Part of Series
Next of Kin is the best-selling European thriller from crime writer Elsebeth Egholm, and the first of her popular ‘Dicte Svendsen’ series available in English. Why do we fear strangers when often it's those closest to us who pose the greatest threat? Fear and anxiety have spread to Denmark in the aftermath of the London bombings. Late one evening, journalist Dicte Svendsen receives an anonymous package containing footage of a brutal murder—a beheading carried out by a sabre-wielding figure dressed in black.Dicte and her old friend Inspector John Wagner form an uneasy alliance with the Danish secret intelligence service to identify the killer. As media reports unleash a wave of anti-Muslim hysteria across the country, panic escalates, and when Dicte’s teenage daughter is attacked, the investigation gets personal. Dicte has fought long and hard to put her dark past behind her—so how does the killer seem to know her deepest secrets?
Author
Bestselling Danish novelist Elsebeth Egholm began her career behind the keyboards of a piano. She was a student of music as a performer at The Royal Academy of Music and at the Department of Musicology at the University of Aarhus, before she changed instrument and enrolled at the Danish School of Journalism, also based in her hometown of Aarhus. She spent a few years working for a daily newspaper, but by 1992 she was living with future husband, the late British author Philip Nicholson, in the Maltese island of Gozo, working as a freelance writer. Eventually she began making a name for herself as the author of a string of well crafted short stories published in women's magazines in both Denmark and the other Nordic countries. Her first novel had three long time friends mourning the death of a fourth and facing a mysterious stranger. ‘The Free Women's Club' was published in 1999 to unanimous acclaim. In ‘Scirocco' (2000) and ‘Opium' (2001) she moved into the darker corners of family and marriage, and combined a fullgrown plot with an engaging dose of international suspense. Then, in 2002, she introduced full time journalist and part time sleuth Dicte Svendsen in ‘Hidden Errors', a novel about a dead baby found in a creek in the middle of big city Aarhus. By the second and third book in the series, ‘Own Risk' (2004) and ‘Personal Damage' (2005), both author and heroine were well known and highly treasured in her homeland. ‘Next of Kin' was published in 2006, dramatically outselling the previous novels, and Elsebeth Egholm found herself published, or about to be published, in Germany, Holland, Sweden and Norway. Afterwards, in 2008, the novel 'Life and Limb' reached the bookshelves followed by 'Against All Odds' i 2009. 'Three Dog Night' was published i 2011. Currently Elsebeth Egholm divides her time between living in Aarhus, as does Dicte Svendsen, and on the Maltese island of Gozo.
