Nordic noir at it's best and from one of my favourite authors. This is the last in the series to feature Inspector Barbarotti and this author has definitely saved the best for last!!!
Barbarotti is in the depths of grief as he has lost his beloved wife after a long illness. His boss thinks that working will help with his loneliness and gives him a cold case.
Five years ago a man went missing, got on his moped and went to the local petrol station to get a local paper and was never seen again. There days later his moped was recovered from a swampy area but no sign of the man. His partner Ellen Bjarnebo claimed he walked out after a row. Ellen has spent eleven years in prison after killing her abusive husband and dismembering his body with an axe. The more Barbarotti delves into this case the more he learns that nothing is what it seems and Ellen could be very dangerous. Packed to the rafters with tension and suspense, full of heart stopping moments and so many twists and turns it was making me dizzy. This author has finished this five star series with a BANG!!!! Loved it!!!!!!

The Axe Woman is the Fifth,and sadly the last,in Hakan Nesser's Gunnar Barbarotti series.
After a devastating personal tragedy Barbarotti returns to work and is annoyed when he thinks his boss is patronising him by giving him a seemingly unimportant "cold case". He's tasked with investigating the disappearance of an electrician 5 years previously whose moped is found in a swamp after seemingly being last seen buying petrol. The man's partner claims that he went abroad to find work but that partner being someone who had several years earlier served a lengthy prison sentence for the axe murder of her husband had Police launching a thorough investigation. that led to no evidence of foul play.

With Barbarotti wondering why his Boss has bothered asking him to re-investigate an old missing person case with seemingly no grounds he struggles to get anywhere ,while also trying to deal with his loss,

This series is for those who enjoy the likes of Henning Mankell's Wallandar books or Jorn Lier Horst's William Wisting series. There are no car chases or punch ups and like Wallandar Barbarotti is a rather melancholy figure in this book. The books are rather pedestrian,which won't be to everyone's taste but they're very involving and the characters are complex and interesting. These are books to savour,take your time with and appreciate rather than speed read .

As with the rest of this great series Barbarotti develops a case out of initially very little with his usual dogged determination and powers of deduction and what he initially suspects is a waste of his time turns into a complex and tangled case.
The only thing I disliked about this book was that at times Barbarotti ponders on religious,more specifically Biblical,matters which for me is an instant turn off and I skipped through a few pages as a result.
That aside a great read and a fitting end to a superb series.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of The Axe Woman, the fifth and final novel in the DI Gunnar Barbarotti series, set in Stockholm county.

Barbarotti returns to work after a personal loss and is asked to look into a cold case. Five years ago electrician Arnold Morinder disappeared from his cabin and the only trace found of him was his moped. His partner thinks he went to Norway, but his partner is Ellen Bjarnebo and she is one a Sweden’s most notorious killers, having spent eleven years in prison for murdering her abusive first husband and hacking up his body with an axe. Now she isn’t answering Barbarotti’s calls and seems to have disappeared.

I have mixed feelings about The Axe Woman. Yes, it has an interesting story to tell, but, principally, it is a novel about grief. I recently and very unexpectedly lost my brother in his early fifties and found it difficult to wade through Barbarotti’s feelings and coping mechanisms, especially as they bear no relationship to mine. To be fair, everyone grieves differently and the author does a good job in some respects, the malaise, the sense of not being in control, the inability to concentrate and the general loss of previous priorities and self confidence. I’m less sure about the belief in messages, seeing a lost one and turning to the bible, although I must admit that the final words in the novel made me smile.

The novel switches timelines between 1989 and the events leading up to the murder of Bjarnebo’s husband and 2012 and Barbarotti’s re-investigation. Both are quite long and slow as they are more concerned with the protagonist (Bjarnebo and Barbarotti respectively) and their thoughts and feelings than the actual events, which tend to act as a catalyst for said reactions. Still, it manages to keep the reader on tenterhooks as it implies that all is not as it seems and there will be twists to come. I think this comes from Bjarnebo’s deliberate attempts to ghost Barbarotti. It builds the tension and anticipation, makes the reader question her motives and evokes mystery.

The resolution is neat. It turns the reader’s assumptions on their head and made me look at what I knew in a different light. The clues are all there, albeit difficult to discern in a cloud of distraction and emotion, so it’s simply a matter of deduction. Ok, simply might be an exaggeration as I failed miserably.

The Axe Woman is a good read that I can recommend.

He may be uncrowned but Hakan Nesser is undoubtedly the King of Scandinavian Noir. To call his crime novels police procedurals is an insult, ignoring his literary genius and storytelling intellect.
I love the Gunnar Barbarotti novels. They are every bit as good as the Van Veeteren series. I love Gunnar's relationship with his wife, Marianne, now deceased but still a major character, and with Our Lord.
Hakan Nesser writes about dark deeds and the darkness of the human psyche but with the lightest touch - and I don't mean Cozy! - and a great sense of humour.
I thank Our Lord that Barbarotti and Van Veeteren will return in The Left-handed Association.