“The road stretches out black and shining as I drive into the city. The brake lights of other cars glisten in front of me on the road, lighting the way. Thick drifts of dirty brown snow and squat, depressing, conformist buildings like the road to Stockholm. The occasional illuminated Christmas star brightens up a window, like a torch in the night. It’s started snowing again. A rainy slush settles on the windshield, blurring all the edges, softening the landscape. The only sound is the rhythmic swish of the wipers married to the soft purr of the motor. A murder. Yet another murder.”

The Ice Beneath Her
By Camilla Grebe
Translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel

Detective Peter Lindgren has just left the cemetery where he was visiting his mother’s grave to answer the call of a homicide at an upscale neighborhood in Stockholm. The body of the unidentified woman has been beheaded and the only clue the police have is that the owner of the apartment is the well-known executive Jesper Orre, who is missing. To add another twist, the detectives encountered the same gruesome scene 10 years ago.

As Detective Lindgren and his partner Detective Manfred Olsson begin their investigation there is also another woman trying to piece together where Jesper Orre is. Emma is a sales associate at one of Orre’s trendy clothing shops Clothes & More. She’s been keeping a secret from the other sales associates and that is that she’s engaged to Orre. Their secret affair quickly led to him proposing but Emma has lent Orre an incredible sum of money and now he’s missing.

Before you get too comfortable reading these narratives Grebe introduces Hanne Lagerlind-Schön, a criminal profiler who Lindgren and Olsson have worked with before. Hanne has her own past with Peter that she must reconcile and something else she’s trying to keep secret for a while longer but she is not one to pass up an opportunity to delve into a mystery.

How all three narratives come together was a surprise for me. I thought the author did a fabulous job of going back and forth between all characters to reveal their secrets and come to a shocking conclusion. I certainly will want to read more by this author.

Source: Advance review copy

I hope you all had a great weekend. Ours was low key but very nice. Today my husband made some new chocolate and walnut cookies but they almost ended up more like brownies (not that I’m complaining!) and we finished watching Trapped. Have any of you watched that show? I really liked it! Lots of snowy scenes, a gruesome discovery and a cast of characters all hiding something. Really enjoyable and now I can’t wait for Season 2.

You know what other Nordic crime show I can’t wait to watch? Occupied. This one is set in Norway where they face a Russian occupation. We really liked Season 1 so can’t wait to see what happens next.

On the book front I started reading The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon and it is so good. I know so many of you recommended this one. I should have listened to you guys sooner! There are several narratives going back and forth between past and present. Disappearances, deaths and so many spooky things. The atmosphere the author builds is so perfect and definitely has made me wonder if I should read this one at night. Ha.

Unfortunately I’m also reading The Good Daughter by Alexandra Burt and while there are no ghosts, there are certainly some similarities as this one also has different narrators and different time frames and I think it’s a bit too much for me to keep track of both. So I’m probably going to put this one away until I finish The Winter People. I’d like to start a book that is completely different from these, like maybe a good woman’s fiction book.

Anyway, that’s the scoop from around here. Let’s see what I find on my bookshelves and I’ll tell you about that in another post. What did you read this weekend?