Where Evil Lies is not for the faint-heated

Norwegian crime writer Thomas Enger has gained a reputation, after his first two novels, as an intense and perceptive observer of human frailty and criminality.

Scarred is his third novel, featuring journalist Henning Juul, a man both physically and emotionally scarred after the death of his son in a fire two years earlier. Estranged from his wife and consumed with guilt, he searches for those who set fire to his flat and destroyed his life.

Enger describes him as ''an introverted man, a thinker with a pronounced sense of responsibility and injustice'' - ''quintessentially Norwegian traits''.

Scarred begins with Juul sent to report on the murder of an elderly woman suffering from dementia in a nursing home. It appears to be an act of rage. The investigation, led by Juul's childhood friend, Bjarne Brogeland, focuses on visitors to the home on the day of the murder. Juul concentrates on the victim's past and discovers she was a much-hated school teacher in a village near Oslo.

On the same day, Juul's estranged sister, Trine Juul-Osmund, Norway's Secretary of State for Justice, is accused of taking sexual advantage of a young male politician.

Unable to cope with the intense media attention, in scenes reminiscent of Borgen, she escapes to the family holiday cabin, where Juul finds her. However, she angrily and dismissively refuses his offer of help.

Inevitably, the two narrative strands converge and both the murderer and Trine's secret are revealed.

Scarred is a clever piece of tight storytelling, dark and disturbing, underpinned by perceptive characterisation, concerns about the treatment of the aged in Norway and the continuing mystery of Juul's tragedy. In other words, it is everything a reader expects from Scandinavian crime fiction.

However, his countryman Jorgen Brekke's debut novel, Where Evil Lies, does not conform to the pattern. Instead, he presents his readers with a complex literary whodunit based around a 16th-century book on anatomy written on human skin, the Johannes Book.

Two horrific crimes, one at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, the other in the Gunnerus Library at the University of Trondheim, involving the decapitation and flaying of the victim, bring together investigators from the United States and Norway.

Felicia Stone, a homicide detective from Richmond, joins forces with Chief Inspector Odd Singsaker, of the Trondheim police to track down a Norwegian serial killer obsessed with human skin.

Brekke, through one of his characters, advises how to read a crime novel and ''the rule of thirds … the murderer is usually most visible in the first third of the book. That's when the author dares to show a glimpse of him or her. The rest of the book is spent trying to present that character as being unimportant, irrelevant, while other possible suspects are put forward instead''.

Brekke follows the rule of thirds in an ambitious novel that spans five centuries. Graphically violent, Where Evil Lies is not for the faint-heated.