On a cold November night, a farmhouse burns to the ground. Inside a young woman is found dead—not from the fire but murdered. To the people in the rural community of Marbäck, this becomes a reference point: a before and after. For ten-year-old Isak Nyqvist, it sets in motion something he cannot control, igniting his future into an unpredictable inferno.
The police focus their attention on Edvard Christensson, the boyfriend of the murdered woman and Isak’s beloved uncle. After a quick investigation, Edvard is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison and Marbäck believes it can return to its innocence. Vidar Jörgensson, the rookie officer who first responded to the fire, prides himself on helping solved the murder. Little does he know this will become the defining case of his career and that it will drive him to the brink of professional and personal disaster—and link his fate to young Isak’s.
A celebrated author and professor of criminology, Christoffer Carlsson digs deep into the psyches of ordinary people and shows how one crime can haunt a community for decades. A #1 international bestseller, Under the Storm is already a modern classic of Scandinavian crime fiction and demonstrates why many regard Carlsson as one of the great crime writers of his generation.
Release Date: Feb 27, 2024
Publisher: Random House
Imprint: Hogarth
Price: $13.99
Under the Storm is a complex novel that covers a time period of over twelve years. There are three different timelines showing how the death of a young woman affects her small Swedish hometown. Specifically. Lovisa’s death permanently changes the lives of Vidar, one of the police officers who helped investigate the crime, and Isak, the nephew of the prime suspect in Lovisa’s death. Of course the life of the suspect, Edvard, is also changed, but the story goes further than that. The characterization is detailed and well done, even when the characters are hard to like at times. The book also has an overwhelming atmosphere of sadness surrounding almost all of the characters.
The book was translated into English from Swedish, and sometimes the results are poetic, and sometimes it’s confusing. The first part of the book is very intriguing, but the middle of the book is slow. There is so much going on in the story, including a hurricane, so some of the information that slows the pace of the book is unnecessary, especially details about Vidar and Isak’s encounters with the women in their lives.
I enjoyed the twists and turns the case takes and like that things are resolved at the end. However, after all of the lengthy descriptions of events throughout the book, I was disappointed that things regarding the main characters were left somewhat vague. The author is a leading criminologist in Sweden, so this is an interesting crime novel that included much more than a typical procedural but didn’t always keep me fully engaged. I’m glad I read this book, although I liked the author’s Blaze Me a Sun more.
~ Christine
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