Summer Death by Mons Kallentoft

I wrote a raving review of the first novel by Mons Kallentoft to be translated into English, Midwinter Blood, and now I’ve had a similar experience with this next work. As before, his protagonist is the police superintendent, Malin Fors, a divorced woman in her 40s with a 16-year-old daughter, Tove. During most of the book, Tove and her father are off on a trip to Bali while Malin works to find a serial killer who preys on the most vulnerable young women who are about Tove’s age.

Do you remember the 1981 movie, Body Heat, with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt? That story memorably captured the essence of living in the brutal heat of a Florida summer, and Kallentoft does an equally effective job of portraying living through the hottest summer in Sweden's history. Fors and the other characters suffer from the inferno with every movement they make and their world is on fire, literally, as a forest fire rages uncontrolled near their town of Linkoping.

Once again, I’m going to avoid writing too much about the plot. Interestingly, the author more than hints at where the plot is going, but this reader was held in its grips as the story actually unfolded exactly where I thought it must. Malin agonizes about her role as a single mother and her distant relationship with her ex-husband. Chillingly, Kallentoft captures the essence of evil, violence and psychopathic thought processes. The crimes about which he writes are personal and disturbing. He introduces subjects such as the role of immigrants in a changing society and the impact of prejudices in the police force. Once again, he often writes in the first person, even as he switches from one character to another. He also created a fascinating dialogue from the perspective of the deceased victims whose spirits hang in the ethers, watching with horror as they are joined by more victims, trying to find a way to communicate with Malin to bring their killer to justice.

It’s good news that Kallentoft has two more books that are scheduled for release in 2014 and 2015. Following the seasonal theme in Midwinter Blood and Summer Death will be Autumn Sonata and Spring Remains. Considering that I got up at 3:30 in the morning in order to finish Summer Death, for me, his next two books will be must reads.

Midwinter Blood

This is the sort of book that we at MRB wait for. The Swedish author, Mons Kallentoft, only 43 years old, published his first novel in 2000, but he did not venture into the crime genre until 2007. This book was only released in the U.S. in June 2012. All of his books have been very well received in Sweden. This is his first book that was translated into English, and it’s hard to believe that it was not written in English. His style of prose is hard-hitting, staccato-like at times, very effective in building the drama of the story. The protagonist is Malin Fors, a police detective, a single mom who has a difficult relationship with the father of her child, a 13 yo precocious daughter, Tove. Kallentoft built a wonderful supporting cast in the police department, just as he built a most interesting group of characters who could have committed the gruesome, ritualistic murder of Bengt Andersson, who was widely derided for being a strange boy, known to his community as Ball-Bengt. The dialogue deserves special mention, and Kallentoft tells much of the story in the first person, changing the narration from one character to another as he marches through the chapters. He even wrote a believable monologue from the deceased Ball-Bengt, which really could have been just the musings of the talented Malin who has a sixth sense for figuring out crimes, victims and perpetrators. The main trouble in the investigation of Ball-Bengt’s murder came by way of the Murvail brothers and their very disturbed mother. I’ve purposely written little about the plot. I don’t want to spoil it. This book is a winner and gets my highest recommendation. Thanks to Julie Sugarman for recommending it. Now, I can’t wait for the next Kallentoft crime novel – I hope it is another one about detective Malin Fors.