Bye Bye Blackbird | Jesper Stein

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Bye Bye Blackbird

Jesper Stein

Bye Bye Blackbird is a brutal Copenhagen thriller about victims, perpetrators, punishment, vigilance and the worst kind of crimes: murder and rape. As its predecessor Unrest it takes place in a contemporary setting in Nørrebro Copenhagen anno 2008. The enfant terrible of the homicide department, the loner and workaholic Axel Steen with the restless heart and the violent temper. In Bye Bye Blackbird we get closer to him as a person. A part of his painful past is revealed and we follow his struggle to shed himself of a lost love in the meeting with a new and demanding woman, whose attitude to life has fatal consequences for Axel’s handling of a new case. Axel Steen receives a call from the past, when a rape investigation shows that the unidentified perpetrator was also behind the Blackbird case, an unsolved sexual murder of a young high school graduate that shocked Copenhagen in 2004. Now – four years later – Axel has the chance to solve the case that cost him his marriage and almost broke him. It soon becomes apparent that more cases are connected to the current one, but have never been linked before due to sloppy police work, errors and mistrust of the rape victims. But Axel Steen sees the pattern.

The hunt begins for a sadistic and cynical serial rapist and killer. Axel Steen, brought to his knees by a conflict over his visitation rights to see his child and an escalating weed addiction, goes further than ever before in his attempt to bring the perpetrator to justice. In this endeavour he will come up against his new boss, who now shares his ex-wife’s bed, and the mistakes of his past that made her leave him. Læs mere

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Pages: 416
Publication Date: 18. Jun 2013

Rights sold to

CZECH REPUBLIC / Brana Publishing
GERMANY / Kiepenheuer & Wietsch
ICELAND / Draumsyn
ITALY / Marsilio
NORWAY / Schibsted
SWEDEN / Norstedts

With his second Nørrebro-blues about the death-fearing and weed-smoking police officer Axel Steen, Jesper Stein proves himself to be one of the best crime writers in the country - a must-bring-book for summer reading

Linguistically brilliant, well-turned and realistic. So no worries folks, the crime novel of the summer is here ... Even more fit and ambitious than the predecessor

Solid psychological depth and a thorough knowledge of the topography of Nørrebro and life as it enfolds itself here do not only make "Bye Bye Blackbird" a relevant crime novel, it also makes it first class realistic contemporary literature

Axel Steen is a sceptic by the grace of God, he listens to jazz and has an Egon Schieleposter on his wall; he loves and hates with a violent intensity, is full of longing for women and of love to his daughter. He is a bully, but he is a bully full of cracks … With his poetic pen Jesper Stein knows how to make him a real, reflective human being Read more