Book Review: I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW by Heine Bakkeid

I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW by Heine Bakkeid

Bloomsbury (UK); 11/14/19

CBTB Rating: 5/5

The Verdict: A chilling, atmospheric Nordic must-read

You know those books that come seemingly out of nowhere and knock you sideways with how very much you love them? That was Heine Bakkeid’s extraordinary crime fiction debut I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW for me. This Norwegian crime novel blends the atmosphere and grit of the Nordic Noir tradition with the spine-tingling chills found in the work of authors like Yrsa Sigurdardottir and C.J. Tudor. I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW is an outstanding crime novel about grief, loss, and the ghosts that haunt us. Set against the backdrop of remote northern Norway, I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW follows a disgraced former police officer who is given a chance at redemption in the form of an off-the-books missing persons investigation. Hired as a private investigator by the parents of a young man who has gone missing at a lighthouse off the coast of northern Norway, Thorkild Aske sets out on what he assumes will be a fruitless mission—a journey that becomes as much about tracking down this missing man as it is about Thorkild confronting his personal demons. With immersive atmosphere and propulsive plotting, I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW wraps readers up in a chilling suspense novel worthy of every bit of praise it has earned. This promising series launch is a must-read for fans of melancholy, atmospheric Nordic suspense. 

Plot Details: 

Fresh out of prison and a stint in a psychiatric hospital, disgraced ex-policeman Thorkild Aske only wants to lose himself in drugged dreams of his beloved Frei. Wild, unknowable Frei. The woman he loved. The woman he has lost forever.

Yet when Frei's young cousin goes missing off the Norwegian coast and Thorkild is called in by the family to help find him, dead or alive, Thorkild cannot refuse. He owes them this.

Tormented by his past, Thorkild soon finds himself deep in treacherous waters. He's lost his reputation – will he now lose his life?

I have the hardest time writing reviews for books I absolutely loved. I get intimidated—how will I ever do this book justice with my words? I’ve started and stopped writing this review three times for that very reason, but I’ve got to start somewhere, so let’s start here: with Heine Bakkeid’s impeccable use of setting in his debut novel. I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW has much in common with its fellow Nordic Noir novels. It is (obviously!) set in Scandinavia; it features a damaged, troubled protagonist haunted by his past; it touches on issues facing the society in which it is set… the list goes on. But from the outset, Bakkeid distinguishes his novel with a unique setting and location that I found refreshing. Now, I love a Nordic crime novel set in one of Scandinavia’s big cities (think Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen), but there’s something undeniably magical about taking a Nordic crime story and plucking it out of these well-tread locales and placing it into a more remote, harsh, mysterious landscape. That is exactly what Heine Bakkeid does in I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW. This Norwegian crime story takes place in northern Norway, outside of Tromsø, a city located above the Arctic circle. Readers follow protagonist Thorkild Aske as he departs his city of Stavanger and travels north on a mission to find a missing young man. With Tromsø as his new home base, Aske then goes even farther into the wilds of northern Norway, traveling out to the lighthouse at which our missing young man was last seen. The powerful weather and breathtaking landscape of this part of the world become a backdrop for our mystery, a barometer for our protagonist’s internal turmoil. Bakkeid brings this stunning land vividly to life; I dare any reader to crack open this book without immediately looking up photos and videos from this part of the world—and maybe adding it to your travel wishlist, too. 

I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW pairs this moody, richly atmospheric setting with a protagonist whose inner turmoil rivals that of northern Norway’s weather. I read lots of great crime fiction, but usually by the time a book is done, I feel that my “relationship” with the book’s protagonist is done, too. It’s not every protagonist that I am desperate to revisit, but I am desperate to revisit Thorkild Aske, the haunted protagonist of I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW. Bakkeid’s protagonist, again, bears all the hallmarks that Nordic Noir readers have come to expect from genre protagonists—but there is much more to him than meets the eye. First, the surface-level facts: Thorkild Aske is a former police officer who, when we meet him, has just been released from a stint in prison, and a stay in a psychiatric hospital. The circumstances that have landed him in this situation are unclear to readers at the beginning of the novel; I will not spoil them for you here. Thorkild suffers from chronic pain, pain which readers know is somehow a result of the traumatic experience he has endured, the very same experience that landed him in prison in the first place. He relies on painkillers to alleviate his physical symptoms, and to alleviate his emotional and mental distress, too. Thorkild might seem like the stereotypical “damaged detective,” and he certainly ticks many of those boxes, but there is much more to him than you might initially believe. Thorkild is a man with a broken heart. He is a man who has lost faith in life, who has all but given up on his ability to have a meaningful life in the wake of all that has happened to him, and in the wake of the things he has done. The woman he loves, Frei, has died, the circumstances surrounding her death left a mystery to readers until later in this story. When Thorkild is contacted by a relative of his beloved Frei to assist in tracking down a missing young man in a remote town, he takes the job simply out of necessity—he expects this trip to northern Norway to be nothing but a wasted effort. But over the course of his journey, Thorkild will do much more than investigate a missing person. He will also confront his personal ghosts (some of whom, I would be remiss not to note, might be even more literal than Thorkild imagines), his troubled relationship with his own family, and much more. 

I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW is not a traditional crime story. It is not a police procedural; while our protagonist is a former police officer, this is not a story that follows a chronological police investigation. It has a mystery component, but it is not a traditional “whodunnit.” It is by no means a supernatural thriller, but some of its scenes are laced with a hint that something else might be out there. I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW is an investigation into the dark corners of our protagonist’s soul, and a consideration of what happens when we can’t run from our demons any longer. Primarily centered in the present day, I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW occasionally provides the readers with flashbacks to Thorkild’s first few days with his beloved Frei, slowly but surely granting readers a complete picture of who Thorkild is, what he has lost, how he has lost it, and how it connects to the circumstances in which he now finds himself. The actual plot of I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW is simple: a former police officer takes on an off-the-books missing persons case. The reading experience in I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW is anything but simple, and, in fact, the less you know about this book’s plot from the outset, the better. This character-driven suspense story will resonate with readers who love crime novels that are slow-burning yet utterly engrossing, layered mysteries that investigate the inner lives of their characters as much as they do the question central to their plot. 

Rich with chilling imagery—and even a touch of otherworldly chills—I WILL MISS YOU TOMORROW is a spine-tingling blend of Nordic Noir and haunting suspense. This is one of my new favorite books I have read so far this year, and I cannot wait to read the next installment in this series. 

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Book Details: 

Paperback: 416 pages

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (November 14, 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1526610760

ISBN-13: 978-1526610768

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