- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown & Company; First UK Edition edition (5 May 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0316729477
- ISBN-13: 978-0316729475
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 739,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
'THE BEAST is a frantic chase through the horror of the hunt for an escaped serial killer of children. At a deeper level, it is full of characters lost for love, or lost to humanity . . . it is a gripping, tragic story. This is a book with extraordinary insights and totally unexpected plots twists. Yet the most striking thing about it is the intensity of the emotion in the characters. It's hard to read without tears coming to your eyes. It has the blunt, matter-of-fact Swedish tone of thriller-writers like Henning Mankell, yet it is also subtle and nuanced. A fabulous read' SUNDAY BUSINESS POST 'A book which is as dark and unflinching as the subject suggests' THE LIST 'A must-read' OBSERVER 'A tale of tragedy and revenge that is truly gripping, and all the more horrifying because this kind of thing can happen anywhere' GUARDIAN
Product Description
Two children are found dead in a basement. Four years later their murderer escapes from prison. The police know if he is not found quickly, he will kill again. But when their worst fears come true and another child is murdered in the nearby town of Strengnas, the situation spirals out of control. In an atmosphere of hysteria whipped up by the media, Fredrik Steffansson, the father of the murdered child, decides he must take revenge. His actions will have devastating consequences. As anger spreads across the whole country, the two detectives assigned to the case - Ewert Grens and Sven Sunkist - find themselves caught up in a situation of escalating violence. A powerful and at times profoundly shocking novel, The Beast has been likened to both Hitchcock and le Carre. It is also an important and timely exploration of what can happen when we take the law into our own hands. It is the winner of Glasnyckeln 2005 (The Glass Key 2005) for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An extremely powerful, thought-provoking novel,
By femmyd "femmyd" (Liverpool, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Beast (Paperback)
I am an avid reader but this is the first time I have felt compelled to write a review to give credit to the authors of this book.
Having never read any nordic crime fiction before, I found this experience refreshing. Whilst the book deals with the sensitive issue of child abuse, I feel that the authors handle it very well, looking at many conflicting views on sex offenders and people's attitudes and values towards to them. The characters in the book were multi-dimensional; the authors giving us enough of an insight into their private lives to get to know the characters and empathise with them without deviating from the main storyline which is often the case in crime novels to the point were we lose interest and focus. Many parts of the novel are distressing and upsetting but justified in dealing with the main issue. The prison and prisoners were very true to life (having spent some years working within the system) and the characters were portrayed as being remorseless and brutal but also with a respect for justice. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Read it in a few days which is difficult with a hectic lifestyle but felt this one deserved making time for! I will certainly be reading more Roslund-Hellstrom books in future. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Voices cried out and the car bumped as he drove it over human bodies...,
By
This review is from: The Beast: A Novel (Hardcover)
Roslund & Hellstrom are two Swedish (male) writers who have collaborated on a series of extremely hard-hitting, not to say stomach-churning, serial paedophile fictional killings. To do this kind of thing justice the writer(s) will need to have extraordinary talents and deep psychological insight into what they are attempting to depict. I have only seen it done once with credibility and courage, by A M Homes, in her book The End of Alice, and even then I was left with some deep misgivings about the reasons for attempting to make this subject even rudimentarily explicable. I think with A M Homes's book, there did emerge some - I can't say explanation - perhaps the word I'm fumbling for is rationale. That there is a rationale, in the minds of sick individuals, is, I think, one kind of explanation. That it is deeply flawed goes without saying. In the case of The Beast, that rationale is a given - something we must accept without knowing or even trying to know where it came from and how it evolved in the serial paedophile killer. To write from this premise would be, for most writers, impossible, to attempt it without any rationale feels like a risk, and in the case of The Beast, it fails.
Briefly, the plot follows the fate of a child, killed after the paedophile escapes from police custody while being transferred. This child's father, somewhat improbably, takes vengeance, most would, and indeed do, say, quite rightly. We are treated to a heavy handed inside-jail scenario quite late in the plot (which I am skimming) during which there is an attack on the child's father There are layers here then, of irony, of heavy-duty rationalisation of the prison system's failings. Of crude assumptions by tainted people, of the complete failure of these people to even understand their own motives. I think it is strange that Roslund and Hellstrom can write such a clichéd and stereotyped prison scenario. Have they ever seen the inside of one themselves? Sometimes these things do matter, but they appear to get their ideas from the movies - even the idea of the father being stabbed in the shower is so hackneyed as to raise the reader's intolerance-levels. Aside from the distaste I felt in such a close adherence to the violent methods of sexual torture and murder of children, I found myself struggling to see what was being depicted. Everyone roots for the father of the murdered child, no one cares that his initial success in court encourages a number of other attacks on quite harmless, perhaps mentally challenged people. When an appeal to a higher court sends him back into prison he stares stoically at the walls or occasionally bangs his head against them. He is a wreck. There is little psychological complexity - even the defence of manslaughter rather than murder or `disturbance of the balance of his mind' is not raised by his defence team. Everything is too black or white. Everyone is too wrong or too right. There is no moral complexity - it loses the reader, especially towards the end. It's like something written by affectless aliens for much of the last few pages.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Horrifying,
This review is from: The Beast (Paperback)
I want to give it 4 stars, but to say "I Like It" doesnt feel right to me.
Its the first book I have ever read where I have felt myself start to cry. Not at the violence, although that probably set it up, but at the emotions of the parents. Sometimes I couldnt read more than a chapter at a time as it was so disturbing but I kept coming back to it. It is gruesome, but I will definitely read the next in the Grens series once I am sure I can sleep at nights ok again.
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