My daughter went to BEA and picked up a copy of The Tenant, shown here with the original cover, for free in exchange for a fair review.  She knows I am a fan of Nordic Noir so she immediately passed it to me to review.

The Tenant is the first in a series featuring Jeppe, a recently divorced and depressed, not necessarily in that order, police officer and his team including his frequent partner Anette, who more often than not gets on his nerves. The case they work on in this book is the first case he will be leading coming back from a leave of absence due to injury  his divorce.  A particularly brutal murder of a young woman living in what should have been a safe building.  The building also houses a small cafe business, an older man in another apartment, and the owner, an aspiring author, in yet another unit.  The murder investigations weaves its way through the lives of the people in the building, digging into their pasts, uncovering secrets and connections to the present.  Very good Nordic Noir, I look forward to reading more in this series.

The Midnight Witness by Sara Blaedel is the first in the Louise Rick series.  I really liked Sara Blaedel’s The Undertaker’s Daughter and so looked forward to reading this.  Louise Rick seems to be a realistic portrayal of a police officers life as she gets pulled about by the demands of her job and yet is also a human being with friends, like Camilla, and an ability to be affected by the plight of the victims and their families.  In this case, Louise is pulled in to one case, the murder of a young woman in public park and then into another, the murder of a journalist.   Plenty of red herrings to keep the reader engaged in trying to figure it all out along with Louise and Camilla.  Very good mystery read led by strong female characters.