PITTBULL – RUTHLESS

By Anne Mette Hancock

For fans of Jo Nesbø and Katrine Engberg, international bestselling author Anne Mette Hancock’s third thrilling novel in the series Harlan Coben calls “the best series I’ve read this year,” is a pulse-pounding Scandinavian noir about secrets, buried truths, and what happens when we go digging into the past.

When Jan Frischof, a dying elderly man, gives a deathbed confession too unbelievable to be true, journalist Heloise Kaldan immediately knows there’s a deeper story to uncover. Her gut soon proves to be right—Jan immediately backtracks and warns her that they will both be in danger if she asks any more questions. Could this kind and elderly man really be a cold-blooded killer?

Heloise quickly realizes that this is a darker, and far more complicated, investigation. Jan is clearly afraid of something, but who or what he’s afraid of could be a dangerous question for Heloise to find the answer to. And that’s the least of her problems: How is a string of disappearances of several young women decades earlier connected to this horrifying confession? Why are the next of kin, not to mention the police, lying to her at every turn? What else could Jan be hiding?

Enlisting her friend, detective inspector Erik Schäfer, Heloise begins her descent into the past, unsure of what she will unearth. Will she discover the truth before Jan’s last breath? Or will she soon be joining him in the grave?

First published by Lindhardt & Ringhof in 2020

Denmark, Lindhardt & Ringhof
Estonia, Rahva Raamat
Finland, Bazar Kustannus
Germany, Fischer Verlag
Norway, Vigmostad & Bjørke
Poland, Kobiece
Russia,  Eksmo
Slovenia, Mladinska Knjiga
Sweden, LB Förlag
US, Crooked Lane

Hancock saves a whopper for the deceptively quiet climax.
Kirkus Reviews

There is a pace in the language and plot that makes it impossible to put Pitbull down [..] Anne Mette Hancock has established herself at the top [..].
Nettavisen (Norwegian newspaper)

Pitbull, the third book in the series about the journalist Heloise Kaldan and the crime inspector Erik Schäfer, is the best one in the series. […] Pitbull is both rough and touching. Thought-provoking, entertaining and at times witty. […] Hancock writes really nice. It’s solid suspense until the very last pages, where the author twists the story one extra time. An unexpected ending. And Pitbull is more than just raw action and gunshots, sometimes I was moved and affected by the reading.
Vildmedkrimi.dk

Hancock’s stories are well constructed and have a sustained arc of suspense.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, (biggest renowned German national daily)

[…] suspense that lasts to the penultimate page. Only then does the surprising and shocking conclusion come about.
Trierischer Volksfreund (regional daily)

In the complex but coherent story, many characters contribute to the dark events.
Bote der Urschweiz (Swiss daily)

Atmospherically tightly written thriller.
Börsenblatt (booksellers magazine)

Hancock has written one of the most brilliant psychological suspense novels that I have read. Pitbull raises the level of the Danish scene for crime novels to a new level.
hverdags_psykologi (Instagram)

Pitbull is a strong and intense book. It’s constructed in a solid way with a constant curve of suspense, with short chapters that urge on the reader automatically. I can only recommend Pitbull the warmest.
book_a_rest (Instagram)

It’s so well-executed and deep. It has bloody and detailed descriptions, it has suspense and a lovely love story, which gets just the right amount of space in the story. It has a fantastic plot twist that gave me goosebumps when the moment of unveiling came […]
Krimitanker (Blog)

BOOKS

Fiction