The Harbour

Katrine Engberg

Average Rating 7/10 (1 Review)

A boy is missing...

A web of lies will be uncovered...

When fifteen-year-old Oscar Dreyer-Hoff disappears, it's assumed he's another teenage runaway - an overlooked middle child who will turn up within 24 hours.

But as the hours, and then days, tick by and the family become more frantic, Detectives Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner begin to dig deeper into Oscar's life.

Who has been sending the family malicious notes? What secrets is Oscar's best friend keeping? And what's really going on down at the harbour?

With every passing hour and little evidence, the odds of finding a missing person grow dimmer and dimmer in Kørner and Werner's toughest case yet.

The third thrilling installment in the internationally bestselling Copenhagen-set Kørner and Werner series, from a rapidly rising star in crime fiction.

Combining pin-sharp storytelling and a rollercoaster investigation, The Harbour is an absorbing mystery thriller for fans of Jo Nesbo and Tana French.

Review by Ben Macnair (200525) Rating (7/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 7/10
This is the third of the novels that feature Katrine Engberg’s detective duo Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner, but it is the first one I have read. I will be looking out for the rest of her work now, if the writing, atmosphere and pace of The Harbour is anything to go by.

The story centres around the disappearance of 15-year-old Oscar Dreyer Hoff. He comes from a successful and well to do family, so at first it is believed to a kidnapping, but as the duo dig deeper into Oscar’s life, and the life of his family members, a more complicated case soon emerges.

The use of short chapters, and a tight time frame means that the pace moves along quickly. The almost real time telling of the story allows for tension to be built and released as the case closes into suspects only to reveal more characters, and more telling story details.

The life of a fifteen-year-old in the modern time is well told, interlinking a with how the older detectives relate to younger people in a world that is constantly changing.

The pressures of Korner and Werner’s lives outside the police are also well drawn, adding extra layers unto a story that is already multi-stranded.

The Harbour is a tidy metaphor for a life outside of the small town in which the action takes place. The sea has a pull on the people who live there, and the world interfering in the lives of people. The action is relentless and thrilling, the story line and the motivations are all believable, as are the characterisations.

There are a couple of times where the reader has to suspend their disbelief, and as always with a lot of fiction too much relies on people being at the right place at the right time, but there is a bit of a twist at the end of book that is both a fitting, and also a believable way in which some people will behave when finding themselves in stressful, and unwanted situations.
Ben Macnair (20th May 2025)