The Devil Book by Asta Olivia Nordenhof review – a Danish series that burns with purpose

<p>This incandescent novel takes in lockdown, the devil, bad investments, erotic thrills and the deadly fire on the Scandinavian Star ferry</p><p>At about 2am on the night of 7&nbsp;April 1990, a fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training coupled with jammed fire doors aiding the spread of the fire and the subsequent release of deadly hydrogen cyanide gas from burning laminates resulted in the deaths of 159&nbsp;people. The disaster was initially blamed on one of the passengers – a&nbsp;lorry driver and convicted arsonist. The fact that this suspect was also one of the fire’s casualties and thus unable to refute the charges against him was almost certainly part of the reason why the truth about the tragedy took so long to come to light. In 2020, a six-hour documentary revealed that the fire had most likely been started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.</p><p>In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof’s Scandinavian Star sequence, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/09/money-to-burn-by-asta-olivia-nordenhof-review-fire-and-energy-in-a-new-septology">Money to Burn</a>, an unnamed narrator is travelling on a bus through Copenhagen when she finds her attention drawn to an elderly man on the street outside. As the bus moves away, she has the “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to travel the same route again in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is at once alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, a couple whose feelings for each other are struggling to survive the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In that book’s final pages, we learn that the root of Kurt’s disaffection might possibly be found in the shattering effects of a bad&nbsp;investment made on his behalf by&nbsp;a man known as T.&l