This novel begins in Abisko in the far north of Sweden during winter. A woman's corpse is accidentally discovered covered up in a fishing ark on a frozen lake. She shows signs of having been tortured and is wearing expensive lingerie under her track suit.
Two detectives (a happily married woman with a brood of children and a divorced man who has just lost his beloved cat) are assigned to the case, and they are assisted by Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson, who is undergoing a tenuous recovery from a nervous breakdown after shooting three men in self-defence.
There are a number of parallels between this work and that of Camilla Läckberg ("The Ice Princess") and Henning Mankell's Wallander series, but the most uncanny similarities lie with "The Ice Princess". Once again we see the seedy underbelly of the Swedish corporate world, with an emotionless oligarch who suffered a deprived and painful childhood. He has a brother-and-sister team as his right-hand persons, and at one stage there is a hint of an incestuous relationship. Kallis Mining is involved in questionable activities in Africa and the quest to cover this up ultimately brings an untimely end to many of the key players. Kallis has a half-sister who is both a seer and a painter (the theme of a key character who is a painter recurs in both "The Ice Princess" and Mankell's works - Wallander's ageing father). She lives with him and his retainers on his large country estate and foresees and prepares for the coming apocalypse.
Martinsson is instrumental in unravelling the threads of the mystery, and in the course of doing this unravels her own feelings for her ex-boss and eventually summons up the courage to act on this.
One murder turns into two once the apparent suicide of a local journalist is investigated, and an elusive contract killer (also linked to Africa) is implicated.
The denouement comes swiftly close to the end of the book. Our two intrepid detectives go to arrest Kallis (who has paid for both 'hits' to be carried out) at the same time that a team of assassins dispatched by the Africans (who have become aware of his shady dealings) arrive at the estate planning to "kill everyone" while Kallis is hosting a dinner party for all his African co-conspirators. They proceed to do this with great efficiency after severing the power (including the gratuitous killing of a small baby) but in a strange twist of fate Kallis' half-sister manages to rescue him and carry him towards the boat landing at the edge of the forest, where (somewhat conveniently) his wife, who has also managed to escape, is abut to make a speedy exit in their boat. The half-sister sinks into the snow and we are led to believe that she bleeds to death (which seems physiologically impossible given the way her wounds are described) and Kallis' wife hauls him into the boat and they speed away into the night. We are given the impression that money will buy him treatment away from prying eyes and a new identity and a new life (their children are safe with their grandparents). Two of the assassins are killed by the detectives and the rest flee.
Martinsson ends up with her boss, the lonely detective hopes to find love with the widow of the murdered journalist (having acquired a new cat in the meanwhile) and Kallis lives to fight another day, which seems profoundly unfair!
I have to admit I have not read many novels in recent years, but it does seem strange to me that the chapters in a number of these crime books are of such irregular (and often extended) lengths, which can make the old maxim of "just one more chapter before I turn the light out" rather challenging!
It is a cleverly-written book and all the threads are woven together in a cohesive way at the end. There are both quirky and believable characterisations, and it was not surprising that the malevolent oligarch turned out to be the person who regarded life as expendable, even that of his closest allies. There was perhaps too much by way of flashbacks to the history behind the murky politics and the ménage à trois, but otherwise a pleasant enough read.
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