Silenced

January 21, 2013
Early in Ohlsson’s deftly plotted second Fredrika Bergman mystery (after 2012’s Unwanted), a Stockholm vicar and his cantor wife are found dead in their bedroom, an apparent murder-suicide, but no one close to the couple believes that Jakob Ahlbin would have shot his wife with a hunting pistol and then turned the gun on himself. Bergman and her colleagues in the Stockholm police’s Criminal Investigation Division begin to doubt the murder-suicide theory, even though Ahlbin, a vocal supporter of immigrant rights, suffered from depression and was despondent over his older daughter’s recent death from a heroin overdose. Meanwhile, a hit-and-run accident turns into a homicide, and other bodies pile up. Could these deaths be connected to the vicar’s murder? The many separate stories and viewpoints make for a sluggish start, but Ohlsson expertly pulls all the pieces together to ultimately form an intricate whole. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency.