The Farther You Fall - Anna Grue
Dybt at falde, Vol. 1
Politikens Forlag, 2007. 304 pages
Sales figures: 40.000 copies plus 140.000 copies sold together with a
women's magazine
Foreign rights sold to:
Norway/CappelenDamm, Iceland/Forlagiđ, France/Gaïa, Italy/Marsilio,
Germany/Atrium, Armenia/ Guitank Publishing
Summary
One bitterly cold November evening, at Christiansund's trendiest advertising agency, a young woman is found strangled. Her identity is unknown - she has no name, no address, no friends ... Not even her employer officially knows of her existence. A few days later, the body of another unidentified woman is found. It’s clear there are two different killers at work. The advertising agency's creative director, Dan Sommerdahl, accidentally gets tangled up in the investigation and soon, it turns out that he holds the key to solving the mystery. He slowly uncovers a secret network among the city's wealthy women. A network that helps women attempting to escape from cynical traffickers. But are these poor trafficking victims really being helped or are they just being exploited once again?
Reviews:
Rarely have we seen a more sovereign opening of a crime series. Anna
Grue is witty and elegant in 'Dybt at falde' where she transforms a
lifestyle expert into a private detective who, with a dangerous cocktail
of sex and cleaning, shakes up this small, provincial town. (...) All
the stereotypes about male and female detectives get twisted up in the
typewriter of this book. As a lifestyle expert, Dan can simply do all
the things that are normally attributed to female virtues.It is first
and foremost Grue's light and playful style that makes you think of
Dashiell Hammett's 'The Thin Man'. Dan is a modern Danish counterpart to
Hammett's society detective. And 'The Farther You Fall' in an
exceptionally good first volume of a crime series that you can
definitely expect a lot from.
- ***** Mette Strømfeldt, Berlingske Tidende
This is exactly the rather well off modern middle class who have one foot in the Capital's sphere of the right opinions and the other in a provincial merchant mindset that the book satirises. Sometimes teasing, sometimes with undisguised gravity. The author is sharp - not to mention funny. (...) But this certainly is not 'femicrime' in the bad sense. There is both a witty mind and a tough nut at work here. - **** Jonas Hindsholm Benzen, Børsen
Anna Grue is clearly not trying to pack her crime novels with harsh social criticism - she wants to entertain, she lays out her clues with the usual two to five suspects to waver between, in short, a crime that is classic in its structure and in its scope - Anna Grue is off to a good start with 'The Farther You Fall ', the first volume in a planned series. - Katinka Bruhn, Weekendavisen
Amongst the piles of mediocre and only moderately entertaining crime
novels that flow from the publishers in a steady stream, Anna Grue's
book stands out. Finally a journalist where all the years working with
words have seen them transformed into a lovely blend with a superior
sense for language and literary ambitions that have an emphasis on
realism. The novel can be read for its dialogues alone, she has such an
ear for what people say to one other.
- Anette Dina Sørensen, Politiken
Anna Grue - Author of the Dan Sommerdahl Series
