I have an addiction to crime fiction which has only been made worse recently thanks to some amazingly good TV from Denmark. Along with much of the rest of the population, I am a massive fan of The Killing and the trauma of watching the end of the final series was only made bearable thanks to being able to move on to The Bridge and Borgen. Once I had finished with all of those I still needed another Danish fix, which was why I was delighted to get the novel of The Killing for Christmas from my boyfriend Drew (along with a fabulous actual Killing jumper). That is going to take some beating as a present. I knew I needed to save reading the book for a weekend when I was travelling and relaxing a lot so I wouldn’t have to sacrifice sleep to finish it and I’m really glad I did – over 700 pages disappeared in three days of highly enjoyable reading.

It’s quite an unusual book, in that the TV series came first and the crime writer David Hewson was commissioned afterwards to turn the screenplay (by Soren Sveistrup) into a book. He really has done an excellent job. Watching the TV series and then reading the book is definitely the way round to do it. Once you know the outcome it makes reading it and re-living every detail even more enjoyable. It is a strange sensation as you can visualise every scene and what each character looks like – he has captured their on-screen presences and superb acting perfectly. It really is like watching it all over again, only in book format and somehow it’s even more delicious.

The final treat is the fantastic and unexpected twist at the end. For all fans of Sarah Lund you must read this book – it’s Danish crime fiction at its best.