Danish crime thriller. A body found, murdered in the past, leads to a search for the murderer in the present. Can they be found and stopped. Read and find out. Thank you to Saga Egmot and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Saga Egmont for an advance copy of Death on Demand, the second novel to feature Detective Roland Benito and journalist Anne Larsen, set in the Danish town of Aarhus.

A body is recovered from a local bog and it doesn’t take the pathologist long to establish that she has been there for twenty-five years and that she was murdered. Roland and the team are determined to bring her justice, but that’s before journalist Anne Larsen gets an anonymous call foretelling more deaths.

I enjoyed Death on Demand to a point as it is a very readable police procedural and that’s my favourite genre, but it’s not without its faults.

I am taken with the way there are two separate narratives and investigations. Roland does his thing the police way and Anne does hers the journalistic way and very rarely do the twain meet as there is no spirit of cooperation in this novel. It gives the reader a broader view of events and more information as the investigations do not overlap too often. Anne often seems ahead of Roland, but he catches up with his more methodical approach.

The plot is interesting and quite complex with its roots in the past and a strong African link. This latter allows the author to expound on some of the continent’s social problems, although it feels too generalised and a bit colonial to lump a whole continent with the same issues. It builds slowly with plenty of discoveries where the problem lies in fitting them together into a cohesive whole. Needless to say it’s painstaking and none of it stretches credibility too far. I must confess that I was deeply disappointed by the solution the police accept. The reader learns the truth, but the lack of accountability is unsatisfying for the reader, well this reader at least, even if it smacks of realism.

There are a lot of characters in this novel and it is initially difficult to see where they fit in. They all have stories to tell that have little to do with the case in hand and are thus a bit redundant. It’s not a short novel so perhaps a bit of pruning would have been judicious to keep it more on point and punchier.

Death on Demand is a solid read. 3.5*

Death on Demand is the second book in Inger Gammelgaard Madsen's D.I. Roland Benito series. Benito is an Italian living in Denmark still scarred by the memory of the Cammora's grip on his beloved home city of Naples that continues to affect his life years after he left .

When 2 young boys find a body in a swamp that proves to have been there for 10 years what starts off as a cold case murder investigation kicks off a series of homicidal events in the present day leaving Benito and his crew fighting against the clock to discover who and why. Meanwhile reporter Anne Larson is often ahead of the police as a result of anonymous calls tipping her off.
What follows is a rather complex tale spanning the decades ,as well as continents as the tale moves from Denmark to Africa.

This is a very busy book that can become a bit confusing at first as there's a massive cast of characters and side stories,not all of them relevant to the plot. Author Madsen also seems determined to squeeze in every current Danish societal issue as well which might irritate some. I actually found it quite interesting.......but have scrubbed Denmark from my Bucket list as a result.

An involving and complex tale but,as with the first book in the series,"Username Doll Child" could have done with a bit of trimming of the irrelevant stuff to keep things moving a bit quicker.

Inger Gammelgaard Madsen uses her knowledge of Doctor Without Borders to get involved with Africa and it's treasures which were involved in the murders of a woman twenty years prior and also a Doctor in the present. It bends your mind somewhat but you come out of it with a little bit of a head ache. Knowing Swahili is something that is also a good thing to know. It is interesting to know that they have Italians mixed in with the Danes. I just spent a month in Italy and Roland Benito is Inger's go to guy. He has mixed feeling that they got the right man in custody. And we have many episodes with relations to make you head swirl. She uses a lot of noir in her story so you feel at home.

Death on Demand is the second book in the Roland Benito series, as it's called. A body turns up in a Danish bog that turns out to be a 25-year old murder victim. Soon, current murders take place that may be connected. Detective Inspector Benito and his team are in a race to track down a possible serial killer as they attempt to solve murders both modern day and decades old. Like the first book, the police investigation is paralleled by local reporter Anne Larsen, who does and doesn't cooperate with the police, and also finds herself trying to tie everything together. Fortunately, her role is a little less pronounced than in the previous novel, as it took away from the Benito side of things. And again there's a side story with the news photographer Kamilla, that, while it builds up some story for her, feels extraneous, as it has nothing to do with the main plot of the book. There's also a couple of other story lines that keep popping up and distracting from the main plot, though eventually they do tie into the main narrative, though they are also more a distraction until they do. While the identity of the killer isn't that hard to figure out as details are revealed early on, the full motivation and connection of everything has a few surprises in store, and the book concludes unexpected directions. For a Nordic thriller it was solid enough and I likely will look for future entries in the series. 3..5 rounded to 4 stars.