This Nordic Noir thriller is the eighth book in the Joona Linda series and follows the detective after the body of missing girl Jenny is found hanging in a public park. Five years prior, 17 year old Jenny was abducted walking home from school and taken to a run down house where other girls are being held. Their captor is unpredictable and the punishments are harsh and often deadly. Joona suspects Jenny isn't the killer's first victim and when another girl - Mia - goes missing it becomes clear they are dealing with a serial predator. As the police investigation unfolds, Mia and the group of young women at the house are plunged into increasing danger and Joona is in a race against time to save them.
TW/CW: kidnapping, sexual assault, child abuse, torture, animal abuse, animal death, drug use, alcoholism, death of a child, mental illness, police treatment of someone with mental illness, abuse in mental health facilities
In typical fashion for me, I didn't look up if this was part of a series before requesting on NetGalley and I was a little worried when I found out it was the 8th book. Also, there were a few reviews I read that said this book would have been confusing without reading the previous ones so I was worried but decided to give it a shot anyway. This series has been on my list as one that I'd like to read so if this 8th book wasn't making much sense, then I'd put it on the backburner and go read through the first seven books first. However, I was very pleased while reading that I was not confused at all. Like many police procedural series, the mystery in this book is self contained. There are a number of references to outside events that happened in what seemed like the previous book and while I didn't know what, exactly, the characters were referencing, there were enough context clues that allowed me to get the gist of what happened. Also, these other references didn't have any impact on the current case Joona is investigating so they were really more so for some character development and background info. As with most police procedural series, the characters and relationships develop over the course of the series so I'm sure I missed out on some of that, but I still really enjoyed this book as a standalone. I'm sure when I do get around to reading the series from the beginning, these character interactions will hold more weight.
I really loved the characters in this book and how interconnected they all became by the end. In the beginning few chapters, we did hop around to a few different characters and it made the story feel a bit disjointed because it wasn't obvious how any of the characters were connected. However, as the investigation progressed the ties and connections became increasingly obvious and I really loved how they all came together in the end. Each of the characters we follow was very unique and well developed so I never felt like any of them were just 'extra'. I think Kepler does a great job at quickly defining these relationships between the characters by giving us just the right about of backstory and then showing us a few key scenes with the characters to really cement in their personalities and relationships. We're following a handful of the characters throughout the story and it felt really well balanced. I think in a lot of police procedurals, the main POV is (unsurprisingly) the police detective. In this case, however, it really felt like it was a 33% - 33% - 33% split between the detective, the main witness, and the girls being held which really made this read less like a procedural and more like a traditional commercial thriller. This also allowed for a lot more character development and exploration since so much of our time was spent with these other characters.
As I mentioned, this was my first book by Kepler and the writing style in the beginning did take some getting used to. A lot of the sentence structure, particularly early in the book, was very basic and repetitive - for example: "Character A does X. Character A does Y. Character A goes to H and does Z." Now I know every author has their particular style and this is a translated work so maybe that narration style is more common in the native Swedish but I've read my fair share of Nordic Noir translated works and this one stood out to me as being a little extra dry and simplistic in the writing style. As the book progressed, about after the 30% mark or so, I noticed those sort of simplistic sentences showing up less and less and the narrative took on a style that didn't really have much outstanding defining characteristics. The narrative style faded into the background and let the plot and characters come through. Personally, I enjoy that way of writing where the narrative craft is almost invisible and I know it takes a lot of work to get a narrative to that level. In those early chapters, the sort of monotone, repetitive narration is broken up by moments of very visceral descriptions of what is happening to these girls and how they're feeling. We see Jenny's abduction on page and the narration goes from "Jenny went to her locker, Jenny left school, Jenny took a left down the short cut" etc and quickly turns into a terrifying close third person narration of what it feels like when she wakes up and the terror growing as she realizes what happened and probably will happen to her.
The thriller aspects of this book really elevated this book for me. I've said before that I'm a big fan of police procedurals but I can understand how other readers find them boring and dry and even I'll point out when certain books lean a little too far into the 'procedure' of the investigation. This one, however, had a really great balance between the investigation aspects and the survival aspect due to the multi-POV. I loved how we had chapters following the kidnapped girls and seeing how they were surviving and dealing with their ordeal. Then we're also following other characters who are connected to the case in various ways. I think the POV choices as well as how much of the violence and torture we're shown really amped up the tension because the reader knows that the Joona is investigating the case but none of the girls believe they'll be rescued. Also, we see some of them try to escape like we know Jenny was able to - at least until she was caught again and killed - so the reader also knows they probably won't make it if they try to escape but understands that they don't know that.
I do want to touch on a main reveal that revolves around a certain mental health diagnosis. This is just my pet peeve, but I really dislike when this certain diagnosis is used in this way. I personally think it is a cheep and overdone twist and while I personally do not have this diagnosis, I've seen many people who are diagnosed speak out against using that diagnosis in this type of way. Based on my understanding of this diagnosis, I do think Kepler got a lot of the factual aspects correct (like how it usually manifests, the root cause, etc) but, again, I think how it overall ended up being used was still not great and overall harmful to the public's understanding of this particular diagnosis. Mental illness is a bit theme and plot element in this story and there are some discussions about abuse in mental health facilities 30 years prior that I found to be a thoughtful addition to the story. However, we also see police officers not listening and taking advantage of a character in a precarious mental health state which, again, was a nice acknowledgement that these sorts of abuses of power are still happening.
Overall, this was a really great detective story and it really solidified my feelings that I should start this series from the beginning. Great characters, good balance between the investigation and more thriller-y elements, good balance between keeping the mystery self contained in this book but also having connections to the previous books in the series.
Thanks NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday for the ARC
Expected publication day is January 18, 2022
(originally published October 19, 2020 in Swedish)
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