The Preacher

During an unusually hot summer in the isolated Swedish coastal village of Fjällbacka, detective Patrik Hedstrom is pulled away from his impending fatherhood to investigate the murder of a young woman whose body was found alongside two older skeletons, victims of a kidnapping from twenty-four years ago whose main suspect died by suicide. The similarities between the killings suggest an impossible continuity, and as another girl disappears, the investigation takes on desperate urgency. Camilla Lackberg's second Fjällbacka novel delivers a genuinely unsettling Scandinavian procedural.

David Thorn narrates with the measured Scandinavian gravity that the genre demands, conveying both the village's claustrophobic intimacy and the investigation's escalating pressure. The domestic details of Patrik's pregnant partner Erica's parallel investigation give the story a dual engine, and Thorn handles both registers with equal authority. The Swedish Crime Academy Award confirms a novel that stands within its genre's best traditions.