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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Sun Storm


Larsson, Asa.  Sun Storm.

This is the first in a Swedish series featuring Rebecka Martinsson.  I'll be looking for the others in the series as I found Rebecka an intriguing character.

When the brutally murdered body of charismatic Viktor Strandgard is discovered by his sister in a fundamentalist church in northern Sweden, Sanna Strandgard calls her old friend, Rebecka Martinsson, a tax attorney in Stockholm.  Although the friendship has, for good reasons, languished, Rebecka responds by returning to their provincial village to support Sanna and her children.

The novel has some interesting characters and becomes as much a psychological thriller as a police procedural.  While not everything held together for me, I found myself quite in engrossed in the characters and the atmosphere.  Northern Sweden is really, really cold!  I needed my comforter even in my nice warm house because the descriptions were so much colder than any idea of cold experienced here in the South.

The suspense builds as the narrative gives more information about the church itself and Rebecka's initial involvement.  As Rebecka grudgingly revisits and reviews the past in order to understand the present, the threat to her own life increases.

The conclusion leaves an ambivalent feeling in one narrative line which, while realistic, leaves the reader uneasy.

I hope the library has more by this author, otherwise I'll have to order them.

Fiction.  Mystery/ Police Procedural.  2003/translation 2006.  307 pages.

6 comments:

  1. I read this book a couple of years ago and remember liking it. It was a cold book! I want to continue to read this series at some point.

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  2. Kay - She has written 3 more in this series, and I want to continue it, too.

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  3. I like cold books! Will have to see if I can chase this down in England.

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  4. Katherine - I'd forgotten your wonderful of snowy books, although this one is not in the fantasy realm. I particularly love snowy/cold books in fantasy!

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  5. Oh I've been wondering about this series! I love discovering all the Scandinavian crime novels that have been translated in recent years. Must see if my library has this one.

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  6. Iliana - I enjoyed the first one; unfortunately, when I went to the library yesterday, I forgot to look for the others in the series. Will have to check next time.

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