The Fire Witness / Lars Kepler

I'm a sucker for a thriller set in Sweden, even though I was somewhat disappointed by the previous novel from the Swedish husband/wife author team who go by the penname Lars Kepler. Novels like those of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Henning Mankell, Stieg Larsson, and even John Ajvide Lindqvist are just hard to resist. So when The Fire Witness came out, I just had to read it. I must admit it was pretty hard to put down. Though not perfect, I think the plot worked better than the previous title.

The central storyline focuses on a double murder in a home for wayward girls not far from Sundsvall. Suspicion focuses on one of the resident girls and a large part of the novel charts attempts to discover her whereabouts. There is an interesting subplot on a psychic medium’s supposed insight on the murders. By the end of the novel the tension crescendos into a nail-biting conclusion and finishes with a scene that seems to lend the book its title.

There was a strange little coda to the novel, which sort of read like the beginning chapter of another book. It gave a bit of backstory to Joona Linna, the enigmatic finlandssvensk detective who has been the central character in each of Lars Kepler’s novels.

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