The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

“Joona Linna’s colleagues at the National Criminal Investigation Department will tell you they admire him, and they do, but they also envy him. And they will tell you they like him, and they do, but they also find him aloof. As a homicide investigator, his track record is unparalleled in Sweden…..But what most don’t know is that his unique stubbornness is the result of unbearable personal guilt”

It is Detective Linna who heads up the investigation into the slaying of a family. The first officers on the scene thought everyone was dead but, in fact, the young boy, Josepf, is still alive.  Dreadfully injured, he lapses into a coma and Linna brings in Erik Maria Bark, an expert in the treatment of shock and trauma. The problem is that Bark has been at the centre of a  controversy in earlier years involving his use of hypnosis.

The unfolding story draws on characters on the edge of an emotional precipice with manipulation, sinister intent, and fraught relationships at the heart of it. Linna is a wonderful main character while the emotionally unravelling Bark is expertly depicted.

The film rights have been sold to this title and more books featuring Linna are on the way from Lars Kepler ( a pseudonym of Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril)