The Ice Beneath Her

This is the first solo outing of Swedish author Camilla Grebe. Grebe has previously collaborated with her sister, Åsa Träff, on the crime series featuring psychologist Siri Bergman.
The book opens with the grisly murder of a young woman found in the house of the wealthy CEO of a popular clothing store chain, Jesper Orre. We hear the story from three perspectives, much of it in flashbacks. I am going to offer the plot summation from Publishers' Weekly since they do it more justice than I could. "Peter Lindgren, the detective investigating the crime, is afraid of commitment and still hasn't accepted the teenage son he never wanted; shop assistant Emma Bohman, whose now-missing wealthy lover appears to be the prime suspect in the murder, dwells on her painful dysfunctional childhood; and profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön, who's trapped in a suffocating marriage, faces early-onset Alzheimer's while helping the police with the case. The present-day crime resembles a 10-year-old cold case during which Peter and Hanne shared a short, tragic relationship. In alternating chapters, the three central figures regret what could have been, grieve for what's been lost, and lament what seemingly can never be..." One might begin to suspect what is really going on about halfway through, but would be unlikely to untangle the whole knot until the very end. The frequent use of flashbacks dropped into contemporary narrative is sometimes a little confusing, but not enough to lose you entirely. It's a very tricky plot and you would probably have to read it twice to truly understand at least a couple of the characters...I won't say why. If you like Scandinavian noir, this will certainly fill the bill. In fact, Kirkus claims, "A tour de force that lifts its author to the front rank among the increasingly crowded field of Nordic noir."