Who killed Nanna Birk Larsen?That was the question on many lips when, in 2011, the BAFTA winning first series of The Killing was aired on British television. The subsequent column inches, not least about a certain black and white Faroe Island jumper, and critical success it garnered were partly a legacy of the previous year’s great success, The Wire, which had shown the appetite for a sophisticated investigation of the relationship between crime and politics. Acclaimed crime writer David Hewson has not, in this novelised version of the series, given us just another hack work spin-off, but a superb example of engrossing, literary detective fiction, so well written that it is now being translated and readied for publication in Danish. Instead of just giving us a verbatim transcript of the subtitles to the tv series, Hewson took the trouble to travel to Copenhagen and consult with Søren Sveistrup, the series script writer. What has emerged is a novel which has its own integrity and its own perspective, for Hewson takes on the persona of a witness to the events, just as the television viewer is. Where the television series at times seemed in danger of making Copenhagen seem dreary, Hewson has retained the gloomy Scandi atmosphere we all know and love, and given the novel’s ending an extra twist rather than an insulting anti-climax or an easy moral. Anyone who appreciates clever detective fiction and has not seen the series will find this riveting, while those who are already fans of the television series will be mesmerised by Hewson’s dynamic style and alternative ending.