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Summary
Summary
"Lars Kepler ... [has] a taste for the macabre and a surefire recipe for the lurid serial-killer thriller. ... This is not a book for anyone on heart medication. Kepler is a virtuoso at delivering scenes of suspense." --Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
The internationally bestselling authors of The Sandman and The Hypnotist return with a terrifying new thriller: Detective Joona Linna--recently returned from compassionate leave--reunites with hypnotist Erik Maria Bark in a search for a seemingly unassailable sadistic killer.
The Swedish National Crime Unit receives a video of a young woman in her home, clearly unaware that she's being watched. Soon after the tape is received, the woman's body is found horrifically mutilated. With the arrival of the next, similar video, the police understand that the killer is toying with them, warning of a new victim, knowing there's nothing they can do. Detective Margot Silverman is put in charge of the investigation, and soon asks Detective Joona Linna for help. Linna, in turn, recruits Erik Maria Bark, the hypnotist and expert in trauma, with whom Linna's worked before. Bark is leery of forcing people to give up their secrets. But this time, Bark is the one hiding things.
Years before, he had put a man away for an eerily similar crime, and now he's beginning to think that an innocent man may be behind bars--and a serial killer still on the loose. . .
Author Notes
Lars Kepler is a Swedish pseudonym used by Alexander and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril. Their works include The Hypnotist and The Paganini Contract. These Swedish authors created the pen name by using two of the people they most admire, Swedish author Steig Larsson and German scientist Johannes Kepler. Alexander and Alexandra are married to each other and live in Sweden.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kepler's stellar fifth Joona Linna novel finds Joona, who faked his death in 2018's The Sandman to protect his family from a serial killer, replaced as the Swedish National Police Authority's expert on "serial killers, spree killers, and stalkers" by Margot Silverman. In Margot's baffling first case, Maria Carlsson, an Ikea product adviser, was stabbed repeatedly in her home, and her facial features were almost completely effaced. Maria's killer posted a video of Maria putting on tights, filmed from her garden, to YouTube shortly before the murder. Before Margot can make any progress, another video is posted-of a woman eating ice cream and watching TV-that also is followed by bloody slaughter. Joona reenters the picture after he learns that his nemesis is dead, but his unconventional methods again land him in trouble. The reveal of the stalker's identity is a genuine gut-punch, albeit fairly clued. Kepler (the pen name for the husband-and-wife writing team of Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril) does a masterly job of elevating the serial killer thriller beyond genre clichAcs and tropes. 50,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden). (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
More trademark murder and mayhem from the pseudonymous mysterian Kepler (The Sandman, 2018, etc.), bringing in the back bench to solve the various unpleasantries.Joona Linna, the tough but anguished Stockholm cop, has stalked off, wanting to be alone. Margot Silverman, pregnant and miserable, is working without him, trying to keep a step ahead of the bad guys in the endless war of good and evil. She's perplexed: A taunting video has turned up at police headquarters that shows a young woman who will soon turn up deadand nastily so. "A serial rapist who's been treated, possibly chemically castrated," theorizes Margot, who's seen such things before, about the stalker/murderer. More nasty killing ensues: "Susanna realizes she's not going to make it. Ice-cold anguish opens up like a chasm as she stops fighting for her life." It's vintage Kepler: There's no nice way to leave the world, if he has anything to say about it. Now, in the fifth novel in his ongoing series, he brings back the lead character in the inaugural volume, the hypnotist and psychologist Erik Maria Bark, a bundle of neuroses himself. He has ideas about who might be behind the string of killings, but he's also caught up in intrigue of his own making, which complicates an already tangled tale that picks its way through a barrel of red herrings. Along the way, Joona re-enters the picture, just this side of being a vigilante and just this side of breaking down, badly fed and migraine-riddled. No bad guy can hope to escape the justice-bent triobut is it a guy at all? Kepler's story is skillfully laid out, but it doesn't stand alone as well as the preceding four volumes; the reader will want to catch up with them before attempting this one, with its unexpected villain and its depiction of a Sweden that, though tidy and with good health care and progressive prisons, seems to be a pretty dangerous place to find oneself.Longtime fans won't be disappointedbut only those longtime fans are likely to catch all the nuances in Kepler's whodunit. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* After faking his death to protect his family from a serial killer in The Sandman (2018), legendary detective Joona Linna returns to Stockholm hoping to clear his friend, renowned psychiatrist Erik Maria Bark, of serial murder charges. Margot Silverman, the National Police's new expert on serial killers, has moved into Linna's office but hasn't yet managed to step into his shoes. She and her partner are hunting a killer who taunts police with voyeuristic videos taken through his victims' windows moments before he strikes. Hoping to use hypnosis to draw clues from a witness' memory, Margot consults Bark. For Bark, the new case awakens the shameful memory of a hauntingly similar crime. Years ago, he discarded alibi information that his patient, Rocky Kyrklund, revealed under hypnosis, and Kyrklund was subsequently (wrongfully?) convicted of murder. In a startling turn, Bark faces police scrutiny when he's connected to each of the new killer's victims. His only hope is Linna, who suspects the killer is the Preacher, a malevolent shadow buried in Kyrklund's memories. Kepler delivers a page-turning hunt for an expertly camouflaged killer that draws shocking connections between the hallowed halls of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm's prostitution and drug scene, and Sweden's rural churches. The author's dark, complex procedurals are must-reads for readers drawn to Stieg Larsson, Mons Kallentoft, and Michael Connelly.--Christine Tran Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
The essential component of their formula is a worthy villain, someone just like the sieko here, who shoots videos of unsuspecting women to study at his leisure ("He takes his time, enjoys himself"). Once he's whipped himself up into a froth, this merciless madman returns to claim his prey with another horrific murder. The sadistic twist here is that he sends the videos of his future victims to the National Crime headquarters in Stockholm, daring the police to outwit him before he kills again. Margot Silverman, a police expert on serial killers, spree killers and stalkers, is properly worked up by these taunts, which also prods into action Joona Linna, a living legend in crime circles and the heavyweight of the Kepler series. The third member of the team is Erik Maria Bark, a specialist in disaster trauma and an authority in clinical hypnotherapy, who treats us to an impressive example of his skills ("The only thing you're listening to is my voice ... "). This is not a book for anyone on heart medication. Kepler is a virtuoso at delivering scenes of suspense, proving it here with an unnerving sequence in which a woman senses the silent killer who is stalking her. He also loves to drop severed body parts into a story, even when it isn't strictly necessary to advance the plot. But that's the deal with Kepler: If you want the thrills, you've got to expect the chills. PETER ROBINSON writes the kind of mysteries they don't write anymore: smart, civilized whodunits that are intellectually challenging, emotionally engaging and always discreet. Can you imagine a cop who concludes a suspect interview by saying: "Sorry to have bothered you at dinnertime. And I apologize if some of our questions caused you discomfort." That gentlemanly policeman is Alan Banks, a Yorkshire homicide detective who appears in CARELESS LOVE (Morrow/HarperCollins, $26.99), his 25th outing in the series dedicated to his sleuthing. No one expects cops to be au courant with the latest fashions. Nonetheless, Banks knows that a young woman found dead at the scene of an auto accident would not get all dolled up and neglect to take her handbag, and that a man who supposedly fell to his death in a ravine would not have gone for a stroll on Tetchley Moor wearing an expensive suit. The double-sided puzzle, which strikes Banks as "a three-pipe problem," involves, among other things, a sex-trafficking racket. But we also appreciate the well-drawn women, the keen character analysis and, of course, the company of a true gentleman. Wearing red to a wedding reception might seem rude, but wearing red while dead seems downright uncouth. The bride certainly doesn't take it very well when a dead woman in a red dress spoils her big day in THE WEDDING GUEST (Ballantine, $28.99), Jonathan Kellerman's latest mystery featuring Alex Delaware. A child psychologist who is often consulted by the Los Angeles Police Department, Delaware has no children to tend to here, but he does find a lot of childish grownups at the Aura, the former strip joint Brearley and Garrett Burdette whimsically chose for their "Saints and Sinners"-themed party. Although the corpse is admired for her fashion sense - "The dress is Fendi, the shoes are Manolo, and the hair is awesome" - no one seems to know who she is. This means Delaware has a suspect pool of about 100 people, from the mother of the bride ("Botoxed as smooth as a freshly laundered bedsheet") to the busboys. One-on-one interviews are Kellerman's strong suit, so expect some shrewd instant analyses and unwittingly funny observations - like "Destroying a wedding has a personal feeling." "No crazy thoughts allowed," promises the diarist who narrates THE SILENT PATIENT (Celadon, $26.99), a predictable if disturbing first novel by Alex Michaelides. Don't fall for that one; there are plenty of crazy thoughts - and crazier events - in this psychological thriller. The two main characters, both inclined to craziness, are extremely well matched. Alicia Berenson appeared to be a happily married woman when she tied her husband to a chair and shot him five times in the face. Why she did it remains a mystery, because she never spoke again. Theo Faber, her psychotherapist at the institution where she is locked up, seems normal enough at first. And it's obvious that he's giving it his all. But Alicia is a tough nut to crack - "I know all this sounds crazy," she admits in her diary - and therapy increasingly becomes a battle between crazy and crazier. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.