The latest book from Camilla Lackberg, Buried Angels, is thoroughly engaging
and entertaining. The married couple, Patrik Hedstrom, policeman, and Erica
Falck, author, become embroiled in a mystery from decades earlier on the island
of Valö, off the coast of Fjällbacka. This island was home to the summer camp that children from
Fjällbacka all attended, but the big white house
has lain dormant for many years following the disappearance of the headmaster
and his family one Easter Sunday afternoon. There were five pupils staying over
that fateful weekend, but they were ostensibly out fishing all afternoon as
they were not allowed to join the headmaster’s family luncheon. No-one has ever
uncovered what happened to the family of five or why the youngest child, a
little girl, was found wandering the house on her own. Fast-forward to the
present time and the surviving girl is a married woman who has tragically lost
her own child and she and her husband have come back to Valö to renovate the house and set it up as a Bed and Breakfast.
The reader is offered glimpses into the
past, well before the headmaster and his family existed, through the portrayal
of Dagmar, a desperately isolated woman living at the beginning of the 20th
century, her daughter Laura, and, in turn, her daughter, Inez. These parallel
stories, of the generations of the women of one family and the headmaster’s
family, will intersect towards the end of the novel in a surprising and fateful
way.
Concurrently, the lives of the five pupils,
all boys, who were on the island at the time of the family’s disappearance are
scrutinized and we come to realize that they have been holding secrets from
that time all their lives. Nazism is part of this side of the narrative; Nazi Hermann
Göring is thought to have visited one of the
islands in the Fjällbacka archipelago,
and this fact is woven into the plot, with his apparent visit to Sweden pivotal
to the lives of Dagmar and her offspring.
Lackberg has created an intricate plot,
spanning decades and generations of local families. As the reader works through
it, and various things are revealed, it loses none of its fascination, keeping
you engaged to the end. I think this is Camilla Lackberg’s best so far and I am
thrilled that we will have the opportunity to hear Camilla speak of Buried Angels, and all her novels, when
she joins us at Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, 19 May. Full details: www.readersfeast.com.au
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