Stone Coffin

September 26, 2016
Tragedy strikes the well-to-do Cederén family in Eriksson’s satisfying seventh ensemble mystery to be published in the U.S. (after 2015’s Open Grave). A hit-and-run driver kills Josefin Cederén and her six-year-old daughter as they are walking to church on a road near Uppsala. Homicide detective Ann Lindell and her colleagues suspect successful businessman Sven-Erik Cederén, the victims’ husband and father, who has disappeared. The police soon discover that Sven-Erik kept a mistress, owned foreign property, and engaged in shady business dealings, and yet odd inconsistencies strain the seemingly open-and-shut case. Eriksson smoothly shifts among the troubled minds of those affected by the deaths, including Sven-Erik’s gentle lover. Lindell’s empathy for the murdered woman (unlocked by Josefin’s poignant diary) tends to drift into pining for stoic builder Edvard Risberg, threatening to funnel the book’s emotional momentum away from the Cederéns. Still, readers who prefer measured, character-driven procedurals to gore or wisecracks will be entranced.

September 15, 2016
When a speeding car kills a young mother and daughter, complications indicate much more than a simple hit-and-run.Josefin Cederen and her 6-year-old daughter, Emily, are struck by a car and killed while walking to the graveyard in southern Sweden where Emily's grandmother is buried. Their deaths hit Ann Lindell and her fellow detectives in Uppsala-Nas' Violent Crimes unit hard. Though the hit-and-run might have been a simple, tragic accident, policy necessitates an investigation for possible foul play. Neighbors report a recent change in Josefin's demeanor, and tension between her and Emily's neglectful father, Sven-Erik, has recently spiked. When the man turns up missing along with a large sum recently transferred from his bank, he shoots to the top of the suspect list. Could he have gone to the Dominican Republic, where he's recently purchased property? In the middle of this, a group of activists called the Animal Liberation Front take over a local television station to protest the practices of MedForsk, a medical lab that happens to employ Sven-Erik. The head of the company, Jack Mortensen, tries to stonewall, but he withers under Ann's skillful questioning. The case ultimately leads the Violent Crimes team to Spain, where the cooperation of local police becomes crucial to closing the case. After a period without a committed relationship, Ann meanwhile contemplates a reunion with her ex, Edvard, a decision complicated by an accidental pregnancy. Eriksson's seventh (Black Lies, Red Blood, 2015, etc.) is full of twists, three-dimensional characters, quiet authority, and heart.

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October 15, 2016
A young mother and her six-year-old daughter have been run down on a leafy road in Uppsala, Sweden. Ann Lindell and her police colleagues quickly conclude that the victims' husband and father is the prime suspect; he has disappeared. But he turns up dead, too, an apparent suicide. Soon the body count rises to five, and Lindell and her team are investigating a pharmaceuticals firm, where the dead husband was lead researcher, and the possibility that they were doing illegal testing on primates. Additional plot developments crop up, but even in the midst of a complex case, Lindell is almost consumed by her loneliness for Edvard, the lover she herself left some months before. She also realizes she is pregnantby a man she met in a bar. Should she get an abortion? Lindell's thoughts and her predicament are interesting, but crime fans may be disappointed in the perfunctory resolution of the case.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2016

A car slams into a young woman and her daughter outside of Uppsala, Sweden, killing them instantly--and suspiciously. Soon, police learn about gruesome findings in the forest near a property in the Dominican Republic recently purchased by the woman's husband, and Det. Ann Lindell is on the case. This seventh Ann Lindell novel released in the United States was short-listed for the Swedish Crime Academy Award for Best Crime Novel, which Eriksson won for an earlier series title, The Princess of Burundi.

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