Camilla Lackberg

The Drowning

Detectives: Erica Falk & Patrik Hedstrom 

Setting:      Fjallbacka, Sweden

Time:         The Present

Genre:       Scandi-Noir

This is the sixth of the Falk/Hedstrom Fjallbacka novels to be translated into English. Struictly speaking Falk is not a detective but an investigative crime writer, who by this novel is comfortably married to Hedstrom. Fjallbacka itself is a very small, almost rural,  community 

As in previous novels Lackberg, intersperses the main plot with (in italics) the psychological story of the main, but unknown perpetrator bringing the solving of the crime and the revelation of identity together at the end.

This plot begins with the mysterious and unsolved disappearance of a Fjallbacka resident, while, in an apparently unconnected theme,  a new local author receives poison pen letters  ruining his book launch. Later it is revealed that friends of the missing man (by now the possibly drowned body of the title) are also receiving such letters but seemingly unconnected to the author. Eventually the threads are drawn together relatively seamlessly. The only weakness is whether the transformation of a person over the years so he is unrecognisable is fully credible

The background story ARC concerns the developing relationship of Falk, who in this novel is expecting twins imminently, and Hedstrom. There is another almost comic thread around the Fjalbacka incompetent police chief's humanising relationship with the mother of one of his detectives and his de-facto adoption of the detective's child as a grandson.

Rating A

Camilla Lackbergs web site

Previously read in the Falk/Hedstrom Fjallbacka sequence
The Ice Princess
The Preacher
The Stone Cutter
The Gallows Bird
The Hidden Child*

*This novel involves treachery and betrayal rooted in the Second World War and as in other Swedish Scandi-Noir, Sweden's conscience about its behaviour is explored