This is the third book by this author whom I discovered via my oldest daughter last year. It's the third book in the Patrick Hedstrom police detective series set in Sweden. Of the three books so far, this one is my favorite. It reads like a true crime novel but it is totally fiction.
STORY SUMMARY
Fjallbacka Sweden is a small remote resort town that seems to have a lot of tragedy. The latest one is that a fisherman has found a dead body one morning while he was casting his nets and it's a little 7 year old girl named Sara. Sara's parents (Niklas, a doctor, and Charlotte who stays home with Sara and her baby brother Albin) are shocked. Why would Sara be down by the sea when she was supposed to be visiting her best friend Frida who lives next door? How did Sara drown??
And then they find out, upon the report of the medical examiner, that Sara wasn't drowned in the sea. She was drowned in a bathtub and her lungs had traces of ash in them! This case has now gone from being a horrendous drowning accident to an unbelievable but very real homicide investigation.
Patrick Hedstrom, the local detective, who lives with his girlfriend Erica and their newborn daughter Maja, is put in charge of this case.
He interviews Lilian aound Stig whom Charlotte and her family live with. Lilian is Charlotte's mother and Stig is Charlotte's stepfather as her biological father, Lennart, died some years back from a horrible disease.
Other suspects are the Lilian's next door neighbors, Kaj and Monica and their son Morgan who is on the Autism Spectrum. Kaj is also discovered to be a pedophile who dabbles in child pornography. This all comes out during the investigation into Sara's murder. But is Kaj really the correct perpetrator?? He admits to the pornography and sexual abuse of boys, but he vehemently denies murdering Sara! To make matters worse, he and Lilian have had a long time battle over property issues. The police bring Kaj into custody but the investigation continues as they don't have solid proof that he is Sara's killer.
Sara's family history holds the key into this murder. But how should the police probe into the family's past when they have just suffered a horrible tragedy? And to make matters worse, Stig appears to be slowly declining in his physical health.
What Patrick doesn't realize is that this investigation will lead him back to the 1920s-1950s and a dark time in Fjallbacka's history spanning this family and the previous generations.
Will he solve the murder of little Sara Florin? How is Sara related to Agnes, a woman from 1920s Fjallbacka??
MY THOUGHTS
This book has a lot of characters but they're easy to keep track of. The title is intriguing and yes there is a stonecutter who appears in the beginning of the story. He is the one who gets the story going......and you end up loving him and feeling sorry for him and his twin boys.
This book is very character driven.....it's a powerful look at how one woman's greed and selfishness affects entire generations of her family all the way from the 1920s to the present day.
Some of the main themes in this book are: identity issues, abandonment, murder, selfishness, greed, vengeance, child abuse and generational issues, parenting, betrayal, marriage dynamics, parent-child dynamics, body image issues.
This is a very powerful look at those themes and it is excellently executed.
I did find several editing errors.
I also correctly guessed who murdered Sara and it's not who you first suspect. At least it wasn't my first guess until about half way through the book when I started putting some clues from the past together with ones from the present.
This is a fast-paced book with some dark themes but with a good look at "what goes around comes around" and justice. It's also a look at girlhood and how things have changed so drastically for women over the years. It's a powerful look at parenting and the extremes in that, from being overindulgent to being unemotionally present.
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to mature content).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 9.
2 comments:
Hi Faith, good that your husband could help out. My husband has a gardener to mow the lawn. Cute bunny family. My granddaughter has a white rabbit. Sounds like an interesting book. You have a good eye for grammar! Have a great Mother's Day weekend!
I haven't heard of this author. Are the editing errors due to translation? I find that with some of the translated works that can happen more often.
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