The ninth and last featuring NYPD Lt Sigrid Harald. I bought TAKE OUT a while ago and decided, as I have with many other books, to start with the first in the series and re-read them all. In this book, set a year after her lover Oscar Nauman's death, Harald is coming out of her grieving and fully back at work. Two men are found dead on a park bench, and it's determined they ate poisoned food provided by someone. There's the widow of the Mafia don, and a famous opera singer, and a house with a red door...who among them sent down the poison? Which one was the intended victim? In a subplot, a man claiming to be Nauman's son shows up, with a birth certificate and everything...and says pleasantly he'll make a claim on the millions that Nauman left to Harald. The two dead guys are a fun puzzle, although I didn't try to figure it out myself.
I don't think there was anything to be gained by reading this series in order. Unlike her Judge Knott series, the personal life of Lt Harald is not such a feature of the books. Her relationship with famous artist Oscar Nauman provides a lot of plots, but it's the fact that she's there and not that they are involved that drives it. Each one has enough backstory to catch up a new reader. I didn't find them compelling enough that I'll read them again, the New York art world is not that interesting to me, and so if I ever need room on the shelves they are candidates for trade.
I don't think there was anything to be gained by reading this series in order. Unlike her Judge Knott series, the personal life of Lt Harald is not such a feature of the books. Her relationship with famous artist Oscar Nauman provides a lot of plots, but it's the fact that she's there and not that they are involved that drives it. Each one has enough backstory to catch up a new reader. I didn't find them compelling enough that I'll read them again, the New York art world is not that interesting to me, and so if I ever need room on the shelves they are candidates for trade.
