The Crow Girl

March 28, 2016
Horrors abound in the pseudonymous Sund’s scathing first in a trilogy that rips asunder the appearance of Sweden’s contemporary welfare state to reveal just about every conceivable human crime—including torture, pedophilia, and child abuse and trafficking. Det. Supt. Jeanette Kihlberg, who’s soul-sick from 20 years supporting her artist husband and early-teen son as a Stockholm police officer, and her solid colleague, Jens Hurtig, investigate an apparent serial killing spree that leaves bodies of homeless boys, drugged and mutilated, across the city. Soon Jeanette becomes romantically involved with Sofia Zetterlund, a psychotherapist with her own dark secrets, including a succession of multiple personalities, headed by the mysterious Victoria Bergman, who becomes the central figure of this challenging multifaceted descent into the abyss of evil and madness. Sund is the pen name of the Swedish writing duo Jerker Eriksson and Håkan Axlander Sundquist. 100,000-copy first printing. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

May 1, 2016
"How sick can a person get?" So, rightly, wonders a character toward the end of Sweden's newest entry in the race to claim Stieg Larsson's throne. This pseudonymous mystery, the first in a trilogy newly translated into English but published in Swedish in 2010, has been a hit across continental Europe. It's easy to see why: full of chills and spills, it incorporates numerous hot-button themes, including non-European immigration, extreme-right-wing politics, and slavery, elements of an already dark tale that encompasses incest, genocide, and murder. Add to that a heady brew of shifting identities: a girl flees a dark memory of the Holocaust, abandoning every vestige of the past to become someone new and not altogether wholesome; a psychiatric patient takes on numerous personalities, one of whom is startled to realize, "I'm just a means of survival, a way of being normal, like everyone else." But everyone else in this story is far from normal: someone is murdering young immigrants from such faraway places as Kazakhstan, former child soldiers from Africa are wandering mad in the streets of Stockholm, and it becomes ever plainer why someone would want to escape the daily grind in the birch and pine woods of the far north by changing masks and dispatching neighbors in spectacular ways. Larsson, of course, covered much of this territory, and even Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo got to some of the unpleasantries in their mysteries of old. Sund updates their scenarios with a well-realized romance between two professional women, a probing look at post-traumatic stress delivered in part by a police inspector who has immigrated north from Bosnia, and many other matters taken straight from the headlines. The story is well-told, though the dramatis personae is daunting thanks in part to all those multiple personalities. It loses momentum about two-thirds of its long way in, too, but it revives as the plot snakes its way into some strange territory indeed. A smart, rewarding psychological thriller, with an emphasis on both of those genre terms.

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Starred review from May 1, 2016
In Stockholm, young boys' tortured and mutilated bodies are being dumped in public spots. DS Jeanette Kihlberg catches the serial-murder case but is left with dramatically shrunken resources after the children are pegged as undocumented immigrants. Jeanette's instincts pull her toward the case of Karl Lundstrom, a pedophile who claims that he knows another pedophile who purchases child victims from the Russian Mob. Hoping for a connection to her stalled case, Jeanette contacts the psychologist, Sofia Zetterlund, who performed Lundstrom's forensic examination and finds she has a strong personal and professional attraction to Zetterlund. At the same time, Sofia is mired in an obsession with her client Victoria Bergman, called the Crow Girl, who developed alternate personalities after sexual abuse by her powerful bureaucrat father. As the story swings between Jeanette's investigation, Victoria's muddled recollections, and the Crow Girl's vengeful perspective, threads between the sexual-abuse cases develop a larger image of a powerful cult's ritualistic abuse. While sometimes difficult to digest, this epic psychological thriller's unflinching portrayals of violent sexual abuse create ultradark atmospheric suspense and a jolting examination of a cycle of abuse and revenge that spans generations. Like the novels of Karin Fossum, Stieg Larsson, and Camilla Lackberg, this award-winning U.S. debut builds a powerful indictment of society's willingness to turn a blind eye toward powerful, privileged abusers preying on the weak.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2016

It begins with the discovery of a perfect, recently mummified, body of a teenage boy. It also starts with a visit to a plastic-lined room, soundproofed and hidden behind a locked bookcase. Stockholm Det. Jeanette Kihlberg and psychotherapist Sofia Zetterlund team up to investigate what ends up being a series of murders and cover-ups of the mistreatment and violence done to children. The reader is immediately sucked into a grim world where no one is who they seem, where lies are told and revised. To say much more would spoil the tangled, engrossing web this best-selling, award-winning psychological thriller weaves. Sund is the pen name of Swedish authors Jerker Eriksson (a former prison librarian) and Hakan Axlander Sundquist; their collaboration is the first volume in a trilogy that will complete the story of the enigmatic Victoria Bergman, the "crow girl" of the title. VERDICT This disturbingly fascinating look at revenge, abuse, and the impact of childhood on adult choices is not for the faint of heart, but it is highly recommended for those that appreciate dark, psychological mysteries. [See Prepub Alert, 1/4/16; 100,000-copy first printing.]--Katie Lawrence, Grand Rapids, MI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016

This could be the next big Scandinavian thriller. A huge best seller internationally, with rights sold to 38 countries and TV rights sold to Tomorrow ITV Studios, this debut opens with a boy's brutally battered body discovered in a Stockholm park. As more bodies are found, Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg realizes that she's dealing with a serial killer and, with the help of therapist Sofia Zetterlund, eventually uncovers evidence of child trafficking rooted in some very dark aspects of Swedish society. Sund is the pen name of Jerker Eriksson and Hakan Axlander Sundquist, musicians and art gallery owners; their new literary adventure won the Special Award from the Swedish Crime Writers Academy.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.