Mons Kallentoft

Savage Spring

Detective: Malin Fors
Setting:      Linkoping, Sweden
Time:         2010
Genre:       Scandi Noir

This is the fourth of the Malin Fors sequence. As with the previous three, the novel is as much about Malin Fors coping with her personal issues, her recovery from alcohilism, her relationship with her daughter and father and coping with her mother's death.  The crime to be solved is a bombing in the middle of Linkoping resulting in the death of two children. Fors and her colleagues pursue investigations into the possibility of terrorist activity, including a brief consideration of an Islamist threat, before the reasons for the explosion take a darker tuirn.

As in the earlier books Kallentoft uses the device of the murder victims  observing  Malin Fors as she pursues her enquiries: a strange perspective but an eerily effective one.

Rating A

Mons Kallentoft's website

Previous novels
Midwinter Sacrifice
Summertime Death
Autumn Killing

Mons Kallentoft

Autumn Killing

Detective: Malin Fors

Time:        Present 

Setting      Linkoping, Sweden

Genre       Scandi-Noir

This is the third in the Malin Fors series. Ostensibly its about solving the murder of a wealthy lawyer but as much as anything it is about Fors' descent  into alcoholism and the increasingly strained relationship with her teenage daughter and her daughter's father.

Kallentoft plaits together three narratives in working towards his conclusion. Besides the straight plot of the criminal investigation, As in the earlier novels he uses a device of the murder victim observing Fors and her colleagues at work and also employs a sequence of flashbacks, primarily into the perpetrators history  but mixing it with that of the original victim. Throughout the novel Kallentoft also explores the reflections on events past and present of a number of characters.

The underlying ARC about Fors' problems is paralleled by an exploration of the difficulties many of her colleagues face in their personal lives.

Rating A+

Mons Kallentoft's website 

Previously read novels in the series

Midwinter Sacrifice

Summertime Death