The Ice Princess Camilla Lackberg Ebook Readers
The Ice Princess (Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck, Book 1) - Ebook written by Camilla Lackberg. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read The Ice Princess (Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck, Book 1).
For the first time in English, the psychological thriller debut of No 1 bestselling Swedish crime sensation Camilla Lackberg. Returning to her hometown after the funeral of her parents, writer Erica Falck finds a community on the brink of tragedy.
The death of her childhood friend, Alex, is just the beginning. Her wrists slashed, her body frozen in an ice-cold bath, it seems, at first, that she has taken her own life. Erica conceives a memoir about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will help to overcome her writer's block as well as answer questions about their own past. While her interest grows to an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspicions about the case.
But it is only when they start working together that the truth begins to emerge about this small town with a deeply disturbing past! The information about The Ice Princess shown above was first featuredin 'The BookBrowse Review' - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks.In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication.If you are the publisher or author of this book and feelthat the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available,please with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
A great detective story from the Queen of Nordic noir, translated from Swedish. The author has also been called Sweden’s Agatha Christie. The book is free-standing but it’s #2 in her 10-volume series featuring detective Patrick Hedstrom.The focus is on a crazy feuding family, descendants of a now-deceased charismatic preacher who passed his “healing ability” on to his two sons. The members of the family range from a wealthy accountant living on a big estate to “trailer trash” – a morbidly obese A great detective story from the Queen of Nordic noir, translated from Swedish.
The author has also been called Sweden’s Agatha Christie. The book is free-standing but it’s #2 in her 10-volume series featuring detective Patrick Hedstrom.The focus is on a crazy feuding family, descendants of a now-deceased charismatic preacher who passed his “healing ability” on to his two sons. The members of the family range from a wealthy accountant living on a big estate to “trailer trash” – a morbidly obese woman with two 30-ish sons who live at home and live by robbing empty vacation cottages. She spends all her time rearranging photo albums from the days when she was a beauty queen. The blurbs call them a “feuding clan of misfits, religious fanatics and criminals.” OK, that fits.The immediate mystery is that the body of a young missing woman is found in a gorge in a scenic tourist area dumped off a cliff.
Beneath that body are two skeletons of young women missing from twenty-four years ago. The new body has been tortured and killed in the same gruesome manner as the old bodies. A fourth woman has just gone missing.The plot proceeds with a lot of focus on the personal lives of the detectives as well as on the family members suspected in the recent disappearances just as they were suspected twenty years ago. (It helped me at first to make a genealogy chart to keep track of all the family connections.)The lead detective has a lot going on at home with his wife pregnant with their first child. The female detective on the team is subject to disrespect by some of the older men. We have a burned-out, lazy, know-it-all detective as well as an alcoholic.We are spared graphic details of the victims’ sexual abuse and torture but are given short entries of the women’s thoughts almost as if they had kept diaries.
We are treated to a tightly-knit, plausible and complex plot. When an exhumation of a grave is ordered for DNA testing, we get three surprises fed to us one at a time as various results come in.We also get local color of Sweden in and around Fjallbacka, a small coastal tourist resort on Sweden’s western coast. This is the actual town where the author grew up. All in all, a good and enjoyable detective read.photos of Fjallbacka: top from kevinandamanda.com; bottom from AFAR.comphoto of the author from book jacket and from carinteriordesigns.net. This is the second book in this series by Swedish author. She seems to be one of those love her or hate her authors as her ratings veer between one and five stars at random!
Nevertheless I enjoyed this offering as much as the first book. Our main characters, Patrik and Erica, are back and this time it is Patrik's turn to take centre stage as Erica sits at home heavily pregnant during a heat wave. I felt for her!
The story was excellent although I got a little lo This is the second book in this series by Swedish author. She seems to be one of those love her or hate her authors as her ratings veer between one and five stars at random! Nevertheless I enjoyed this offering as much as the first book. Our main characters, Patrik and Erica, are back and this time it is Patrik's turn to take centre stage as Erica sits at home heavily pregnant during a heat wave.
I felt for her! The story was excellent although I got a little lost at times regarding who was who and what their relationships were. There were a lot of characters and they were all related! The book also jumped around a lot from one person's perspective to another and occasionally I was forced to read back and work things out. This was a small price to pay though for a really entertaining story and a satisfactory conclusion to the mystery.
The bottom line: the novel's premise is interesting, but I did not enjoy the book because of the sloppy writing (a translation problem?), the unsympathetic characters, and the shame-on-you dirty writers' tricks Lackberg uses to keep readers from seeing or knowing what the characters see and know.I wrote a much longer version of this review, but the gist remains the same. While the plot was interesting (I did read all the way through to the end), it wasn't enough to overcome how annoy The bottom line: the novel's premise is interesting, but I did not enjoy the book because of the sloppy writing (a translation problem?), the unsympathetic characters, and the shame-on-you dirty writers' tricks Lackberg uses to keep readers from seeing or knowing what the characters see and know.I wrote a much longer version of this review, but the gist remains the same. While the plot was interesting (I did read all the way through to the end), it wasn't enough to overcome how annoyed I was by the rest of the book.The writing itself relies heavily on helping verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.so much so that I had to grit my teeth to finish the book.
I'm not sure if these words just flow better in Swedish, or if perhaps the translator didn't lavish proper attention on this book. (The same translator also handled Stieg Larsson's books, and I don't remember having this problem with those books.) Whatever the outcome, the writing itself had me wanting to toss the book across the room.I also had a hard time sympathizing with any of the characters. I expected this to be the case with the suspects, but most of the police officers and supporting characters are equally lacking in self-awareness. Even the main characters are both pretty clueless, if well-intentioned. Any bits of insight delivered came from the narrator, not the characters.Lackberg also used a few dirty tricks to prolong the suspense. Characters frequently open letters or receive phone calls that change everything-and they tell us that it changes everything-but the reader doesn't get to see the letters or hear the person on the other end of the phone delivering the bombshell. This seems unfair-if the suspense requires elements of the plot to be hidden, keep them hidden from the characters, too.
If the characters find out who's to blame, why not let the reader know, too? Unless, of course, it's to be sure he or she turns another 75 pages. This is a follow up to the Ice Princess.
This is really more like 3.5 stars, I marked it down from 4 stars because of the lack of Erica. This character that took center stage in the last book was relegated to the pregnant girlfriend role and I hated it. Her big story was having to deal with uninvited guests! She seemed like part of the scenery. I also didn't like how Anna was relegated to a few pages, it seemed like the author just didn't know what to do with her after her big drama This is a follow up to the Ice Princess. This is really more like 3.5 stars, I marked it down from 4 stars because of the lack of Erica. This character that took center stage in the last book was relegated to the pregnant girlfriend role and I hated it.
Her big story was having to deal with uninvited guests! She seemed like part of the scenery. I also didn't like how Anna was relegated to a few pages, it seemed like the author just didn't know what to do with her after her big drama in book one. While I am still complaining, this book could have been 100 pages shorter because there was a lot of whining about the heat and a lot of back story about the suspects that was unnecessary, we don't have to understand or feel for them. On the good side, it was good to get to know the police personnel better, and the editing is improved from the first book. The mystery was decent and I am hoping that Erica is back full force in the next book or it may be the last of the series for me.
This is the second book in this series and I enjoyed it just as much as the first.The story centres on Patrik more this time as Ericka is in the last stages of her pregnancy.The mystery revolves around a dead body which causes police to revisit the disappearance of two girls some twenty years earlier. As the investigation proceeds it appears that a particular family are about to have a lot of skeletons emerge that they would rather keep hidden.A well told story, I am looking forward to the third This is the second book in this series and I enjoyed it just as much as the first.The story centres on Patrik more this time as Ericka is in the last stages of her pregnancy.The mystery revolves around a dead body which causes police to revisit the disappearance of two girls some twenty years earlier. As the investigation proceeds it appears that a particular family are about to have a lot of skeletons emerge that they would rather keep hidden.A well told story, I am looking forward to the third book. This is a solid Scandinavian crime novel,which weaves together scenes of domesticity and scenes of horror, in a social democratic context that manages to have its fair share of religious fanatics. I would have rated it higher, but I felt that the use of the 'omniscient' narrator sometimes got in the way of the story. I prefer to have everything necessary to the final understanding of the plot emerge from the story, rather than have the omniscient narrator come up with a lot of extra, missing mat This is a solid Scandinavian crime novel,which weaves together scenes of domesticity and scenes of horror, in a social democratic context that manages to have its fair share of religious fanatics.
I would have rated it higher, but I felt that the use of the 'omniscient' narrator sometimes got in the way of the story. I prefer to have everything necessary to the final understanding of the plot emerge from the story, rather than have the omniscient narrator come up with a lot of extra, missing material right at the end of the book.
This was the first of Camilla Lackberg's novels I have had the pleasure to read. I will certainly read more of them. I keep wondering HOW on earth the writer thought of that story!! What was on her mind at the first place! Good work Camilla Lackberg! So promising for her next novels that I m sure gonna follow.Definitely better than Lackberg's first book The Ice Princess - stronger plot with many scenes of agony (ex. The grave moment: couldnt wait, had to turn the pages forward to see what was found!☺ ) Liked the fact that we were updated on Patrick and Erica's lives as well as on other people's stories that w I keep wondering HOW on earth the writer thought of that story!!
What was on her mind at the first place! Good work Camilla Lackberg! So promising for her next novels that I m sure gonna follow.Definitely better than Lackberg's first book The Ice Princess - stronger plot with many scenes of agony (ex. The grave moment: couldnt wait, had to turn the pages forward to see what was found!☺ ) Liked the fact that we were updated on Patrick and Erica's lives as well as on other people's stories that were introduced to us at the first book.What really made it difficult for me though: too many names, had to go over again and again who is who and the relations between different people. Other than that, I strongly recommend the book and the writer! Cant wait for the next one!
This is a crazy good creepy dark Swedish crime series. 'The Preacher' is the second in the series and for me, it was even better in some ways than the first (which I loved - 'The Ice Princess'). In this novel, the focus is mostly on Patrik, the police detective, rather than his partner, Erica, the writer.
The long-term support version of Ubuntu Server, including the Queens release of OpenStack and support guaranteed until April 2023 — 64-bit only. This release. Download ubuntu server iso 64 bit. If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or if you need full support for. Server install image for 64-bit PC (AMD64) computers (standard download). Want to download via-bitTorrent links, get images with more language packs, use the text-based. Ubuntu 19.04 Desktop (64-bit) Ubuntu 19.04 Server (64-bit). Overview Cloud IoT Server Desktop Alternative downloads Ubuntu flavours. Download the latest LTS version of Ubuntu, for desktop PCs and laptops. Five years, until April 2023, of free security and maintenance updates, guaranteed. Most Macs with Intel processors will work with either 64-bit or Mac images.
Much more focus on Erica in her first novel.Most of the action takes place with Patrik's leading an investigation into crimes of tortured and murdered young girls - two cold cases from 20+ yea This is a crazy good creepy dark Swedish crime series. 'The Preacher' is the second in the series and for me, it was even better in some ways than the first (which I loved - 'The Ice Princess'). In this novel, the focus is mostly on Patrik, the police detective, rather than his partner, Erica, the writer. Much more focus on Erica in her first novel.Most of the action takes place with Patrik's leading an investigation into crimes of tortured and murdered young girls - two cold cases from 20+ years ago that are linked to a current homicide and a missing girl they are trying desperately to find. This is all mixed up with the weird Hult family.any more and I'd give too much away.
I can totally understand why Camilla Lackberg is the most successful author in Sweden today.Highly recommend her work if you like literate, weird, creepy police detective novels with good characters and sometimes darkly humorous writing. I'm going to start the third one, even though I have a pile of great books I want to read.
I'm totally hooked on this series! This is my 3rd book in the Patrick Hedstorm series, and the worst among rhose.A very insipid tale told of young women found dead or missing in the 70s as well as in 2004. And connection sought for these different timelines of crimes. The side story of Erica, Patrick's pregnant partner and her sister Anne who is forever attracting the wrong kind of man, too wasn't thAt convincing.Would continue with the series as I have invested in the private lives of the investigators and their respective fa This is my 3rd book in the Patrick Hedstorm series, and the worst among rhose.A very insipid tale told of young women found dead or missing in the 70s as well as in 2004.
And connection sought for these different timelines of crimes. The side story of Erica, Patrick's pregnant partner and her sister Anne who is forever attracting the wrong kind of man, too wasn't thAt convincing.Would continue with the series as I have invested in the private lives of the investigators and their respective families. Whew this second installment of the Patrik Hedstrom series had even more characters than the first. Brother's sister's cousin who? While I like the series' dark story line and I love the two main characters, I could not keep track of all characters, especially in the Holt(spelled right?) family. The scandalous activities of said family didn't help the confusion.Patrik and Erika were cute in this story, expecting their first child ( and feeling the strain of that) all the while playing host for Whew this second installment of the Patrik Hedstrom series had even more characters than the first.
Brother's sister's cousin who? While I like the series' dark story line and I love the two main characters, I could not keep track of all characters, especially in the Holt(spelled right?) family. The scandalous activities of said family didn't help the confusion.Patrik and Erika were cute in this story, expecting their first child ( and feeling the strain of that) all the while playing host for annoying friends and family members who are taking advantage of the couple's ideal vacation spot of a home.The murder mystery was interesting, again alternating between past and present, and again I didn't guess the killer until the end.All in all a solid mystery with interesting main characters but way too many extras. These books have so much potential. I am persisting, as I am sure the author must wake up at some stage and realise that potential. Until then, I just feel a bit frustrated.I picked the twists hundreds of pages before they were revealed. The first major one particularly as there was so much clunky and heavy handed foreshadowing.
I was like 'I bet it's that' and 120pp later, they worked it out. I should be a Swedish policeman apparently. Crime rate would be right down. As long as everyone w Urgh.
These books have so much potential. I am persisting, as I am sure the author must wake up at some stage and realise that potential. Until then, I just feel a bit frustrated.I picked the twists hundreds of pages before they were revealed.
The first major one particularly as there was so much clunky and heavy handed foreshadowing. I was like 'I bet it's that' and 120pp later, they worked it out. I should be a Swedish policeman apparently. Crime rate would be right down.
As long as everyone was as painfully obvious as they are in this series.I read this book for a challenge for someone with the same marital status as myself. I'm in a de facto relationship, and it is hard to find someone in a book in similar circumstances. One, as we expect people to be married so it takes less explaining if couples are married. And as someone who is not married, there is a lot of explaining that happens. You have to justify your lifestyle constantly. And secondly, as if you have met the couple before, it is a nice way to end a book.
Nice and neat, with a little, quaint wedding. So to have people not in that circumstance was very refreshing.That is, until the translator got lazy. The word he is looking for is 'partner'. We'd be trundling along and then there would be a wife thrown in. Who's the wife?
Is there an ex? He means Erika.
The Ice Princess Camilla Lackberg Ebook Readers Free
But as his world view or English skills can only deal with a binary it seems, it just was lazy and annoying. I mean, maybe the Swedish word is the same? But part of being a translator would be finding the right words in your target language, wouldn't it?Petty problems, but both enough to jar me and annoy me enough. One day, I hope to love Camilla Lackberg. Just not today. The novel takes place in Sweden. Police Investigator Patrik Englund is enjoying a vacation with his very pregnant wife, Erica, when he learns that a six-year-old boy has discovered the dead body of a young girl while out playing.
Beneath the young girls body are the skeletons of two more women who disappeared in 1979. Autopsies prove that all three had been slowly tortured over the course of many days before dying.The story is told through flashbacks to 1979 (when the first 2 women were murdere The novel takes place in Sweden. Police Investigator Patrik Englund is enjoying a vacation with his very pregnant wife, Erica, when he learns that a six-year-old boy has discovered the dead body of a young girl while out playing.
Beneath the young girls body are the skeletons of two more women who disappeared in 1979. Autopsies prove that all three had been slowly tortured over the course of many days before dying.The story is told through flashbacks to 1979 (when the first 2 women were murdered), from Patriks perspective, Ericas perspective - and from several other characters perspectiveThe story develops into the past of the Hult family, whose family patriarch, Ephraim Hult, was a highly successful evangelical preacher, and whose two sons Johannes and Gabriel had supernatural healing powers when they were children. A rift developed between the 2 brothers because of the dad, Ephraim. Ephriam and Johannes have both been deceased many years when the story opens. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first one, but it was still a pretty solid book.The writing was still engaging and the characters interesting, but the plot was lacking.I don't think the situation with The Preacher and the Hult cult was taken to it's true potential.
Princess Camilla Of Wales
We barely knew the Hults, except that there was some serious bad blood right there and that every single one of them had something to hide.I would like to know more about what drove them to do the things they did.Also, Anna'sI didn't enjoy this one as much as the first one, but it was still a pretty solid book.The writing was still engaging and the characters interesting, but the plot was lacking.I don't think the situation with The Preacher and the Hult cult was taken to it's true potential. We barely knew the Hults, except that there was some serious bad blood right there and that every single one of them had something to hide.I would like to know more about what drove them to do the things they did.Also, Anna's side story is driving me crazy. How can that woman be so dumb? I can't believe she went back to her abusive asshole of a husband after what he did to their daughter.The fact she's always getting mad at Erica for pointing out the truth and wanting the best for her is infuriating. She wants to act adult, mature and rational, then she does stupid childish things that endanger her and her kids. Unbelievable!Anyway, this series is worth keeping reading it, so that's what I'll do. After years of anticipation (on my part, at least) Camilla Lackberg's first novel, The Ice Princess was finally published in the U.S.
(It's been in English translation in the UK and Canada since 2008.) I'm happy to say that the book really delivers-it reminded me a lot of Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back with its portrayal of a claustrophobic small town rife with secret scandals and tensions. In The Ice Princess, Lackberg did a great job of imbuing each character-even minor ones-wi After years of anticipation (on my part, at least) Camilla Lackberg's first novel, The Ice Princess was finally published in the U.S. (It's been in English translation in the UK and Canada since 2008.) I'm happy to say that the book really delivers-it reminded me a lot of Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back with its portrayal of a claustrophobic small town rife with secret scandals and tensions.
In The Ice Princess, Lackberg did a great job of imbuing each character-even minor ones-with an interesting back story and relevance in the story's greater context. And she also set up an enjoyable relationship between main character Erica Falck and her new lover, Detective Patrik Hedstrom.Given all of this, I was eager to get my hands on the second installment in this series, The Preacher.
This novel is also forthcoming in the US, but I figured it would be awhile and so bit the bullet and ordered a copy from the UK. Unfortunately, I have to admit, that I was more than a little disappointed by this novel. Not really in terms of Lackberg's writing-she's still very good at balancing a murder investigation with a domestic subplot (here, Erica's pregnant with Patrik's baby, she's still having trouble with her sister, etc.) However, this doesn't pay off as much because of some rather notable shortcomings, which are as follows:1. The murder plot here is much, much more grim. Now don't get me wrong-a faked suicide in the previous book is pretty grim (as were the background scenarios that lead to said murder), but this book takes it to another level.
Several murders, preceded by bone breaking and other forms of slow-death torture, enacted on teenagers, over many years. Not nice stuff. It's a lot to take honestly, and if I'm going to read about those sorts of acts, they better be in the service of a pretty well developed, large-scale plot. And, also, you better have a pretty credible uber-sadist in the story, because well, there's got to be a pretty good explanation for why you decided that kind of pain needed to be inflicted on your characters.2. This brings me to problem 2. The rationale for these murders-if not the exact murderer himself-is obvious within the first 100 pages.
I'm not exaggerating. It became so overwhelmingly apparent how Lackberg was going to explain the 'reason' for the above-mentioned violence/torture that I actually skipped ahead in the book to confirm that I was right. This is horribly disappointing for reasons I'm sure I don't have to explain.3. The murderer is-and don't worry, I'm not spoiling here-presented as part of a large feuding family almost immediately. So the possibilities of who the actual killer are extremely limited from the get go. This makes the whole investigation, which is actually, admirably complicated, rather anticlimactic. Not that into this family's backstory, either.4.
Erica is actually not very present in this story at all. Which is a shame because she's likable and interesting and, because she's not on the police force, gives a murder plot a less procedural point of view. Patrik is definitely front and center here.
And I like his character, too, but really-not as much. Given the fact that Erica has started writing True Crime novels, it seems to me that she could have been more involved here. And Lackberg even draws attention to the fact that she's twiddling her thumbs while she waits to have her baby. It's like she knows that there's not enough Erica in the story, but started writing it that way and can't go back. Instead, she uses the scenes with Erica to provide the comic relief-lots of horrible house guests descend on she and Patrik because it's summer and everyone loves coming to their small town over the summer.
But those scenes aren't-with one macaroni-suffused exception-really all that good. The novel's format is a little too reminiscent of The Ice Princess, which makes Lackberg's approach to plot development/reveal seem a little too mechanical. The investigation scenes are intercut with italicized passages in the voice of one of the victims, which is exactly what she did in her first book. In The Ice Princess this worked out rather cleverly-you actually thought the italicized passages might be narrated by the killer, until it becomes obvious that the speaker is dead as well.
In The Preacher adding these passages is probably supposed to make the reader sympathize more with the victims, which is totally unnecessary, given what we're told they had to go through before they died. Of course we empathize with them. Now you're just rubbing our faces in the tragedy of it all, which we don't really need. It's overbearing.That about does it for the major problems. I like Lackberg's characters, though, and I honestly like the way she handles their development, back story, etc.
And I definitely would read another of her novels (there's one more in English translation, and she's gotten a big book deal to release all her books in the US)-but I might not be in such a rush to order the next installment this time. A swing and a miss.This book was quite different from the first book, Ice Princess, even switching who was the primary narrator (in-book). I found it predictable, to have too much angst and not enough consequences. I was not impressed with the ending, nor did I like it, but it would have been a worse book had the case ended differently.Leukaemia - I know I have seen crime shows that used the 'two different DNA in the same person' shtick, and probably the leukaemia one specificall A swing and a miss.This book was quite different from the first book, Ice Princess, even switching who was the primary narrator (in-book). I found it predictable, to have too much angst and not enough consequences. I was not impressed with the ending, nor did I like it, but it would have been a worse book had the case ended differently.Leukaemia - I know I have seen crime shows that used the 'two different DNA in the same person' shtick, and probably the leukaemia one specifically - and I do not watch any television and have not for years.
I understand that it was probably an answer for the author as to how to have the bloodtest not just end the case there, but that does not make it less of a Chekov's gun and predictable.Noose - The charaters/cops, from the retelling of the story of Robert finding his father, never showed any hesitation or questioning of 'I saw him laying on the floor with the rope around his neck'. Unless the rope was strong enough to kill him but frayed enough to drop him, or someone else pulled him down first, the rope could not have possibly killed him. The story, evidence aside, did not make sense.As for the consequences thing, mostly I dislike how the cop that screwed up a bunch never got any reprimand, not even when breaking a promise to the chief, AND when there was a perfect opportunity for it the wife's call about the baby interrupts it and that is the end of that. Thinking it over, there were other instances too where the characters did things that didn't change the course of events at all, good and bad.On the topic of the wife, she went from a main character to a nothing character with filler scenes that did nothing at all for the book apart from whine and set up for a story in the next book. She caused problems (but small and quickly solved) for herself, interrupted the main character's more monotonous or suspenseful moments with a home-break, insisted on getting involved/helping but backed down and never solved her boredom, and went into labor in a really odd moment for the book as if the writer wanted to just avoid writing the argument about the cop that actually hurt the case and might have been why the investigation was so far behind. The only thing the wife did do of use was start up a plotline about Anna but it was not pursued at all with it kinda but poorly cliff-hanging for the next book.I am no longer so dissapointed that Overdrive lacks #3 and beyond.
'The Preacher' is Swedish author Camilla Lackberg's second police mystery mystery. I did not read the first one, and think after this book, probably will not. As I said in the past about my reviews of book and critique of authors' works is often based upon my reading preference at the time of reading it.
The story is set in Fjallbacka, a Swedish coastal town and begins with a young female’s body found murdered. On further investigation her body is placed on top of the remains of two young girls 'The Preacher' is Swedish author Camilla Lackberg's second police mystery mystery. I did not read the first one, and think after this book, probably will not. As I said in the past about my reviews of book and critique of authors' works is often based upon my reading preference at the time of reading it. The story is set in Fjallbacka, a Swedish coastal town and begins with a young female’s body found murdered.
On further investigation her body is placed on top of the remains of two young girls who were reported missing 24 years ago and never found. The local policeman who helps to solve the case is Patrik Hedstrom. He appears a thorough enough detective, but I found something about him that seemed to bother me. Perhaps it was his preoccupation with his wife who is very pregnant during a very hot summer. And to make matters worse, their home is plagued by visiting annoying relatives. I didn’t find this information about his wife and the relatives all that interesting and certainly not enough to take me away from the solving of the case. Other subplots in this book I found, often just as uninteresting and take it away from the story.
In fact I had a hard time really relating to just about anybody in this book. The story seemed to go in one direction and then we went to other characters in their dysfunctional roles and quite soon I lost track of my interest in the story. The conversation between characters is stilted, and maybe this is something lost in translation. Initially I decided to read this book because two of my other favorite Scandinavian mystery authors who books I find most interesting and they are Henning Mankell and Steig Larssen. This book was OK, but that is all it was. The development of the mystery was not thrilling at all, as it was a bit boring and dragged out.
Way too much information about characters that don't matter and don't have any role in the solving of the murder. After a while I started to skip all the bits about Erica because they were so irrelevant. Too much vital clues about the murder are revealed too late in the book. I wish they were spread out more evenly, as the first part of the book felt a little This book was OK, but that is all it was.
The development of the mystery was not thrilling at all, as it was a bit boring and dragged out. Way too much information about characters that don't matter and don't have any role in the solving of the murder.
After a while I started to skip all the bits about Erica because they were so irrelevant. Too much vital clues about the murder are revealed too late in the book.
I wish they were spread out more evenly, as the first part of the book felt a little uneventful.All in all, an OK book, but left a lot to be desired from a crime novel. Where is the suspense and thrill?