Dark Angel

Starred review from April 7, 2014
What does the puzzling murder of prominent event planner Viktor Algård during a glitzy gala on Sweden’s Gotland island have to do with the tortured self-examination of an anonymous depressive who can barely drag himself out of his borrowed Stockholm flat for therapeutic sessions? The answer will prove central to Det. Supt. Anders Knutas’s cracking a most disturbing case—one that eventually calls into question some of his most basic assumptions about his probity as both a police officer and a parent—in Jungstedt’s powerful sixth mystery featuring the Gotland policeman (after The Dead of Summer). With a Tolstoy-worthy array of unhappy families living incongruously amid Gotland’s sheep-flocked landscape, affecting main characters, and muscular writing, this installment makes a compelling case for Jungstedt’s discovery by discerning American readers. Agents: Bengt Nordin and Anna Rytterholm, Nordin Agency (Sweden).