Blue Blood

BLUE BLOOD (aka CALL ME PRINCESS) is the debut novel in the Detective Louise Rick series from Danish writer Sara Blaedel. Blaedel is a million copy best-selling author, voted Denmark's most popular novelist three times since 2007, and an international success story.

BLUE BLOOD reads like a traditional police procedural, focused on who perpetrated the crime, and not a lot on why. The initial crime, the vicious beating and rape of a young woman, quickly becomes even more worrying with the sadly preventable death of a second victim, but it does provide the focus - an increasing number of cases that revolve around the internet dating world.

Given the police procedural styling, I was looking at three specific elements - plot / investigation and then characterisations. BLUE BLOOD takes the reader into the world of internet dating and the possible perils, and it uses many of those aspects to have a red hot go at raising some tension. Although, to be honest, the none too subtle way in which potential dangers are raised for Rick, as well as best friend, journalist Camilla did make this reader dubious. Whilst there is a team, and a hierarchy, and a bit of tension between teams chucked into the mix for reasons that I couldn't quite fathom, the main core of the investigation becomes a solo hand pretty quickly. Which didn't actually work that well, as it created a problem with interactions between Rick and the rest of the team that was never really resolved. In fact, most of the other police characters remained very much bit-parts, and somehow floated off to the side. Which leads therefore to characterisation. The focus is very much on the Rick, who is the sort of lead character that is either going to annoy or fascinate. She's an odd combination of intensity and vagueness. Her attempts at victim consolation weren't particularly convincing, and whilst she's obviously driven to resolve the case, there are some things that she seems almost criminally dumb about. Not the least of which is the rapid, and obvious collapse of her personal life, that on one hand she seems quite matter-of-fact about and on another devastated.

All of which makes it sound like I didn't really like the book. Which isn't exactly true. Cutting the requisite slack for a debut book in a series, and some heavy lifting in the character establishment phase as a result of that, there's more than enough in BLUE BLOOD that makes me want to get the next book in the series. The series doesn't feel like it's going to shape shift into the darker, more psychological stylings of my preferred Scandinavian material, but as a general, police procedural styled novel, I don't mind the occasional prickly, difficult, unpredictable female central protagonist at all. Especially as it would appear that the next book, FAREWELL TO FREEDOM is tackling human trafficking, a topic which is increasingly being explored in crime fiction worldwide.