After She's Gone

Starred review from January 1, 2019
Investigating a cold case reveals old horrors and spawns new ones in the Swedish town of Omberg. In 2009, teenager Malin Brundin finds the remains of a young girl, who is never identified. Eight years later, with the statute of limitations on murder lifted in Sweden, newly commissioned police officer Malin is assigned to the case because she knows the area, working with characters from Grebe's previous novel (The Ice beneath Her, 2016): detective Manfred Olsson, investigator Peter Lindgren, and profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Sch�n. Hanne and Peter are now lovers, worried about her increasing short-term memory loss, and they vanish within days, with Hanne turning up in the forest unable to remember what happened. The search for Peter uncovers instead the body of a woman, newly killed, identified as a Bosnian refugee. All of this occurs in a depressed and dying town that houses shelters for refugees, who are resented by the populace for the state benefits they receive at the same time locals are denied support. This atmospheric mystery is masterfully constructed with alternate first-person chapters by Malin, whose life becomes upended by the case, and a teenager with a secret, who finds Hanne's diary, which may hold the key to everything. Nordic noir at its best.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)