Lotte Hammer

This is the third volume in the crime series featuring Danish detective Konrad Simonson (Simon). Although it's rather long and leisurely, it opens with a bang: a school shooting. However, that proves not to be the main crime to be solved, but only the link to a connection with a postman who recently died in a fall. Simon is given the task to determine whether the postman's death was an accident or murder. Along the way Simon also looks into the disappearance 40 years previously of a teenage runaway from Liverpool named Lucy. And that's where, for me, a lot of the "fun" and merit of this book came in: repeated reference to Beatles songs and trivia. The runaway's name of course refers to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, and the circumstances of her leaving comport with She's Leaving Home ("meeting a man from the motor trade"), with her parents still mourning and wondering what they did wrong 40 years later. And then Simon's girlfriend from the late 60's was named Rita, and she's involved with parking garages, so references to Lovely Rita the Meter Maid abound. And so on.

I'll probably read another in the series, though I'm not sure Beatles references will be enough to keep me reading. In general I'm not a huge fan of series (or at least those that go on too long), preferring to read new characters and new situations.

3 stars… (altro)