Tove Alsterdal

I read the first volume of this trilogy last October. The second volume also gripped me from the start.
The young policewoman Eira Sjödin again has her hands full. Her mother, who suffers from dementia, is admitted to a nursing home, which she really likes. But what to keep and what to take away is a challenge for Eira. She packs together with her mother, but she unpacks everything behind her back. When everything has been moved, Eira wants to clear out the house, but as her brother Marius show more is in prison (innocent), she is left with everything. On top of everything else, a murder case takes up all her time.
A male corpse is found in the cellar of an abandoned house in the woods. It looks like he was locked up and died of starvation and thirst. She rejoins the investigation team. She soon realises that this murder victim is not the only one and it even looks like it is a serial murder. The worst thing for her is that someone close to her disappears and time is running out to find him alive.
It was exciting from the first to the last page and I'm already looking forward to the next volume. show less

This is the first in a new-to-me Scandi-crime series. I liked it a lot, so I checked the next one out of the library and read it as well, but apparently those are the only two translated into English thus far.

The book is set in fairly far North, but not yet Arctic Circle Sweden. The investigator is 30-something Eira Sjodin who lives with her mother who is suffering from worsening dementia. Eira's brother is a sometime drug-user, sometime petty criminal. Eira is primarily a beat cop in a show more mid-size town, but in this case she is called in to assist the violent crimes division in a case which involved a teenage girl who went missing 15 or 20 years previously. Some of the girls's were found, but her body was never recovered. A fourteen year old boy, eOlof, who was found in possession of the girl's sweater was arrested at the time, and a confession was coerced out of him. Because of the Olof's age, there was no conviction, but everyone "knows" he did it.

Now, so many years later, Olof, now a man, has returned to his old neighborhood, where he discovers his father dead in the bathtub, murdered. The violent crimes division is called in, and what begins as an investigation into the murder of Olof's father soon becomes much more.

I really liked this one, as I said. It's a police procedural moving steadily and logically forward. Although several crimes are involved, they weren't as gory, violent and perverse as in some other Scandi-crime novels I've read recently. I like Eira's back story, her family relationships, and the atmosphere of rural Sweden.

3 stars show less

This Swedish noir detective novel features a heroine whose job takes her back to her hometown to investigate a murder. In so doing, she uncovers a decades-old mystery, with complications that lead back to her own family's possible involvement. At the same time she is dealing with a mother with dementia. This makes for some nicely dramatic moments. There's plenty of suspense, atmosphere, mystery, and twists and turns.

Ally Cornwall, a theatre set designer in New York, has not heard from her husband, Patrick, for nearly two weeks now. Patrick, a highly respected investigative journalist, had gone to Paris to investigate reports of human trafficking, he may be undercover. When Ally, who btw has discovered she is pregnant, can’t reach Patrick by all the usual channels, she flies to Paris to look for him.

Ally’s search for her husband is relatively methodical and resourceful. Much has to be done in show more secret, so as not to comprise both the people who are in the country illegally, and those who shelter them. But, also those who exploit such vulnerable people and the thugs they employ.

Alsterdal has written an excellent mystery about a complex subject, it’s intelligent, detailed and engrossing. The reader is soon well-invested in Ally’s plight, just as the plot thickens and the suspense moves in like a dark cloud. In the end, the author deftly brings the story, more or less, back to the beginning.

Note: For those who may be sensitive, there is a rape in the book. There’s also a bit of revenge fantasy. I think the former is necessary to move the story forward to where the author ultimately takes it, while the latter is more gratuitous (but damn, it felt good….).

This is the Swedish author's first crime novel. I read her 2nd book, [We Know You Remember], last year, and enjoyed it (a first book in a proposed series) . show less