The Drowning

The Drowning is the sixth Patrik Hedstrom/Erica Falck Swedish mystery novel by Camilla Lackberg.  Patrik and Erica are married with one small daughter and expecting twins.  Patrik is a homicide detective and Erica is a writer and they live in Fjallbacka.  Erica is asked to help a new local author, Christian Thydell, edit his manuscript and finds that it is a fascinating piece of writing.  Her publishing agent is also his, so she attends his book signing events, where she discovers he has been receiving threatening letters in the mail.  She finds this very disturbing, so of course she needs to investigate.  When Christian's childhood friend Magnus first disappears and then is found murdered, her husband gets involved.
Christian has three childhood friends and they all grew up together in Fjallbacka.  It is soon discovered that all are receiving these threatening letters.  However none of them will discuss it with her or the police, which means little progress is made. So both Erica and the police begin to investigate Christian's early life.  The first page of each chapter delves into a memory of a young boy adopted by a beautiful mother and then rejected by the same mother when her own child is born.  Is this perhaps from Christian's book The Mermaid or is it the memory of one of his friends?  This definitely ups the tension in the story as you don't know which of the four friends lived through this abusive parenting.

This book is a definite page turner as are all of Lackberg's previous books.  If you are interested in reading a Swedish mystery, but feel some trepidation, this is the author to try.  So start at the beginning as the Hedstroms' relationship and family are a part of the story.