Sunday, July 17, 2011

The Hand That Trembles-Kjell Eriksson; Ebba Segerberg (Translator)

The Hand That Trembles
Kjell Eriksson; Ebba Segerberg (Translator)
Minotaur, Aug 2 2011, $24.99
ISBN 9780312605056

In 1993 in Uppsala, Sweden, Commissioner Sven-Arne Persson leaves a council meeting, but never is seen in town again. The townsfolk assumed he killed himself though no corpse or note was seen. A dozen years later, an Uppsala resident Jan Svensk is in Bangalore, India is on a business trip when he sees Sven-Arne on the street and later in a restaurant. Sven-Arne likewise recognizes his Swedish neighbor and muses that his life as an illegal immigrant laborer is over.

At the same time in Uppsala, Detective Ann Lindell visits Detective Berglund in the hospital recovering from an operation to inform him a female foot inside a boot with no other body part has been found on the shore near Oregrund. Lindell investigates in an area overwhelming with single males including her ex lover. She also looks into a cold case homicide that Berglund failed to solve back in 1993.

The latest Detective Lindell Swedish police procedural (see The Princess of Barundi, The Cruel Stars of Night, and The Demon from Dakar) is an engaging complicated mystery that grips the audience on several levels with a need to know. First there is the question as to why a person left his power position to become an illegal laborer in a foreign land; second is his vanishing linked to the cold case homicide; and third the severed female foot belongs to who and the saw culprit is whom. Loaded with action and a strong cast, readers will enjoy this terrific mystery as Kjell Eriksson deftly ties everything together.

Harriet Klausner

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