Open Grave

Starred review from May 11, 2015
At the start of Eriksson’s outstanding sixth mystery featuring police inspector Ann Lindell (after 2014’s Black Lies, Red Blood), 84-year-old Bertram von Ohler, a professor emeritus who lives in a posh neighborhood of Uppsala, Sweden’s premier university town, learns that he has won the Nobel Prize in medicine. Meanwhile, Agnes, his housekeeper of 55 years, harbors old grievances against him and yearns for her girlhood home, a poor rural community on Gräsö, an island where Edvard Risberg, Ann’s lost love, lives—a world away from Uppsala. Ohler’s neighbors, former colleagues, and professional rivals, all alienated by his arrogance, simmer with resentment against him, and his unstable daughter, Birgitta, both fears that her father’s world is crumbling and hopes that it will. Unsettling incidents that the police dismiss as pranks take a darker turn. More a psychological study than a police procedural, this entry is for connoisseurs of subtle, character-driven crime fiction. Those who prefer action and thrills should look elsewhere.

June 1, 2015
The sixth book in this award-winning Swedish crime series finds police inspector Ann Lindell investigating the harassment of a recent Nobel winner and returning to the island where her former lover still lives. The aging Professor Bertram von Ohler has been recognized for his contributions in medicine, but he hardly lived his life by the credo first, do no harm, having earned the contempt of his former colleagues, his live-in housekeeper, and a stranger who believes the professor caused his mother's disgrace. First appearing a third of the way into the book, the unassuming Lindell still manages to make a big impression, small actions speaking volumes. A must for series fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)