Silenced by Kristina Ohlsson
Apr. 18th, 2016 03:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Fifteen years ago a young girl was brutally attacked as she picked flowers in a meadow near her parents’ Swedish country home. The crime went unreported; the victim silenced.
Cut to the present. It is a bleak February morning in Stockholm, when Alex Recht’s federal investigation unit is assigned to two new cases.
A man has been killed in a hit and run. He has no identification on him, he is not reported missing nor wanted by the police. Investigative Analyst Fredrika Bergman has the task of finding out who he is.
At the same time, a priest and his wife are found dead in their apartment. All evidence suggests that the priest shot his wife and then committed suicide. But is that all there is to it?
Two different cases, seemingly unrelated. But it is not long before the investigations begin to converge and the police are following a trail that leads all the way back to the ‘90s, to a crime that was hushed-up, but whose consequences will reach further and deeper than anyone ever expected.
It’s February 2008. Alex Recht’s Criminal Investigation Unit has been thrown two new cases. The first appears to be a straight up murder-suicide – the Reverend Jakob Ahlbin was known to have mental health issues and it appears that the news of his daughter’s death tipped him over the edge. The second is an obvious hit and run, but the victim has no ID and has not been reported missing. Alex assigns the very pregnant Fredrika Bergman to the hit and run, while he runs the murder-suicide with Peder Rydh and newcomer Joar Sahkin (who’s on loan from the environmental investigation unit). But it isn’t too long before both teams realise that nothing about their cases is as it seems and that there are links between the two that go back to another, unreported crime that occurred 15 years earlier, a crime that was hushed up but with a victim determined to no longer be silenced …
The second in Kristina Ohlsson’s BERGMAN & RECHT SERIES (translated by Sarah Death) is a slick crime thriller that nevertheless didn’t quite pull together the threads enough to provide a satisfying ending. I hadn’t read the first in the series, but Ohlsson provides enough information so that it isn’t necessary to do so (although it would perhaps help in explaining some of the relationships – notably Fredrika’s role within the team and the tensions it’s created). Ohlsson’s got an easy style and I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book and the way she ties the different plot lines together, utilising different points of view to provide information but leave enough mystery to keep the reader interested. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that there was enough of a pay-off to the different mysteries – in particular the revelation of the antagonist and their motivation was somewhat vague and I wasn’t completely convinced by the explanation for how it was all pulled together or why. I also felt that the storyline involving Alex’s relationship with his wife and his growing concern that his wife is keeping secret wasn’t developed enough on page to have the impact it was clearly intended to have, which is a shame because there was a lot of potential there. All in all, while this book didn’t quite come good for me, there was enough here to make me interested in checking out the rest of this series and Ohlsson’s other work.
The Verdict:
The second in Kristina Ohlsson’s BERGMAN & RECHT SERIES (translated by Sarah Death) is a slick crime thriller that nevertheless didn’t quite pull together the threads enough to provide a satisfying ending. I hadn’t read the first in the series, but Ohlsson provides enough information so that it isn’t necessary to do so (although it would perhaps help in explaining some of the relationships – notably Fredrika’s role within the team and the tensions it’s created). Ohlsson’s got an easy style and I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book and the way she ties the different plot lines together, utilising different points of view to provide information but leave enough mystery to keep the reader interested. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that there was enough of a pay-off to the different mysteries – in particular the revelation of the antagonist and their motivation was somewhat vague and I wasn’t completely convinced by the explanation for how it was all pulled together or why. I also felt that the storyline involving Alex’s relationship with his wife and his growing concern that his wife is keeping secret wasn’t developed enough on page to have the impact it was clearly intended to have, which is a shame because there was a lot of potential there. All in all, while this book didn’t quite come good for me, there was enough here to make me interested in checking out the rest of this series and Ohlsson’s other work.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy of this book.
Cut to the present. It is a bleak February morning in Stockholm, when Alex Recht’s federal investigation unit is assigned to two new cases.
A man has been killed in a hit and run. He has no identification on him, he is not reported missing nor wanted by the police. Investigative Analyst Fredrika Bergman has the task of finding out who he is.
At the same time, a priest and his wife are found dead in their apartment. All evidence suggests that the priest shot his wife and then committed suicide. But is that all there is to it?
Two different cases, seemingly unrelated. But it is not long before the investigations begin to converge and the police are following a trail that leads all the way back to the ‘90s, to a crime that was hushed-up, but whose consequences will reach further and deeper than anyone ever expected.
It’s February 2008. Alex Recht’s Criminal Investigation Unit has been thrown two new cases. The first appears to be a straight up murder-suicide – the Reverend Jakob Ahlbin was known to have mental health issues and it appears that the news of his daughter’s death tipped him over the edge. The second is an obvious hit and run, but the victim has no ID and has not been reported missing. Alex assigns the very pregnant Fredrika Bergman to the hit and run, while he runs the murder-suicide with Peder Rydh and newcomer Joar Sahkin (who’s on loan from the environmental investigation unit). But it isn’t too long before both teams realise that nothing about their cases is as it seems and that there are links between the two that go back to another, unreported crime that occurred 15 years earlier, a crime that was hushed up but with a victim determined to no longer be silenced …
The second in Kristina Ohlsson’s BERGMAN & RECHT SERIES (translated by Sarah Death) is a slick crime thriller that nevertheless didn’t quite pull together the threads enough to provide a satisfying ending. I hadn’t read the first in the series, but Ohlsson provides enough information so that it isn’t necessary to do so (although it would perhaps help in explaining some of the relationships – notably Fredrika’s role within the team and the tensions it’s created). Ohlsson’s got an easy style and I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book and the way she ties the different plot lines together, utilising different points of view to provide information but leave enough mystery to keep the reader interested. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that there was enough of a pay-off to the different mysteries – in particular the revelation of the antagonist and their motivation was somewhat vague and I wasn’t completely convinced by the explanation for how it was all pulled together or why. I also felt that the storyline involving Alex’s relationship with his wife and his growing concern that his wife is keeping secret wasn’t developed enough on page to have the impact it was clearly intended to have, which is a shame because there was a lot of potential there. All in all, while this book didn’t quite come good for me, there was enough here to make me interested in checking out the rest of this series and Ohlsson’s other work.
The Verdict:
The second in Kristina Ohlsson’s BERGMAN & RECHT SERIES (translated by Sarah Death) is a slick crime thriller that nevertheless didn’t quite pull together the threads enough to provide a satisfying ending. I hadn’t read the first in the series, but Ohlsson provides enough information so that it isn’t necessary to do so (although it would perhaps help in explaining some of the relationships – notably Fredrika’s role within the team and the tensions it’s created). Ohlsson’s got an easy style and I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book and the way she ties the different plot lines together, utilising different points of view to provide information but leave enough mystery to keep the reader interested. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that there was enough of a pay-off to the different mysteries – in particular the revelation of the antagonist and their motivation was somewhat vague and I wasn’t completely convinced by the explanation for how it was all pulled together or why. I also felt that the storyline involving Alex’s relationship with his wife and his growing concern that his wife is keeping secret wasn’t developed enough on page to have the impact it was clearly intended to have, which is a shame because there was a lot of potential there. All in all, while this book didn’t quite come good for me, there was enough here to make me interested in checking out the rest of this series and Ohlsson’s other work.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy of this book.
