Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Chestnut Man / Oktober | 2018 | Soren Sveistrup | Buy |
| 2 | Hide And Seek | 2026 | Soren Sveistrup | Buy |
The Chestnut Man (2018) was Soren Sveistrup’s first novel, and it arrived with the credibility of a writer who had already spent years building some of the tightest crime narratives on television. The book’s premise — a killer who leaves chestnut figurines bearing the fingerprint of a dead girl — is immediately arresting, and Sveistrup develops it with the patience he brought to The Killing: the plot reveals itself slowly, with layers of character and social observation accumulating alongside the thriller mechanics.
The novel won the Barry Award for Best First Mystery Novel and was adapted into a Netflix series in 2021, for which Sveistrup served as head writer and executive producer. Critics compared it favourably to the work of Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell, placing it firmly in the Scandinavian tradition of using crime fiction to probe the cracks in a society that prides itself on civility and equality.
Hide and Seek (2026) returns to the same Copenhagen world with a new investigation, continuing Sveistrup’s examination of the violence that persists beneath the surface of a prosperous modern society.