I think I definitely need to go read something light and fluffy after having consumed a couple of these in recent weeks (see also my post on Killer's Art). This is certainly a complex plot and complex characters, and although the reader is led down the garden path towards one conclusion, you are pretty sure the "obvious suspect" didn't really do it--not entirely sure, but almost. First a young teen is attacked and fatally beaten by a trio of thugs, apparently, and when off-duty police officer Maria Wern encounters them and tries to stop the beating, she too is severely beaten. Then a nurse is murdered and posed in a public park as a grisly bride. Are they separate cases? Then the nurse's next door neighbor is found hanging from detective Per Arvidsson's living room ceiling. And it seems that the police cannot make any headway finding the perpetrators of any of these crimes. There is one piece of evidence left at the scene of the nurse's murder with DNA, but strangely, the killer has apparently been very careful to remove all traces of his presence otherwise. All hands are scrambling as fast as they can to find the murderer before someone else dies, maybe someone very close to those investigating the crimes. Every one of the dead people and the living ones as well seem to have such incredibly complicated lives: depression, dead spouses, loss of parental rights, illegitimate children, hypochondria, drinking too much, smoking too much--the list goes on and on. It's a wonder any crimes get solved when the investigators' lives are such a mess. Sometimes I just need a hit of Midsomer Murders where the main characters are all reasonably well adjusted and happily married...
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