Oskar Jensen’s debut adult novel, the wonderfully titled Helle & Death, begins with ruminations on the human body and what technically constitutes as a kidnapping attempt on a British railway line by a hapless Danish art historian. Such an opening salvo, contained within the first five pages of Helle & Death, helps prepare the reader for the tone of Jensen’s work – cerebral without being cold, mordantly funny at times, and with a mystery slipperier than a Scandi ski slope.
As a mystery, Helle & Death has an intriguing enough premise – a group of formerly-close university pals, now years along from their last full meeting, have reunited at the remote mansion of their capricious, tech-averse host, just in time for a furious snowstorm to trap them there and for a body to turn up. It’s the classic Golden Age formula of a ‘closed circle’ mystery – limited suspects, isolated setting, suspicion setting in faster than frostbite – and Jensen delights in this approach, paying loving homage to all the best tropes of the micro-genre.
The heart of the novel however, rather than its mystery, is the relationship between the suspects. Each of them is a university graduate, part of the same incestuous friendship group, prickling with secrecy, tension, or repressed feeling. Lead Torben (the Helle of the title), a Danish ex-pat art historian living in the UK, has a black hole of unrequited love inside his heart; other characters are dealing with money troubles, feelings of inadequacy, or even abusive, controlling relationships. The way that each of the stranded characters interact with one another drives the novel, people rediscovering their love – or hate – for one another, a decade or so on from graduation, and Jensen is sure to infuse each character with pathos and flaws and the possibility, achieved or not, of redemption, leading to not only twists and turns in the mystery, but also in the cast’s personal, individual growth.
While it might occasionally drift into a study of post-dark-academic malaise, Helle & Death is a smart, humane, post-modern mystery that skewers the tropes of the genre and crafts an engaging mystery with a likeable, empathetic lead. Jensen clearly has a talent in – and reverence for – the classic mystery genre, and it’s clear he’s made an auspicious start by creating the first great mystery of 2024.
Helle & Death is out on 18th January from Viper.
Certainly sounds like one I would enjoy