The first thjing I noticed about this book was the sticker placed on the cover, presumabl;y by the booksellers, saying "If you Jo Nesbo you'll love this." And the books by Jo Nesbo have stickers saying "The next Stieg L:arsson". I'm not sure what these cvomparisons are supposed to achieve, except that Jo Nesbo's writing has recently come to look a rather ineffectual attempt to imitate Stieg Larsson. But Lackberg has so far not tried to imitate either. Other than being crime fiction, and thus in the same broad genre, Lackberg is Lackberg, and there is little resemblance to Nesbo.

But the claim made me think of the differences between male and female crime writers, and this one is obviously written from a feminine perspective. For the first hundred pages or so I thought the protagonist was post-natal depression. And it got me thinking about differences between male and female crime writers.

One of the most notable ones is that the detective heroes of the male writers tend to be heavy drinkers, if not actual alcoholics, and are divorced or about to be. Alan Banks, Kurt Wasllander, Harry Hole and several other fictional detectives invented by male writers seem to fall into this category. Even Morse, though though unmarried, was unlucky in love, and tended to booze a lot. But the fictional detectives of female crime writers, though they may have faults, seem to be able to stay off the booze and avoid divorce -- Rex Wexford, Lindley, Adam Dalgleish and, in this book, Patrik Hedstrom.

In this book the murder of a child baffles the police, and when it is followed by apparently similar non-fatal attacks on young children the police find that find most of their suspects appear to have alibis for one or more of the attacks. In addition, many of the families involved in the investigation have secrets that they want to keep hidden. There is a kind of parallel story set in the past, which show that the roots of the crimes lie in an earlier generation, and in the upbringing of chiuldren in the past. Some of the police officers involved in the investigation have difficulties in bringing up their own children.

So the book turns out to be more than a simple whodunit, but is also an exploration of the ways in which dysfunctional families can produce criminals.If you love this book, you might not necessarily Jo Nesbo. crime-fiction our-books70 s Hajar Y,90 165

The Stonecutter turned out to be such a tiresome read for me. It feels the author tried to cover so many grounds in her book till she losed focus and failed to emphasis more on the thing that suppose to matter most: the mystery and the routes to solve it.

The main thing that can be found in The Stonecutter is the neverending emotional outburst mostly from the female characters. To read about their endless self-pity where they blame others for difficulties that they have to face is utterly exhausting. And to have this train of thoughts repeated number of times in the book is simply too much for me.

But what pained me most is the way Läckberg consistently created characters that have a brain the size of a pea and then built some absurd subplots involving them that don't seem to add anything to the story. It irks me that she put this seemingly ridiculous storyline upfront while neglecting to be precise and in detail about the proper investigation procedures that involved in solving the crime. How this book could be mentioned as at par with the other Scandinavian mysteries is really beyond me.

In the nutshell, I found The Stonecutter to be excruciatingly dull, slow and exhausting read. It is an ordinary whodunit book that have zero suspenseful chapters and by the end, I don't think I really care who actually the perp is anymore. This is definitely one of the worst books that I've ever read, enough said.black-list books-i-own genre_thrillers-mystery ...more69 s Phrynne3,535 2,389

Another gripping instalment in this excellent series. As usual there are murders and attempted murders aplenty plus an interesting back story, which eventually ties up with the main events and helps to explain why it all occurred.
This is definitely a series to read in order because the character development is huge and different personalities and relationships are constantly changing. There are also several long running stories which pop up from time to time but are not resolved in just one book. This book actually ended in a cliff hanger regarding one of these stories. Which of course means I now have to search out the next one!47 s ThomasAuthor 0 books3

I got me somethin' to say about mystery books.



Over the past several years I've been reading more and more in the way of mysteries, and there are a few things I've noticed along the way. Although there are plenty of mysteries written and published in France, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Russia, and cetera, here in the United States we primarily see those that are written here, England, and the Scandinavian nations and it is those last three styles that I want to talk about. I say styles, because there is definitely a particular underlying general style that each of these three cultures seem to produce.

In the American mystery novel, the reader is thrown right into the soup immediately - shots fired, people dying right off the bat, then the protagonists and antagonists (who may or may not have been introduced yet) work their way through the novel while offering varying levels of characterization along the way. (McBain, Stout, Chandler, Hammett, Charyn, Burke and many more) American mysteries sometimes appear to have a focus on action, but this is really just a vehicle for the exploration of emotional situations that typically use a lot of dialog. This is the center of the American mystery style in my opinion (and almost any other American genre style) - emotional situation. What would happen if this type of person saw that type of person do this or say that to this other type of person. What would they do and are they right in doing it? In the end, in many American novels, the ideas of right and wrong get boiled down to a gray sludge that the reader does not even notice themselves relating to because the characters are usually so dynamic (and often likable) that right or wrong - moral or immoral - lose importance or value in their presence.

What I've noticed about mysteries written by English authors is the focus on character development. Before the actual "mystery meat" of the tale even BEGINS to be explored, there has already been a good chunk of the novel devoted to nailing down the characters and their relationships with each other and their environment. P.D. James and Agatha Christie are the first of a great many English mystery writers who pop into mind when I think about this tendency. The English mysteries tend not to dwell so much on the gory details over and over and over again, but more on the intelligent placement and discovery of the "clue" and the almost always unspoken assumption that the good guys are, in fact, good, and that they will prevail.

Scandinavian mysteries are an in depth mixture of both worlds, with extremely detailed characters and character interactivity combined with gritty (and usually topical) crimes to be solved. The thing about the Scandinavian style though is that these writers are extremely interested in not simply questions of good guys and bad guys but actual right and wrong. The characters are not only emotionally developed, but also psychologically (and often spiritually) developed. These characters are operating in a world that has been intricately crafted so as to bring their depths - motivations, quirks, magnetism, repulsiveness - into the light for the reader to sink their teeth into. The psychological approach to delving into the character add greatly to the believability of the world of the tale, sinking the reader into the story as though they were actually there with the cop, or the street kid, or the single mother, or the doctor worrying about the time he's Not spending with his wife and new child, or the degenerate. One quirk I have to also bring up regarding Scandinavian mysteries is the nonchalant disregard for the actual law of the land in place of what is deemed morally right. I noticed this tendency long ago when I used to read the old sagas ( Gisli's or Egil's or Njal's) - there is a feeling of obvious common-sense respect where it comes to what is simple and true in regard to humans and their fallibility to being Human, and as the characters recognize these different things in themselves and each other, the story gradually resolves its various plot-points hand-in-hand with them.

In any case, whether you dig what I'm getting at or not, The Stonecutter is an excellent read.43 s LENA TRAK129 125

I just loooooove Lackberg's style... I've bought the whole Hedstrom series and I can't wait to start reading The stranger...

Absolutely beutiful story... So many twists and turns... Right when you think you have figured everything out another secret is revealed and turns your world upside down... I'm officially a fan of NORDIC CRIME!!!!2015 mystery-crime-thriller30 s1 comment Pattie O'Donnell323 30

So I'm reading this book randomly taken from the "New Books" shelf at the library and about a quarter of the way through, I thought "I haven't read anything this badly written since ....what was it? Oh, right, that other Swedish book...." and I checked the Author profile, and yes, she was the person who wrote the last book I read that was this badly written. From that point, I just skimmed.

As with "The Ice Princess", most everyone outside the main detective is a one dimensional character. I'm guessing the author has a really miserable mother or mother-in-law, because the older women characters are particularly Grimm's Fairy Tale Evil Stepmother. Each character has been assigned one character trait - ex: the Lazy Colleague, who we know is lazy, because he's always playing video games at work. That's it - everyone gets just one attribute, just in a Grimm's Fairy Tale.

Another reviewer referred to it as "duct-taped together", and I think she meant it as a compliment. I would agree with the description, but I do not mean it as a compliment. Each chapter begins with part of a story from the past of an purely-evil rich girl (a Lackberg favorite trope), and I figured out pretty early on where she was going with that one. One of the sub-plot attempted murders was pretty much telegraphed. Didn't really care about the main murder.

If you're a fan of good writing, complex characters, and a solid mystery, this book is not for you.




mystery31 s Anna593 118

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- ???????. ?????????? ???????. ?? 608 ??????? ?? ????????? ?? ????? ??????? 100 ?????????, ???? ?? ????????? ?? ??????? ?????????? ??? ??? ????????? ????? ??? ????? ???? ?? ?????? ???????, ? ??????? ??? ??? ??? ??????????? ???????? ??? ?? ??? ??????????, ?? ??????? ??? ????????? ???? ??????? ??? ????? ?? … ??’???? ???, ??? ?????????? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ??? ????? ???? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??????????, ???? ??????? ??? ??? ??????? ??? ???????? ??? ???????? ??? ??? ????? ???? ???????????? ????? ??? ?? ?????????? ??? ?? ??? ???????. ?? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??????? ?????? ? ?????????? ?? ???? ?????????? ?????????.
- ???? ? ?????? ???????? ?? ??? ???? ?????? ??? ? ???????????? ??? ????????? ?????? ??? ????? ????? ????, ???? ?? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ? ??? ?????? ????? ?????? ??? ?? ??? ?? ???????? ??????? ??? ???? 1000 ????????? ????? ????????? ?? ?? ????????? ??? ????? ?? ?????? ??? ??? ??????????? ?? ?????????? ??? ??? ???????? ??? ???????? ?????????? ?? ????????! ?????? ? ??????? ??? ????????? ??? ???????? ??? ?? ?????? ???? ?????? ??????????…
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??????????????, ??? ???? ??????, ????? ?? ??????? ?????? ???????? ??? ????????? ??? ??????????? ??????. ?? ?? ???????, ?? ????????? ???? ?????, ???? ???????, ??? ?? ??????? ?????? ? ??? ???!
crime-mystery scandinavian-crime24 s JohnAuthor 326 books174

My copy of this novel bears what must be the most vacuous, inane review quote of all time, and from the Washington Post, no less: "One day, we might be identifying Agatha Christie as 'the British Camilla Lackberg.'"

Either someone was given a massive bribe or they were knocking back too much of the hard stuff. Lackberg's work is nothing Christie's; it's quite simply in a different subgenre. And, although I'm no great Christie fan, she had more plotting ingenuity in her little finger than I've yet seen from Lackberg.

I much disd Lackberg's first novel, The Ice Princess , and so really have no clue why I picked up this, the third, especially since it's (just) over 500 flipping pages long. Nor, having picked it up, why I should have actually read it.

Patrik and Erica are now living together, and Erica is having a hard time of it looking after their months-old daughter. The blurb writer presumably didn't get this far into the book, because the blurb talks of the pair as "Lackberg's beloved crime-solving duo"; Erica's role is to stay at home loathing motherhood while cop husband Patrik does all the detectiving.

What he's detectiving about is the murder of a little girl, Sara, found grotesquely entangled in a lobster pot off the shore of a small Swedish fishing village. Told in parallel with the police investigation is the tale of the vile, spoilt, rich daughter Agnes who, decades ago, decided to spend a few months boffing studly stonecutter Anders and then, just when she'd decided to end the affair, found she was pregnant; forced to marry Anders and then thrown on her ear out of the family mansion, Agnes thereafter gained satisfaction only out of poisoning the lives of others.

Fairly early on I worked out the vast majority of the plot -- not because I'm a smartypants but because it's pretty bloody obvious. Not only did I spot Sara's killer but I figured the truth of another murder and an attempted murder in the present, plus some earlier murders. (I didn't foretell the pedophile subplot, but that has nothing to do with the main plot.)

One of the annoying things about The Ice Princess is continued here. A staple of good mystery-fiction plotting is that the reader is presented with the same evidence as the sleuth; the joy is to try to put the evidence together faster than the sleuth can so as to crack the case. No one evidently sent Lackberg the memo on this. Her technique -- which she obviously regards as very, very cute -- is to tell us that the sleuth has been presented with a new and important piece of evidence but to keep that evidence from us, often for several chapters. It's an entirely infantile plotting method. (Much of the characterization is wise infantile.)

Among many examples here, a subsidiary character gets a letter that gives him news that blows his mind, and for something over a hundred pages (I didn't count, but my guess is it was over two hundred) we're kept in whatever the stupefied version is of high suspense as to what the contents of this letter might be; in the final reveal, we find it has nothing to do with the plot. Lackberg could have built up a tad of suspense here, by telling us the contents of the letter and then making us wonder how the two people involved might react to the new relationship between them; but, no, she chose the option of cheaply earned false suspense.

There are several other examples that are more closely contingent upon the main plot. I chose this one for fear of giving too much away.

There's also the matter of plotting by stupidity. As anyone will tell you, exactly the wrong way to construct a plot is to base it on people acting stupidly. Here's it's the cops who act stupidly, and repeatedly so:

page 144: Oops, the cops forgot, but then remembered, that the dead girl's grandfather was there at a crucial moment and would have heard a significant argument.

page 174: Oops, the cops forgot, but then remembered later, that they couldn't locate the dead girl's father on the morning the body was discovered. "How could they have missed that?" thinks one of the cops. How indeed?

page 200: Oops, the cops forgot, but then remembered, that it might be a good idea to send a technical crew into the bathroom of the dead girl's home -- after all, although found in the sea she was almost immediately shown to have been drowned in a bathtub.

page 226: Oops, despite the reminder on page 200, the cops still forgot that it might be a good idea to send a technical crew into the bathroom of the dead girl's home.

page 317: Oops, the cops forgot, but then remembered, that it might be a good idea to send a technical crew into the bathroom of the house of a particular other suspect.

Believe it or not, I missed noting a couple of other examples of this plotting daftness -- primarily because I was reading in bed and there wasn't a pencil near to hand: no way was I going to palpitate my way out into the cold to go find one.

The book has several more plot strands than I've indicated, including one that lays the foundations for the next volume in the series, a volume that alas I shan't be reading. Despite the steadfast mediocrity of it all, that multiplicity of strands did I confess keep me turning the pages, on the one hand to confirm that, yes, I'd been right in my deductions of much of the plot, and on the other, just as with the couple of Jacqueline Susann novels I read back in the day, because, muggins that I am, I kept assuming the book just had to get better.

Huh! I'm almost tempted to go dig out an Agatha Christie to cleanse my palate.20 s Lena434 39

I think this is one of the rare crime books I've read that my focus wasn't on who the killer was.The depth of the characters and the thorough psychological analysis gave a singural feeling to this book.In my opinion it portays greatly how important the family is in the growing process of a human and how much it can destroy a person.The story that was about the past although few pages each time succeded in making you realise the burden that 3 generations carried.I wasn't sure about the killer until the very end.The plot of the book was totally believable in my opinion due to the great work the author did with the characters.5 starsssss.21 s ??????? ?????????Author 8 books67

?????????????? ?????? ??? ?????? ???? ???? ??????? ?????? ??? ????????? ????? ?? ?????????? ????? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ??? ?????? ??????? ???? ??? ??? ??????????? ??? ????? ?????????? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ????? ???? ??? ???????????? ???????? ??? ??????????.???? ???????? ? ??????? ?????? ???? ?????? ????????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ???? ????? ? ??????.??? ???????? ???? ?? ??????????? ???????? ??? ????? ???? ???? ??? ? ?????????? ??? ??????? ?? ?????? ?????????? ??? ????? ??? ?????.???? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ?????? ??????? ??????? ??? ???? ????? ????.??? ??????? ?????? ???? ???????? ??? ???? ?? ???? ?? ????????? ?????????? ?? ??????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ?????????.???? ? ?????? ?????? ?? ??? ????????? ??? ??? ?????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ??? ????????? ??? ??????? ???????.???? ?? ?????? ??????.????????? ??? ??? ?????????? ?? ??????? ?????? ??????????? ?? ????????? ?????? ????? ?? ????? ?????????? ???? ?? ????? ???? ?????? ?? ?????? ?????????? .?????? ?? ???????????? ????? ????? ???? ??? ??? ????.???? ??????? ??? ?????? ?? ?????? ??? ???????? ??? ??????.????? ?????????? ?????????? ??? ??????????? ???????????.? ??????? ?? ??? ???????? ???? ??? ???? ?? ????? ?? ?? ???? ???????? ????? ?? ???????? ????????? .??? ??? ??? ?? ??????.??? ?????? ??????????.??????? ??????? ?????? .?? ???????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ???????? ??? ?? ?????????? ??? ????????? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ?????? ??????.???? ????????? ???? ??? ????? ???.?? ?????? ??????????? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ?????? ?? ??????? ? ???.18 s Nasia407 100

?? ??? ?? ??????????? ????????? ??? ???????? ?? ???????? ??????, ??? ?? ??????? ???? ? ???? ? ??????? ??? ??????????? ??? ????????? ??? ?????????. ?????? ????, ? ???? ??? ?????? ????????? ??? ?????????? ??????? ???? ??????? ??? ??????? ?????? ????? ??? ??? ??????, ?? ?????????? ? ?????????? ??? ?? ????? ?????? 3.5/5. brace2017 could-give own-read ...more17 s Kylie H1,032

This is the 3rd book in the Patrik Hedström series and sees he and Erika struggling with their newborn daughter Maja.
In this book the body of a child is found, presumed an accidental drowning until a forensic report indicates that child was drowned in a bath, despite being found in the sea.
The book the interweaves a story from the past into the current events and slowly information begins to fall into place.
Although a very well told book, it will not be for everyone. There are elements of child abuse, paedophilia, domestic violence and elder abuse.
This is also not really a standalone book, as you need to know the characters for a lot of the story to make sense.crime great-read16 s Anto M.1,027 89

Una trama costruita in maniera magistrale.
Un passato che a piccoli passi va verso il presente fino al punto d'incontro dove tutto diventa lapalissiano agli occhi del lettore. Della serie "Fjallbacka" della Lackberg è quello che più di tutti mi ha coinvolta. Una delle rare volte in cui leggo un giallo e non sono concentrata solo sullo scoprire l'assassino perché, l'analisi psicologica approfondita dei vari personaggi e il ritmo incalzante del romanzo, me lo hanno fatto amare in toto. Al 70% avevo già subdorato chi era l'assassino, perché, stavolta, con gli indizi è stata molto generosa, ma questo non mi ha distolta dalla lettura.
Quel passato che pian pianino andava incontro al presente, sebbene fossero due o tre pagine, ogni 50 del presente, erano così intense, così crude, da far capire al lettore quanto una famiglia sia importante nel processo di crescita di un essere umano e, quanto, i modelli familiari sbagliati possano incidere sulla stabilità psicologica di una persona.

"I mostri vivono nel buio"

Mi dispiace che Erica in questo volume non sia stata parte attiva dell'indagine, ma ho amato comunque la sua parte umana; il post parto e l'allattamento li ho rivissuti insieme a lei tanto erano reali. La Lackberg è ormai per me una garanzia.cartaceo gialli-e-thriller15 s Nuria233 26

3/5
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