2024
On a rainy Friday afternoon, on July 22nd 2011 eight-year-old only child Sander Mohr dies in his own home. The parents are inconsolable. Forensic psychologist Inger Johanne Vik believes, as does everyone else, that the death was a tragic domestic accident. Only rookie Henrik Holme, who graduated from the police academy only six weeks prior, is suspicious: It’s possible that something is wrong in the wealthy and apparently well-functioning home in Oslo’s fanciest neighborhood. Without experience, but with great will-power and distinct talent, Henrik Holme manages to recruit Inger Johanne Vik to an investigation that will prove to be fatal. In the shadow of the national catastrophe that hits Norway the same day as Sander’s death, the odd couple struggle to unravel one family’s darkest secrets. The hunt for the truth about the eight-year-old’s death becomes a brutal confrontation with prejudice and evasions, shame and lies, system failures and human humiliation.
What Dark Clouds Hide is the fifth – and final – freestanding installment in the Inger Johanne Vik series.
What Dark Clouds Hide is a very good novel, it raises important questions about prejudices, suspicions and the compulsion to at all times maintain a façade outwards. The portrait of the grieving and troubled mother Ellen is almost physically painful to read.
A suspenseful plot with credible characters and compassion.
Anne Holt
