The Voices Beyond by Johan Theorin

Set on the Baltic island of Oland this is a tale of secrets long held that have disastrous effects on many as they come to light. The central characters are the Kloss family who are the most prominent islanders, running a large resort; a retired sailor Gerlof Davidsson; and a man who left Oland in the 1930s as a young boy.  The ‘homecomer’, as he is known, spent decades in Russia, living a brutal and desperate existence. His return to the island is the catalyst for the truth coming to light about the Kloss family; a truth that has this man determined to exact revenge.

Johan Theorin weaves intricate plots that seem to unfold slowly yet build to a devastating crescendo. Each of his titles are self-contained but this is the fourth in a quartet featuring the island of Oland, a place very familiar to Theorin.

The Voices Beyond title signifies those who can be heard down the years through the oral history of a community. It also, in my opinion, refers to the reach of people long gone from this life. Theorin manages to create intricate plots with original characterisations and a sense of the supernatural without in any way testing the credibility of his narrative. He is one of my favourite authors and never fails to impress.

Camilla Lackberg with us at Reader's Feast Bookstore in Melbourne Australia

I am delighted that Camilla Lackberg will be with us at Reader's Feast, my bookstore in Melbourne, Australia, this coming Monday evening, 19 May, 2014. My most recent blog reviewed her latest book, Buried Angels. Full details are on our website - www.readersfeast.com.au - and bookings are via telephone or email. We love meeting our favourite authors and our readers so if you are near us in Melbourne, do come along. It will be a great conversation. Mary D

Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg *Released in Australia May 2014. Event at Reader's Feast, Melbourne

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 20^th 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

The Son by Jo Nesbo

This just-released title by the creator of Harry Hole is an accomplished work, with an interesting storyline and a great twist at the end. The son of the title is Sonny Lofthus, a convicted and jailed murderer and drug addict who also happens to be the son of a deceased policeman. Sonny is special among the prison population. He attracts other inmates to him, seeking redemption; they believe he can bless them and relieve them of their guilt. Sonny plays this role, almost by default, his silence and stillness generating the response in others. We learn fairly quickly that Sonny is still using drugs, not least because he is being looked after by other prisoners but also because he is a scapegoat for the assistant prison administrator and others. They fabricate evidence that suggests Sonny, on day release, killed again thereby ensuring for him a supply of drugs and earning them a smokescreen for their actions.

As the story progresses we come to understand that Sonny is pivotal in many peoples' lives, people in positions of power and authority wanting to remain untouchable. When he escapes from prison, Sonny begins a quest to avenge his dead father, a man who supposedly took his own life because he was corrupt. This has never sat well with Sonny and he sets out to kill those he believes were in fact responsible for Ab Lofthus' death.

Another central character in the story is Simon Kefas, a policeman and one-time colleague of Sonny's father. He is regarded as somewhat of a maverick and a difficult man to work with; his wife is in the midst of a health scare that is robbing her of her sight and he is assigned a new detective whom he rightly picks as a woman on a fast-track through the police force to greater things. We learn early on that Simon was very close to Sonny’s father and, as the story unfolds, we also learn that there was a third policeman with whom both men were close and who is now in the higher ranks of the force.

Nesbo creates two equally captivating characters in Sonny and Simon. He also introduces a third character, Helen, who spends her life working with addicts and whom we come to have great sympathy for as her life intersects with the two men. As always with Nesbo, this is a book that has moments of great violence but it is not as extreme or shocking as in some of his earlier works. Nonetheless, he is an author for the seasoned crime fiction reader. The twist at the end is unexpected but, at the same ttime, utterly believable.

The Gingerbread House by Carin Gerhardsen

It has been far too long since I added to my blog so this is the first of regular posts, beginning March 2014. I have been reading Nordic crime,  perhaps too much, as time for blogging has been non-existent. But, here we go....
The Gingerbread House introduces us to Inspector Conny Sjoberg, a welcome new addition to my list of interesting crime fiction characters. Conny has a young, big family and is in a happy marriage. This is, as readers of crime fiction will know, rather unusual; most lead detectives have any number of impediments to a stable family life!
Conny becomes involved in a very unusual case. An elderly woman, returning to her Stockholm home from an extended stay in hospital, discovers the body of a man in her kitchen. She has no known connection to the man and there is no apparent reason for him to have been in her home. As he and his team are grappling with this mystery, Conny hears of other suspicious deaths but does not immediately relate them to the dead body he is investigating. He will, though, come to realise that he has a serial killer at work.
Whilst we are reading of the Inspector's struggle to find a motive for the murder, we are also reading of Thomas, a completely isolated man who was the victim of dreadful bullying at school as a very young boy. We quickly realise that one of Thomas' classmates was the man found dead in the old woman's kitchen.
Gerhardsen cleverly manipulates the reader; we are so sure of the correlation between Thomas' revelations to us and the focus of Conny's investigation that we believe we know the killer and the motivation for the murders. You will have to read it to discover if this is in fact, true. Originally published in 2008, this is the first of a series, one I am looking forward to reading as more are translated into English.

The Asylum - Johan Theorin

The Asylum is another stunning book from Johan Theorin. The premise is fascinating - a young man applies for a job as an assistant at Dell Nursery, a child-minding facility located next door to St. Patricia's asylum. The connection between the two organisations is that the children attending the nursery are all offspring of someone residing in the asylum.

Jan, the young man, sets about cementing his place at the nursery in an effort to gain access to the asylum. He believes that a one-time famous singer lives there and he wants to meet her; he is also interested in a notorious serial killer known to be another of the residents.

As the story unfolds, the reader becomes increasingly aware of Jan's troubled past and his unsuitability as a nursery assistant. He befriends a neighbour whom he discovers once worked and resided at the asylum and gains useful information about access, and he becomes embroiled in plans by other nursery workers that will compromise the strict security regimes of the asylum.

Whilst a dark and disturbing novel on some levels, The Asylum is also riveting and memorable. The final chapters are remarkable as all becomes clear about Jan, the inmates and the nursery workers. Every book by Theorin has completely captivated me.

Silenced byKristina Ohlsson

I have read this impressive book in one sitting. A small group of Swedish detectives (which includes amongst their team a non-police trained investigative analyst) are faced with the apparent suicide of a controversial priest and his wife. The controversy surrounds his position on, and activity with, the asylum-seeker issue. It appears one of his two daughters has died of a drug overdose in the same week as her parents are found dead.
At the same time, the team have to establish if a hit-and-run is something more; if it is another crime for them to investigate. Over time, connections are found between the case of the family deaths and the car accident.
Interspersed with the action in Sweden, the reader is swept along with a woman in Bangkok who is desperately struggling to maintain her identity as all avenues for help close off - her email accounts are inaccessible, her contact phone numbers for her family are no longer valid, her passport and wallet are stolen. She is systematically being made invisible by unknown forces.
It will transpire that the woman in Bangkok is the other daughter of the Swedish priest. And the culmination of all three events - the death of her family, the car accident victim and the hijacking of the her identity - will lead the detectives through a circuitous route to the early childhood of the priest's two daughters and to a detective in their own community.
There is not one central character - all are equally well-drawn and developed. This makes for a nice departure from many books in the broader crime fiction genre. The plot is intriguing and the issues raised by the story are both timely and thought-provoking.
I can honestly say this particular Nordic crime offering is the most engaging book I have read this year. I look forward to many more from Kristina Ohlsson.