Review by Booklist Review
If you're a fan of Nordic noir, this dark mystery, the second in the High Coast series, should suit your taste for the shivery. Everything is dystopian to the nth degree--from the setting, a mining town in the extreme north of Sweden where inhabitants must abandon their collapsing homes; to the central, bizarrely executed murder; to the characters' depressive dialogue. For example, a neighbor of the victim has this to say about fitness trackers: "They've got us counting our steps toward death." Police assistant Eira Sjödin returns, now working as a responding officer after being transferred from Violent Crimes. Eira and her partner discover a body in the basement of a deserted house. That leads them to a cold case from the year before, which results in the disappearance of their commanding office and puts Eira in the sights of a killer. Some readers may find the relentless bleakness over the top, but noir fans should savor it all, especially for the bite that Alsterdal brings to Eira's dauntless character.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The discovery of the body of a missing person, Hans Runne, drives Alsterdal's often gripping but haphazardly plotted sequel to 2021's We Know You Remember. Found in an abandoned house in a mining town in Sweden's far north, Runne had two fingers severed from his left hand not long before he died. Police detective Eira Sjödin, along with her boss, Georg "GG" Georgsson, and her other colleagues, cover all kinds of territory, geographical and cultural, as they look for clues into what becomes a murder inquiry. Various personal issues--Eira's mother is in a care home with dementia, her brother is in prison for manslaughter, and she's attracted to the much older GG--slow the action. The pace picks up after GG disappears. A strong sense of place--in particular, the remote, sparsely populated north of Sweden--helps compensate for the meandering narrative and the author's sometimes clumsy efforts to impose profundity and unearth big themes about societal change (for example, a mining company's expansion becomes a seismic metaphor about dislocating communities). Scandi noir fans will hope for a tighter plot next time. Agent: Astri von Arbin, Ahlander Agency (Sweden). (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
First seen in We Know You Remember, a Glass Key winner also voted Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, Det. Eira Sjödin is handling a missing-persons case when her own boss (with whom she was having an affair) vanishes. Meanwhile, workers have found a fearful, quaking man hiding in a mining town that's being relocated--the old mine is swallowing houses and streets wholesale. With a 30,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A new novel from a Swedish author whose last book, We Know You Remember (2021), was named Swedish Crime Novel of the Year. In the northernmost part of Sweden, the earth shakes as a mining company digs for ore and moves entire hamlets in the process, and many abandoned buildings collapse into rubble. Near a destroyed home, two young men hear "the cry of a caged animal" and discover a half-dead man trapped in a basement. A woman wanders through an abandoned area with her old Leica camera as part of her project to photograph forgotten places, "the sorrow of what once was." In her darkroom she develops an image that shows a human hand. The forlorn town is named Offer, which is the Swedish word for victim. To the photographer, the name is "ominous…yet somehow it was also beautiful." But to the police, it's different. "What a goddamn name for a crime scene," says Georg Georgsson, aka GG, who is lead investigator in the Violent Crimes Unit. Indeed, calling the hamlet the equivalent of Victim is laying on the drama a little thick in a tale that already has plenty. The main character is police assistant Eira Sjödin, who admires and reports to GG. She is a dedicated detective, but like everyone else, she has problems of her own, like having a wrongly imprisoned brother. It is a complex case made even more so when GG stops answering his telephone and no one knows where he is. The mystery becomes more tangled as details of GG's life emerges. Eira and a colleague already had their hands full sifting through clues and looking for possible perpetrators, and now they must worry about their boss. Meanwhile in a dark basement, a ghastly scene makes police wonder what a person will do to survive. American readers will enjoy this dark, tightly plotted, and satisfying thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
