Dead Men (Marie and Lotte Book 1) by Mette Glargaard

person could be a neurotic perfectionist without any desire to hurt others. A predator could be scruffy and messy to look at, but it was rare. My own statistics say that the chance that a predator has a sophisticated image is around 80%.
    As I sat there in my favorite cafe shortly after Verner’s demise, with a glass of mulled wine in front of me, it dawned on me that I missed the hunt. I was very pleased with myself over the success of his death, but now there was a void to be filled. I wondered if you can get addicted to the hunt, or was it the actual killing I had become addicted to?
    I decided I had to check on the internet, there would certainly be articles and comments on the topic. I had, at one time, visited a forum for people who claimed to be serial killers and I lurked around for a couple of days before I found that they were much more likely to be thrill seekers who’d run a mile before they actually killed someone.
    Outside the cafe, in front of the bright and cheerfully decorated department store in central Copenhagen, was a mother with two small children. Probably in her mid-30s, she looked frozen as her children pulled her hands to get her into the toy shop next door. It was cold and they were all three dressed in the kind of outfits that made them look like colored marshmallows with legs. The mother’s tousled hair hung in wisps around her face, and her eyes had a haunted expression. She looked like one of those women who often felt as if they were a single mother, even though they were married. That type of women would often suffer in silence and they seem to be able to do everything alone, and preferably before it’s necessary. Therefore, they have lost in advance, and they know it, and it makes them restless at night.
    With a whispering voice, I began to sing the Alice Cooper song I had heard as an eighteen year-old; a song which made so much sense to me. I dreamed about meeting the singer and thank him for making it absolutely clear to me how most men look at women:
    Man got his woman to take his seed
    He’s got the power oh she got the need
    She spends her life through pleasing up her man
    She feeds him dinner or anything she can...
    Next to the young mother was an elderly lady busy choosing a poinsettia from a street vendor. She took each plant up and considered it from all angles, so she could get one with exactly the right mix of red and green; another example of Christmas success criteria. I thought of my own desire for perfectionism in plants. The way plants unfold into life when they grow wild is one of the most beautiful symbols of life’s diversity. To kill off the enthusiasm for life that plants show with their growth is a very sick way to control life. To call some plants weeds tells me more about the human inability to enjoy life than the number of suicides in the spring.
    A young man, probably a student, hurried past with several large and beautifully wrapped boxes in plastic bags. As he stopped at a red light, his girlfriend appeared beside him. She had perhaps been looking in a shop window and now she wanted a kiss, perhaps to make sure that he was okay with the fact that she had made several detours and let him be the pack mule. She seemed to be dressed in expensive clothes and this gave the finely wrapped presents more meaning; they were out shopping for Christmas gifts with her money.
    The girlfriend looked almost longingly at the two children who struggled to pull their mother along the street. One of them bumped into the elderly lady with the poinsettia and she got an annoyed expression on her face and looked reproachfully at the mother, who sent an exasperated glance back. Real Christmas atmosphere; joy to the world.
    I’m glad that I had never become a mother. I had been a quiet, introverted and very easy to manage child, but unfortunately there was no guarantee that you got one like that yourself. Nowadays, it seems as if half the children are born with attention deficiency