eBook Dead Souls (Norton Library (Paperback)) download

I just love reading Egholm. Yesterday I finished the second novel with Peter Boutrup in the leading role - and it was one of the best crime novels I've ever read!
Egholms's writing keeps you reading on until the end, wanting to know how everything ties together. And then you must consider that I read in translation, so probably the Danish version is even better.

In this volume, Peter has coped with the loss of Felix (lead character in the first novel of the series). His boss Manfred and himself are now working in a convent named St. Mary's. One evening, Peter sees how a man approaches a young nun.
Not much later, he is approached by Sister Beatrice, to look into the disapperance of Sister Melissa. While Peter conducts his investigation, albeit unwillingly, the body of Melissa is found in the moat of the convent. She has been garotted...

In the meantime, diver Kir has found a box filled with human bones somewhere in a deep in the Kattegat. The bones are brought to the forensic unit to be inspected - and they turn out to be more than 60 years old. Both Mark Bille Hansen and Peter have a feeling these two finds are connected however, and so they prove to be.

More people get murdered, others disappear. It is Peter who finally can tie the loose ends and finds out the identity of the killer. But before he does, lots of things happen.

This book is full of aciton and also shows a lot of psychological insight. It also deals with things we all can come into contact with.

A must-read!

Excellent. More from this author please!!?

Loved it, interesting addendum to Dicte TV series

This is actually the second book in the “Peter Boutrup” series and I have not read the first – but this was easily read as a standalone and I thought it was superb.

When a young Nun is found murdered, her story links to a violent and unknown history. Peter Boutrop, who has problems of his own, gets caught up in the tangled web and is reluctantly drawn into a world he wants no part of.

There is a high quality character arc to this tale and the backdrop is brilliantly described to give you a sense of the surroundings. Quite apart from Peter there is a small group of well drawn, intriguing and often enigmatic characters to follow along with, whose lives you will find yourself hopelessly caught up in. I adored Peter as a character, so tough on the outside but just as conflicted inside as anybody else – his reluctance to get involved followed by an inate need to find the truth is endlessly compelling.

There are some great examples of Danish crime fiction around at the moment and this is top notch – beautifully written, with a very engaging and engrossing mystery, peppered with some marvellous and easily loveable characters, I shall definitely be reading the first book and I hope that the next one is not far away.

Highly Recommended for crime fiction fans.

Happy Reading Folks!

Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" is an exploration of the methodology of malfeasance in tsarist Russia, where the spirits of serfs take on a statistical yet eerie reality for tax purposes, landowners being taxed on their payroll of serfs, including those who had died between tax-assessments. Gogol's implicit allusions use a type of demonic doggerel to amuse yet alarm the reader as he looks for the haunting evanescences that are supposedly in the pages of the novel.

Gogol's story is like some of the Dickensian ghost stories as the narrator fancies inanimate things transformed and wriggling with life. The main character, Chichikov, is described with coy neutrality as "not overly fat, not overly thin", who first greets the reader with fleeting, unwanted apparitions in the form of vermin, "with cockroaches peeping out like prunes from every corner" in a wayside in. His servant Petruska, carries his greatcoat "a special odour all his own that had also been imparted to the next thing he brought in, a sack containing the sundries of a manservant's toilet", the special odour perhaps recalling the odour of sanctity or death conjured by Dostoevsky in "The Brothers Karamazov".

Chichikov buys the dead souls of serfs from landowners which entitles him to by land to "resettle" and so enter the boyar class. On a figurative level, Chichikov is also a dead soul, affable, inoffensive, unremarkable, at least superficially a nondescript part of the landowning establishment. He is a confidence-trickster whose plots, who ultimately outsmarts only himself. Gogol addressed himself with a parodic allusion, noting, "the dreadful appalling mass of trifles that mires our lives, all that lies deep inside the cold, fragmented quotidian characters with which our earthly, at times bitter and tedious path swarms...", as if he is another Chichkov, a writer seeking recognition for his work, but feeling that the minor distractions that haunt his thoughts prevent him from realising his literary ambitions, just as Chichikov does not realise his landowning aspirations.
The novel is littered with ethereal beings like the half formed table-guest of whom Gogol writes, "...It was hard to say definitely who she was, a married lady or a spinster, a relative, the housekeeper or a woman simply living in the house - something without a cap, about 30, and wearing a multicoloured shawl. There are people that exist on this earth not as objects in themselves, but as extraneous specks or tiny spots on objects. They sit in the same place, they hold their heads in the same way and you are almost ready to take them for a piece of furniture..." But spectral as such characters may seem, they can be heard in the near distance with some distinctness, whether in bedrooms above, or the maids' room or the pantry.

Chichikov recalls Goncharov's Oblomov in his love of earthly comforts, despite his interest in the realm of the dead, journeying with a well-equipped travelling box and a snuff box. Yet he is aware of his own human absurdity, as when he sees a Cossack dancer, describing him grotesquely as "an adult, a full-grown man suddenly leaps out all in black, plucked like a bird and wrapped up tight like a little devil, and then starts pumping his legs up and down."

Gogol's authorial voice asks of the reader whether Chichikov is "moral or immoral", but anticipates by providing his own answer: "Everything undergoes a rapid transformation in man. Before you know it, a dreadful worm has grown within him, and tyrannically sucked off all the vital juices for itself." The moral complacency of Chichikov, or anyone else who delves into the incomprehensible, with a view to deceive himself or others, will find himself overwhelmed by an ephemeral nemesis.

i very loved this book his funny and sad about russia slaves the word dead souls its not only about the slaves its about their masters as plushkin,sobakevich and the others i realy love gogol he have lote of humor revisor is a great play