Kristine Hartung, the daughter of social minister Rosa Hartung, was murdered one year ago. Her convicted killer is prison and Copenhagen has moved on, tossing up the murder to a horrible tragedy. But the shut and close case is about to be ripped open again when young mothers are found dead, tortured and mutilated. Detective Naia Thulin is tasked with investigating, but she doesn’t have much to go on, just small little chestnut men left at the scene of the crime. Her temporary partner, Hess, believes that the cases of the murdered women and the murder of Kristine are related, especially when Kristine’s fingerprint is found on the chestnut men, but Thulin isn’t as convinced. But as the murders begin to go up, Thulin and Hess will have to go deep into a dark world to discover the truth.

The Chestnut Man reads like a old school detective mystery with shreds of horrific violence sprinkled throughout. I liked that Mr. Sveistrup gave this story an old feeling to it, reminding me of the detective mysteries my mom would read growing up. But don’t let that fool you into thinking this story might be boring, it certainly is not. Despite being a very chunky book, the story reads quick and the chapters are fairly short.

While the mystery itself is good, I will say that I did guess the identity of the Chestnut Man about 70% of the way through but why that person was doing this crime was very well done. Mr. Sveistrup weaved the various clues given throughout the book well and that worked to its favor. All that being said, I do feel like I need to label some trigger warnings on this book.

This book is very violent, a bit more than what I prefer. The women is this story are mutilated and while sometimes descriptions are enough to get the picture, Mr. Sveistrup took it a step farther by having parts in the book where the reader watches the torture actually occurring and in those cases I glazed over them. In particular, the last torture scene at the end of the book might have scarred for awhile, even though I did read much of that. Additionally, sexual assault on children is a huge topic in the book, that is often talked about in great detail and if that is a trigger for you I wouldn’t suggest picking this book up.

Ultimately, this book is a very strong mystery book. I give it a 4.5 stars because I was able to guess who the killer was and though the book is very violent I didn’t count this against it as that is just my own personal preference.