The Stonecutter

Starred review from February 27, 2012
Läckberg’s excellent third novel set in the west coast village of Fjällbacka, like its predecessors The Ice Princess and The Preacher, strips conventional veneers from her achingly complex characters. Alternating parallel narratives embroil readers first in the present-day murder by drowning of little Sara Klinga, then in the rise and fall many decades earlier of Agnes Stjernkvist, a venomous schemer who lusts after honest stonecutter Anders Andersson. Investigating Sara’s death is series lead Det. Patrik Hedström, now an exhausted new father, whose partner, Erica, is suffering through a desperate postpartum depression. Läckberg gradually tightens the disparate narrative strands noose-like around her numerous remorselessly dissected characters, her signature reversal revealing shocking and poignant truths about the residents of Fjällbacka, where she herself was born. With at least nine more novels waiting for English translation and the Swedish TV series Fjällbacka Murders in the works, Läckberg has rapidly become one of the most profitable native authors in Sweden’s history. Agent: Joakim Hansson, Nordin Literary Agency.

June 25, 2012
The extreme darkness of the human spirit—a quality that marks Läckberg’s novel and the work of many other Swedish crime writers—is expertly portrayed in this audio edition by narrator David Thorn, who previously read earlier installments in the author’s Patrik Hedstrom series. Although it may take listeners a few moments to become accustomed to Thorn’s British accent, this discrepancy quickly becomes a nonissue given the narrator’s deliberate pace, which serves to underscore the bleakness of both the external and the internal terrain. This time around, Hedstrom is particularly invested in solving the crime; as a new father, he’s affected by the murder of an eight-year-old girl even more strongly than usual. And Thorn is especially effective in portraying the detective’s exhaustion from tending to his infant daughter, which only adds to the strain of working the grisly murder case. A Pegasus hardcover.