The search for a missing girl in rural Sweden forms the backdrop to this intelligent crime story from Lina Bengtsdotter. A teenager, Anabelle, has not returned home from a wild party in a down-at-heel town in deepest Sweden. DI Charline \u201cCharlie\u201d Lager and her colleague Anders have been sent to investigate.<\/p>\n
Nearly everyone involved in this procedural is troubled. We first meet Charlie recovering from a monumental hangover and one-night stand. But that\u2019s as nothing to the goings on in Gullsp\u00e5ng, where the town\u2019s teenagers are drinking nearly as much as their parents, everyone reliant on the local paper mill for a living, and under-age sex and drugs are very much on the cards.<\/p>\n
Inevitably the police initially get nowhere, but not everyone is being as helpful as they might. At the same time, Charlie is facing up to the face that she\u2019s returning to the town of her childhood \u2013 somewhere she hoped she would never return to again.<\/p>\n
Everywhere you turn in this novel, there are ghosts of what happened before, and it probably wasn\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n
The book moves along quite nicely, and it has a structure that sends the reader forwards and backwards in time as we learn what really happened. I found the book highly readable, with it portraying a depressing picture of a part of the Swedish countryside that I found convincing.<\/p>\n