The crow girl

Review by New York Times Review

"THE CROW GIRL" - a Swedish thriller written by Erik Axl Sund - begins with a body discovered in some bushes, the mummified remains of a boy who has been horribly abused, his skin split with wounds and colored with bruises, his genitals excised. It's certainly an attention-grabbing gambit, but the novel is less concerned with whodunit than why. Jeanette Kihlberg is on the case. She's a detective with the Stockholm police, overworked, underpaid and at odds with her sexist colleagues. Things aren't going so well at home either. She has to bum money off her father to pay the bills because her husband spends his days in his studio, chasing his dream as a painter. "Boredom was all they had in common these days," Sund writes, and in Neil Smith's unobtrusive translation their voices take on a serrated edge whenever they speak to each other. Though Jeanette plays on a soccer team, she can never manage to make it to any of her son's matches. It's a "gray, everyday life" until one body is followed by another, and then another, all of them immigrant boys, and the investigation consumes her. The braided novel also tracks the story of Sofia Zetterlund, a psychologist who specializes in childhood trauma. She is a seeming ally and even a romantic interest of Jeanette - but the reader figures out very early on that she is in fact the serial killer and the Crow Girl of the title. The deadly tension of their friendship has real potential, except that Sofia is characterized with soap opera clumsiness. She suffers from multiple personality disorder. So while Sofia Zetterlund is a psychologist with a successful practice and a spacious five-room apartment, she is also Victoria Bergman, a serial killer with a sex dungeon/torture chamber built behind a bookcase in her living room. In the elevated reality of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," I can buy into a plot device like this, but here I found it cartoonishly unbelievable, offset by the novel's otherwise grim earnestness. And good lord is it grim. Especially when we come to understand why Sofia/Victoria kills. As a child she was endlessly abused. By her pedophilic father. And many others, including some of his friends and colleagues. "The Crow Girl" takes us back in time, staggering flashbacks throughout the novel, and we come to understand that Victoria is a monster because she is the product of monsters. I'm a callused reader. There's not much that bothers me. But I felt exhaustedly repulsed by "The Crow Girl." The graphic depictions of sexual violence - much of it directed at children - kept piling up until I had to go for a run in the sun or race to the multiplex to watch "Finding Dory," anything to dilute the nastiness. That's not much of an endorsement, I know. Unless you love reading about creepy pedophiles and extreme violence. If so, then have I got the book for you. It's no surprise "The Crow Girl" seems to model itself on the granddaddy of the Swedish crime fiction phenomenon: Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Sund - who is actually a team of two writers, Jerker Eriksson and Hakan Axlander Sundquist - shines a light on pedophilia and human trafficking and child abuse the same way Larsson showcased the victimization of women. There's something incendiary about these novels: They want the reader to feel repelled by the pestilence they're exposing, which merits some applause. But Larsson gives us hope. He successfully transforms Lisbeth Salander from victim to conqueror. We see her suffer, and we empathize with her and root for her revenge. That's why "The Crow Girl" works best in its second half, when Victoria Bergman begins to hunt down a secret ring of pedophiles made up of the Swedish 1 percent. She takes vengeance for their abuse of her and prevents them from harming more children. Fine! Great! I could go along with her trapping her sicko father in his basement sauna and burning down the house. I could even be O.K. with her surgically dismembering a pedophilic businessman and using his blood to roller paint a room - if I hadn't had to endure several hundred pages of her pliering the teeth out of kids, beating them with electrical cables, hitting them in the eyes with a hammer, drugging them, molesting them, mummifying them, hanging them and - here's the part I never could figure out - depositing them in a public place where she could easily be caught. If only revenge were the focus of the novel, it would have mercifully lost a few hundred pages and made our central character less repulsive. Salander's a hero I want to read about. Victoria's a freak I wish I could forget. If you're not convinced, let me tell you about Gao Lian of Wuhan, another immigrant boy Victoria victimizes. But she's got a soft spot for little Gao. He lives in the secret room behind the bookshelf, and she trains him into a kind of torture-porn warrior who attacks the kidnapping victims she brings home. When he's not hammering the brains out of some poor kid's skull while she's in the next room drinking chardonnay with a friend, he's crayoning pictures and riding a stationary bike. At one point he sneaks out and wanders thoughtfully around Stockholm, taking in the sights, enjoying the musical way in which the Swedes speak, before dutifully returning to his sex dungeon, an infraction Victoria seems pretty chill about given that he could put her whole secret serial killer thing at risk. Since "The Crow Girl" is marketed as a blockbuster - with an initial print run of 100,000 copies - I think it's only fair to make pop-culture comparisons. I'm not the first to say that superhero stories are the western of this era: the dominant narrative, a cultural barometer, a billboard for American values and anxieties. And this novel is the literary equivalent of the disappointment that was "Batman v Superman." Excessively grim, dour and plodding. The last gasp of post-9/11 cynicism. I love the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, but they are the product of another time. We've struggled through too much bad news for too long - and lately the ticket sales and critical reception indicate people are ready for hope and optimism. The chipper, winky, smartass Avengers over the sad, exhausted, gloomy Batman. Even the hard-R "Deadpool" was at its heart a cheery love story. This is a very American point of view, and I should note that "The Crow Girl" was an international best seller. So I could be wrong about its stateside reception. But its unrelenting pain just doesn't strike me as what people are looking for in their entertainment right now. I'm no Pollyanna. My writing and reading habits trend toward the monstrous. Take "A Little Life," by Hanya Yanagihara - a best seller, a National Book Award finalist and one of my favorite books of 2015. It was also a celebrated novel that reveled in darkness. But "A Little Life" was buoyed by humor and love and deeply felt friendship. Reading that book changed me for the better, whereas "The Crow Girl" made me want to wash my eyes out with bleach before leaping off the nearest skyscraper. "You're somehow supposed to enjoy the misery," a police officer thinks partway through the novel, nominally in reference to Sweden's weather. It might be the most telling line from "The Crow Girl," and it would double nicely as a warning label on the cover. BENJAMIN PERCY'S newest book, "Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction," will be published this fall A victim turned killer hunts down a pedophile ring made up of the Swedish 1 percent.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 7, 2019]

---

Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* 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 Lundström, 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 Lundström'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 Läckberg, 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.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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). (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

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 Håkan 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 Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

"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 Sjwall and Per Wahl 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

The house was over a hundred years old, and the solid stone walls were at least a meter thick, which meant that she probably didn't need to insulate them, but she wanted to be absolutely sure. To the left of the living room was a small corner room that she had been using as a combination workroom and guest bedroom. Leading off of it were a small toilet and a fair--sized closet. The room was perfect, with its single window and nothing but the unused attic above. No more nonchalance, no more taking anything for granted. Nothing would be left to chance. Fate was a dangerously unreliable accomplice. Sometimes your friend, but just as often an unpredictable enemy. The dining table and chairs ended up shoved against one wall, which opened up a large space in the middle of the living room. Then it was just a matter of waiting. The first sheets of polystyrene arrived at ten o'clock, as arranged, carried in by four men. Three of them were in their fifties, but the fourth couldn't have been more than twenty. His head was shaved and he wore a black T--shirt with two crossed Swedish flags on the chest, under the words "My Fatherland." He had tattoos of spiderwebs on his elbows, and some sort of Stone Age design on his wrists. When she was alone again she settled onto the sofa to plan her work. She decided to start with the floor, since that was the only thing that was likely to be a problem. The old couple downstairs might  have been almost deaf, and she herself had never heard a single sound from them over the years, but it still felt like an important detail. She went into the bedroom. The little boy was still sound asleep. It had been so odd when she met him on the local train. He had simply taken her hand, stood up, and obediently gone with her, without her having to say a single word. She had acquired the pupil she had been seeking, the child she had never been able to have. She put her hand to his forehead; his temperature had gone down. Then she felt his pulse. Everything was as it should be. She had used the right dose of morphine. The workroom had a thick, white, wall--to--wall carpet that she had always thought ugly and unhygienic, even if it was nice to walk on. But right now it was ideal for her purpose. Using a sharp knife, she cut up the polystyrene and stuck the pieces together with a thick layer of flooring adhesive. The strong smell soon made her feel dizzy, and she had to open the window onto the street. It was triple--glazed, and the outer pane had an extra layer of soundproofing. Fate as a friend. Work on the floor took all day. Every so often she would go and check on the boy. When the whole floor was done she covered all the cracks with silver duct tape. She spent the following three days dealing with the walls. By Friday there was just the ceiling left, and that took a bit longer because she had to glue the polystyrene first, and then wedge the blocks up against the ceiling with planks. While the glue was drying she nailed up some old blankets in place of the doors she had removed earlier. She glued four layers of polystyrene onto the door to the living room. She covered the only window with an old sheet. Just to be sure, she used a double layer of insulation to block the window alcove. When the room was ready, she covered the floor and walls with a waterproof tarpaulin. There was something meditative about the work, and when at last she looked at what she had accomplished she felt a sense of pride. The room was further refined during the following week. She bought four small rubber wheels, a hasp, ten meters of electric cable, several meters of wooden skirting, a basic light fitting, and a box of light bulbs. She also had a set of dumbbells, some weights, and an exercise bike -delivered. She took all the books out of one of the bookcases in the living room, tipped it onto its side, and screwed the wheels under each corner. She attached a length of skirting board to the front to conceal the fact that it could now be moved, then placed the bookcase in front of the door to the hidden room. She screwed the bookcase to the door and tested it. The door glided soundlessly open on its little rubber wheels. It all worked perfectly. She attached the hasp and shut the door, concealing the simple locking mechanism with a carefully positioned lamp. Finally she put all the books back and fetched a thin mattress from one of the two beds in the bedroom. That evening she carried the sleeping boy into his new home. Excerpted from The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---