The Drowning by Camilla Lackberg

You Can't Outrun the Past
Review by Maryom
One morning, walking to a colleague's house, Magnus Kjellner disappears. Three months further on and the police seem to have no clues - until his body is found frozen beneath the ice.

Meanwhile, his friend Christian Thydell is on the brink of realising his dream - his first novel is about to be published to great acclaim but his happiness is marred by a series of threatening letters he's been receiving. The 'real-time' story is interspersed with flashbacks which gradually reveal the dreadful secret which links these boyhood friends. No one seems at all prepared to help the police who feel increasingly helpless at the rising number of deaths.

This is the first novel I've read by Camilla Lackberg and I've managed to jump in part way through a series revolving around police officer Patrik Hedström and his wife, crime writer, Erica Falck - so there was obviously a lot of their back story that I was missing. This doesn't really detract from the plot but I'd now like to go backwards and read their story from the beginning.

It's very readable with a well thought out plot but doesn't have the nail-biting tension of some crime thrillers.

Overall, there's more of an air of Midsomer Murders or Miss Marple rather than hard gritty crime thriller about The Drowning. The police seem to stumble around aimlessly as events unfold and eventually happen upon the culprit by accident rather than design. The 'real' detective is Erica. In a friendly, gossipy way reminiscent of Miss Marple, she chats to people and teases out the secrets they wouldn't reveal to her policeman husband, Patrik.

An interesting new 'find' in Scandi-crime reading and an author I'll be reading more from.

This counts towards one of my challenges for this year as it was sitting on my TBR pile. I won it somewhere on the web, but can't remember where or when - please shout out if it was on your blog.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Harper Collins
Genre - adult, crime

Buy The Drowning from Amazon