The mirror man

Review by Booklist Review

Five years after teenager Jenny Lind was abducted, she's found hanging in a Stockholm park, and renowned detective Joona Linna's instincts tell him police are facing a serial offender. But Joona's new boss fears the repercussions that might come from Joona's unconventional investigative methods and bars him from the case until the premature arrest of a mentally-ill witness draws negative attention. Until recently, the witness, Martin Nordström, had received treatment for PTSD at a psychiatric facility. Camera footage places Martin in the park during the early morning murder, but PTSD blocks his memory. Under hypnosis, Martin reveals that he overheard another psychiatric patient discussing Jenny's murder with a nefarious entity known only as Caesar. Joona, back on the case, dives into Stockholm's biker underground and examines a hidden psychiatric study, finally revealing Caesar's twisted religious compound. A bar-raising entry in a series that unfailingly blends streamlined plotting, smart psychological suspense, and explosive conclusions with gritty portrayals of human evil. Recommend this one to fans of Chelsea Cain, Nikki French, and Jeffery Deaver.

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

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Kepler's stellar eighth Killer Instinct novel (after 2020's Lazarus), Joona Linna, a detective with Sweden's National Operations Unit, looks into the case of a woman found hanged in a Stockholm playground. Her killer attached a winch to a jungle gym before slipping a wire noose around her neck. The discovery that the victim is Jenny Lind, who vanished five years earlier when she was a 16-year-old, adds additional mysteries--her whereabouts since her disappearance and why her captor decided to kill her now. Unfortunately, the one witness who may have seen the murder while walking his dog in the middle of the night suffers from memory lapses following an ice-fishing accident in which his daughter died years earlier. Linna comes to believe Lind was murdered by a serial killer, who may have more women in captivity. The ability of Kepler (the pen name of Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril) to ratchet up the tension en route to a stunning reveal and an eminently fair solution is remarkable. This merits comparisons with the best of Thomas Harris. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden). (Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Five years after her abduction at age 17, Jenny is found dead in a public park, and Det. Joona Linna of Sweden's National Crimes Unit recognizes similarities to a presumed suicide years before. Now another teenage girl has vanished, and the police realize that they are dealing with a serial killer. His victims' voices are heard in the grisly background of this latest thriller from Sweden phenomenon Kepler, a husband-and-wife team.

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

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Swedish detective Joona Linna is back to investigate the abductions, killings, and dismembering of teenage girls by a serial killer called Caesar. Five years after her much-publicized abduction at age 16, Jenny Lind is found gruesomely hung to death on a public playground. Martin, a mentally frail local man, may have witnessed the crime while walking his dog, but personal traumas have left him too shaky to remember anything. Also five years ago, during an ice-fishing outing with his 16-year-old daughter, Alice, Martin survived a fall through the ice but Alice was never found. He also lost his entire family in a car accident when he was a boy and has been tormented by punishing visions of his dead brothers ever since. With Martin in and out of a psychiatric facility, his wife, Pamela, decides to adopt Mia, a troubled 17-year-old. Soon enough, Mia will be abducted by Caesar and his tattooed henchwoman, Granny, who likes to jab her girls with a knockout drug--and saw the feet off of those who try to escape. Psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark, a regular in Kepler's Killer Instinct series (of which this is the eighth installment, following Lazarus, 2018), has some tantalizing results hypnotizing Martin to get him to remember what he saw at the playground. Though the early sections of this longish thriller are tantalizing--toying with the reader with a major red herring--the book jumps the tracks with a burst of forced twists and turns and an ultraviolent, head-shaking climax. A page-turner until it isn't, Kepler's latest becomes a case of too much too late. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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1 THROUGH THE CLASSROOM'S GRIMY WINDOWS, ELEONOR watches the bushes and trees bend in the stiff breeze as dust is blown along the road. It almost looks like a river is flowing outside the school, murky and silent. The bell rings, and the students gather up their books and notes. Eleonor gets to her feet and follows the others out of the classroom. She watches Jenny Lind button her jacket in front of her locker. Her face and blond hair are reflected in the dented metal. Jenny is pretty, different. She has intense eyes that make Eleonor feel nervous, make her cheeks flush. Jenny is artistic. She likes taking photos, and she also happens to be the only person in school who actually enjoys reading. When she turned sixteen last week, Eleonor said "Happy birthday" to her. But no one cares about Eleonor. She isn't attractive enough, and she knows it, even if Jenny once said she wanted to take a series of portraits of her. It was after PE, as they stood in the showers. Eleonor grabs her things and follows Jenny toward the main doors. The wind whips up the sand and dry leaves along the white walls of the building, scattering them across the yard. The rope snaps against the flagpole. When Jenny reaches the bike racks, she pauses and shouts something. She gestures angrily and then sets off on foot without her bike. Eleonor had punctured her tires that morning, hoping it would mean she could walk Jenny home. They would start talking about photography again, about how black-­and-­white photographs are like sculptures made of light. She has to rein in her imagination before she pictures them kissing. Eleonor follows Jenny past the Backavallen sports center. The seating area outside the restaurant is empty, the white umbrellas flapping. She wants to catch up with Jenny, but doesn't dare. Eleonor is about two hundred meters behind her on the footpath running parallel to Eriksbergs Road. The clouds race by above the spruce trees. Jenny's light hair whips around and blows back into her face as one of the Green Line buses drives by. The ground shakes as it passes. They leave the developed area behind, passing the ranger station. Jenny cuts across the road and continues on the other side. The sun breaks through, and the remaining clouds cast shadows that seem to dart across the fields. Jenny lives in a nice house down by the lake in Forssjö. Eleonor knows this because she once came by after she found Jenny's missing book--­a book she herself had hidden. In the end, she didn't dare ring the doorbell, and after waiting outside for an hour, she just left it in the mailbox. Jenny pauses beneath the power lines to light a cigarette, then sets off again. The buttons on the cuff of her sleeve glint in the light. Eleonor can hear the rumble of a big truck behind her. The ground trembles as a tractor trailer with Polish plates thunders past at high speed. Its brakes screech, and the trailer careens to one side. The truck turns sharply off the road and swings straight up onto the grassy shoulder, rolling onto the footpath behind Jenny before the driver manages to bring the heavy vehicle to a halt. "What the hell!" Jenny shouts. From the roof, water streams down the blue fabric on the side of the trailer, cutting a slick channel through the dirt. The engine is still running, and the smoke from the chrome exhaust pipes rises in thin columns. The cab door opens, and the driver climbs down. His black leather jacket has a strange gray patch on the back and fits his broad frame snugly. His tight curls are almost to his shoulders. He strides toward Jenny. Eleonor stops dead and watches as the driver hits Jenny in the face. A few of the straps on the side of the truck have come loose, and a section of the fabric covering the trailer catches the breeze, obscuring Jenny from view. "Hello?" Eleonor shouts, moving forward again. "What are you doing?!" As the thick fabric goes slack, she sees that Jenny has fallen to the ground and is lying flat on her back. Jenny raises her head and gives a confused smile, her teeth streaked with blood. The loose section of fabric starts flapping again. Eleonor's legs are trembling as she steps into the wet ditch. She realizes she should call the police and reaches for her phone, but her hands are shaking so much that it slips from her fingers. It falls to the ground. Eleonor bends down to retrieve it, and when she glances up again, she sees Jenny's legs kicking as the driver picks her up. A car sounds its horn as Eleonor steps out into the road and starts running toward the truck. The driver's sunglasses flash in the sunlight as he wipes his bloody hands on his jeans and climbs back into the cab. He closes the door, puts the truck into gear, and pulls away, one wheel still on the footpath. Dust rises from the dry strip of grass as the truck thunders into the road, quickly gaining speed. Eleanor comes to a halt, gasping for air. Jenny Lind is gone. A trampled cigarette and her bag of books are all that are left on the ground. Excerpted from The Mirror Man: A Novel by Lars Kepler 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.

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