She's Never Coming Back Review

Hans Koppel's She's Never Coming Back is not a police procedural but, rather, a thriller. Ylva disappears one day without trace and her husband is, naturally, frantic. He is also, naturally, the first suspect the police think of as the days go by without any lead into Ylva's disappearance. There is a young daughter, Sanna, and Mike (the husband) slowly settles into a routine of looking after her and trying to regain some semblance of a normal life. What none of them can know is that Ylva is watching them the whole time. She is fact being held hostage in a cellar which is rigged up so that she can see clearly her husband and daughter as they live each day. It is the ultimate cruelty, to be so close and yet completely incapable of communicating with her loved ones. As the story unfolds, it becomes a saga of the worst of human nature and the ways in which we take on a new 'normal' when circumstances demand it. Koppel is  a pseudonym for a Swedish based author; whoever he or she is, they have penned an intriguing and disturbing novel in She's Never Coming Back.