Silenced

January 21, 2013
Early in Ohlsson’s deftly plotted second Fredrika Bergman mystery (after 2012’s Unwanted), a Stockholm vicar and his cantor wife are found dead in their bedroom, an apparent murder-suicide, but no one close to the couple believes that Jakob Ahlbin would have shot his wife with a hunting pistol and then turned the gun on himself. Bergman and her colleagues in the Stockholm police’s Criminal Investigation Division begin to doubt the murder-suicide theory, even though Ahlbin, a vocal supporter of immigrant rights, suffered from depression and was despondent over his older daughter’s recent death from a heroin overdose. Meanwhile, a hit-and-run accident turns into a homicide, and other bodies pile up. Could these deaths be connected to the vicar’s murder? The many separate stories and viewpoints make for a sluggish start, but Ohlsson expertly pulls all the pieces together to ultimately form an intricate whole. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency.

February 1, 2013
Frederika Bergman returns in the latest installment from Swedish author Ohlsson. Frederika is the only civilian working with Alex Recht's federal investigation unit, but you wouldn't know this was her book until the very end. The novel opens with the rape of a teenage girl in Frederika's own backyard. Then we fast-forward several years to a priest and his wife, who are killed in an apparent murder-suicide; in a seemingly unrelated incident, a man is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Alex and his team, including the very pregnant Frederika, start investigating, and things are not at all how they first appeared to be. Human trafficking is going on, from the Middle East through Bangkok and then to Sweden. OK, but then things really get twisty. The story slowly unfolds, revealing layer upon layer of deception. The interplay between the detectives adds another level of interest to this intriguing puzzle, as do the inner workings of a foreign police department. This Scandinavian procedural, though less gristly than most of the genre, should appeal to international-mystery fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)