Fingertip Search
Selected Crime Fiction Reviews
Selected Crime Fiction Reviews
Rebecka Martinsson is a newly qualified tax lawyer working for Meijer & Ditzinger in Stockholm and she has borrowed her profession from her creator, Åsa Larsson, a long qualified tax lawyer, whose debut crime novel is The Savage Altar.
Rebecka is overworked, not entirely content with city life, often dreaming of winters at home in the north of Sweden with thick, clean snow, tree bark glowing like copper under a luminescent twilight sky, back when she used to ski from her Grandmother's house in Kurravaara to the family cabin in Jiekajärvi.
She is in the office very early on a Monday morning with her work colleague Maria Taube when the radio news announces the violent murder of a well-known religious leader, Viktor Strandgård, known as The Paradise Boy who Rebecka knew when she was a young girl. Moments later she gets a phone call from Sanna, Viktor's needy sister, and before she can stop herself, volunteers to fly up to be with Sanna during her inevitable police interview.
Meanwhile, in the north at the crime scene in Kiruna, Inspector Anna-Maria Mella, heavily pregnant, and her colleague Sven-Erik Stålnacke are in the church of The Source of All Our Strength where Viktor was murdered. He has been hideously mutilated, stomach slit open, eyes gouged out and his hands severed from his body. The church has three pastors, determined not to be interviewed individually, but only collectively. Their respective spouses seem brittle and nervous and there is an undercurrent of tension, a feeling that there are many hidden secrets.
This novel is not for the faint-hearted, it is cruel and vicious by turn yet with a deftly plotted story that, probably without intention, also shows how idyllic life can be in rural Sweden. But be prepared for a violent conclusion with Rebecka Martinsson right at the heart of it.
As an aside, what I like about Rebecka is that she is slightly clumsy, far too thin, unconcerned with her looks, but has a good eye for well-cut clothes. She is possessed of a very sharp investigator's mind yet knows what really matters in this life, and somehow manages to be both resilient and vulnerable at the same time.
This the first of a series of five books featuring Rebecka, all of which are very readable, satisfying, and live long in the memory.
The Savage Altar is available at Amazon in paperback for £8.99 with the Kindle edition at £3.99. As ever, avoid the TV series and read these instead.