--Connie Fletcher. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. The buildup to each murder is extraordinarily well done and almost unbearably suspenseful. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The story moves seamlessly between 16th-century Europe and present-day Virginia and Norway, and the mystery is intricate… as it moves through time and place. Yet this didn't stop it from being published and apparently becoming an international best seller. Billed as an international bestseller, I was intrigued by it's unusually original plot summary. There’s a bleakness to current Nordic noir that can make the reader wonder if the tone accurately reflects the Scandinavian soul, or if the authors (following Stieg Larsson) are being intentionally over the top. It be. Normally, this sort of blood-soaked serial killer murder fest turns me off: I prefer my mysteries character-based, and grounded in believable human behavior and motivation. There she finds the flayed and beheaded body of the museum director. Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2017. Wonderfully-crafted, complex murder mystery set in present-day Richmond, Virginia and Trondheim, Norway. This sets the tone for an unrelievedly bleak mystery. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. And all these are features of. ; The Earth-Crawlers! (There's also another piece set in 1500's Norway.). Please try again. Walked Like a Man! This book actually has three main characters, two of which are modern day detectives and the third a sixteenth century priest who might be a serial murderer. The corpse of the museum curator in Virginia is found flayed in his office by the cleaning staff; the corpse of an archivist at the library in Norway, is found inside a locked vault used to store delicate and rare books. A popular mystery device is shifting time from chapter to chapter. But this novel is an exception. ; The Black Clock! Whoa! Early in WHERE MONSTERS DWELL, a character who collects mystery books discusses their plot narrative. It’s not his name, which is common enough in Norway, but the aftermath of the neurosurgery that removed a golf-ball-sized tumor from his brain a year ago. They join to uncover a twisted scheme whose tendrils slither as much among ancient scalpels and "The Book of Johannes," an esoteric16th century tome, as they do in the present. One quick phone call to Trondheim officer Odd Singsaker confirms the striking similarity in the murders. Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2020. The first half is mediocre and mildly interesting, but then it just runs off the rails and explodes. Brrrr. Jorgen Brekke follows this narrative structure in the complex plot of WHERE MONSTERS DWELL as he weaves threads from a murder at the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmo.