towards a person who has just endured a serious trauma. This latter point brings us to the other, more disheartening problem about CALL ME PRINCESS. This is a novel written by a female author, about a female police officer who is investigating a string of heinous crimes against women. Given this, one might expect a substantial level of empathy throughout the book. But while Blaedel does attempt to make the reader feel for the victims—for instance, by relating both of the rape episodes from the women's perspectives—her detective Rick is one of the more emotionally tone-deaf agents of the law that I've read in quite a long time. Louise gestures towards compassion when dealing with rape victims—stiffly noting in one instance that the woman has "been through a terrifying experience"—but is unaccountably upset when the victim involved can't render a full description of her rapist or articulate a full account of events just hours after she's been attacked. There's an explanation for this: we're told that Louise avoids "…empathizing too much with other people's sorrows and emotions," in order to keep her work separate from her personal life. This makes sense, certainly. But Louise's struggle to be understanding towards others bleeds into her personal life as well: into her relationship with her boyfriend, and also with her best friend Camilla. Struggling to be compassionate seems to be a major part of Louise's character development in this series, so perhaps this weakness is meant to align her with the typical police detectives that abound in the genre: married to their work, solitary, unyielding in their morals and motivations. But more often than not, it just makes Louise Rick a difficult detective to root for. § Larissa Kyzer lives in Brooklyn. She will complete her Master's degree in Library Science in May 2011.
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer, November 2011
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