This novel was a little more noir, even grisly, than my normal choice of reading.

Having just survived a hot spell here, I could empathise with the skeleton investigation team which takes on the first case. The victim has amnesia so has no clue as to what has happened to her., and the team really has nothing to work on. Her parents have only just discovered she is missing.

Malin Fors' mind is distracted by the fact that her daughter Tove, approximately the same age as the first victims, has gone on a holiday to Bali with her father.

The central theme of the story is the relationship between fathers and their daughters.

Those who like a bit of paranormal in their crime fiction will undoubtedly like this book berrter than I did. The victims' voices, italicised, provide a commentary on the investigation, and that really stretched the bounds of credibility for me. So, just at the moment I probably won't be looking for #3. ( )

interesting plot, but the flow of the story is rather hard to follow, not sure if it's from the swedish-to-english translation, or just the way the author wrote it...very hard book to get all the way through. ( )

Yep. Good thriller. I'm invested enough to read the sequels. ( )

In the UK this is known as "Midsummer Death". On the cover it compared this to Nesbo and Larsson. I think Mankell is a much closer reference point with the team of detectives in a smallish town in rural Sweden but that is where the comparison stops. Whilst the police procedural elements were quite interesting, I did not like either the plot or the characters and I was really interested from the constant interjections of the victims/angels. I shall not be seeking out any more of his books. ( )

A great read. Male author, female pov seems to me to me to work mostly (in one or two places it was awkward). And the book is near the top of the crime fiction I've read. This is quality lit. as well as great thriller writing, invoking a sense of environment without resorting to the travel catalogue-style cliches of more mundane thriller writing (when it bothers to do that at all). It's so strongly done that I'm not going to read the author's winter novel until January. And that care in presenting the context of the events makes the turn of the novel from procedural to to personal drama quite believable (even if you have a suspicion that it's what's going to happen from about 1/3 through). Acknowledgements to the translator, too. Characters are given depth, though the existential-dilemma dimension is a little overdrawn in some places. But it's great stuff and does the proper thriller thing too, racking up the tension to a conclusion redolent of a horror novel. Don't bother reading the epilogue, it's so obvious it can only have been written for the publisher. ( )