Silenced by Kristina Ohlsson

A few months after Stockholm’s Criminal Investigation Division solved the case that exposed some pretty raw emotions, the group is in a lull. Not much is being asked of them. A couple cops are dispatched to an apartment after long time friends arriving for dinner find more than what was expected. Jakob Ahlbin, a local vicar and his wife are found in their bedroom, apparent victims of a murder-suicide. Jakob has a history of depression and seemed despondent and learning that one of his daughters has died of a drug overdose. Shortly afterwards, a middle eastern immigrant with no identification and no reports of being missing, is found dead from a hit and run.

            Friends say no way Jakob could’ve done this, but others aren’t so sure. No one has a clue about the John Doe. And the other Anlbin daughter is missing, sort of marooned in Thailand with no clothes, no hotel, no money, no passport, and unable to get a ticket home. The local cops think she’s involved with drug running and the Swedish Consulate is no help.

So much for boredom. Division leader Alex Recht, his partner Pedr Rydh, and civilian researcher Fredrika Bergman all think this shouldn’t be much. A murder-suicide and a hit-and-run. Check the reports, visit the scenes, study the photos, write the report.

The main question, as always, is the why. Yes, Jakob was depressed, but he was also involved with helping and harboring illegals in Sweden. And there’s still no identification of the Joe Doe. The unit learns of a 2^nd home owned by the Ahlbin’s. Their search shows that one daughter stops appearing in any family photos. Like she split and never returned.

And if work hadn’t become a bit of a circus, each member of the unit has, to put it bluntly, issues. Alex and his wife have grown increasingly distant with each other. Pedr Rydh has separated from his wife and IAD is on his case about some pretty crude comments directed at a hot newbie on the force. Fredrika is pregnant by her lover of nearly 10yrs and 20yrs her senior. Each has to try and keep their personal lives from interfering with the investigations.

Ohlsson weaves the continuing development of the backstories of the unit with the current investigations. What starts out as a murder-suicide turns sideways into an immigration question that is further complicated by whatever it was that happened 15 years ago at the Ahlbin’s vacation home. Multiple stories that shouldn’t intersect may just well tear the unit apart that, in the wink of an eye, becomes all the more twisted at a soul bearing confrontation. 

This makes it 3 for 3 for me by Ohlsson. All three have been intricately designed and expertly presented - everything that the lover of mysteries desires. Something about those Scandinavian mystery writers has struck a cord with the American audience. They have the gift. 

Three down, one to go.

ECD

Last Words by Michael Koryta

Markus Novak is a private detective for Innocence, Inc., a Florida based company that uses modern forensic technology to evaluate the guilt or innocence of convicts.  His wife, Lauren also worked for this do-gooder organization when she was murdered.  Markus becomes obsessed with solving her murder and takes actions inconsistent with the ethics of his employer.  His boss sends him to Southern Indiana on the pretense of evaluating a possible new case but more realistically to get him out of Florida to gain a fresh perspective.

Small town Garrison, Indiana was known to tourists for Trapdoor Cavern.  But the cave was closed to the public when a teenage girl, Sarah Martin was lost and died in the cavern nearly ten years earlier.  Ridley Barnes was the local spelunker who found her body and retrieved it from the cave.  But Ridley is a strange bird. An eccentric recluse, he feels more comfortable alone in the dark, in tight quarters underground, than he does on the surface in everyday society.  Further, he personifies the cave and thinks it has powers and can talk to him.  When he refuses to discuss how he found Sarah’s body, he quickly becomes the leading suspect for her death.  But it isn’t that Ridley just won’t talk about finding Sarah, he can’t remember how or where he found her.  Without evidence, local officials can’t charge Ridley and he just becomes more of a societal outcast.  After years of psychological misery, he tries hypnosis to help him remember but with limited success.  He decides to contact Innocence, Inc. hoping a fresh investigative look will resolve events surrounding Sarah’s death.  At this point, he just wants to know the truth whether it implicates him or not.

So, Markus Novak arrives in Garrison to evaluate the case.  But apparently there are those who don’t want the truth about Sarah to be known.  Markus is lied to, kidnapped, beaten, drugged and left for dead inside Trapdoor Cavern.  Yet after Markus is rescued, the sheriff does not believe his story and now his reputation is on the line in Indiana as well as in Florida.  Now he has no choice but to personally take the case.  Finding the truth about Sarah’s death is the only way to save himself.

I’ve read a couple Michael Koryta books and this is the first time (that I know of) he writes about his resident state, Indiana.  In fact, the location of the fictional Trapdoor Cavern as he describes it, can’t be more than an hour from his home in Bloomington.  As for Last Words, I had some trouble liking the protagonist, Markus Novak.  True he had some events in his life that incite sympathy but I thought he acted more out of necessity instead of nobility… perhaps a little too self-serving for my brand of hero.  Nonetheless, the author leaves the door open for a sequel.  I’ll probably read it when nothing else looks appealing. 

Bust by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

We at MRB have read most of Ken Bruen’s books, and we’ve raved about them. Bust, which is actually the first novel in a trilogy, is the first Bruen book I’ve read in which he used a co-author, Jason Starr. While Bruen’s other books, mostly about his protagonist Jack Taylor, were dark crime novels, they still had a positive human quality, good wining out over evil. Taylor is an erudite character whose struggles with life seemed to be something I could often identify with. Bruen’s character development has always been the best. However, I’m less than enamored with his effort in this book. I’m disappointed, and Bust does not get my recommendation and I have no interest in reading the rest of the trilogy. Unlike his other books, Bruen’s conclusion is that crime does pay. It’s a most unsatisfactory story with an unhappy conclusion.

This is a story of a sorry group of psychopaths/sociopaths. Max Fisher was a successful businessman who had fallen out of love with his wife, Deidre, and into hate for her. She never stopped complaining and finding fault in him. For Max, who didn’t even tip waiters, the idea of a divorce was far too expensive an option. He managed his feelings with booze and hookers until his new hot Irish 20-year-old secretary, Angela Petrakos, with whom he was also sleeping, suggested that he kill Deidre and marry her instead. Max thought that was a great idea. They hired her lover (something Max didn’t know about), the sickest guy in this lot, “Popeye,” to do the deed. But Popeye not only killed Deidre, but also Deidre’s niece, a college student who just happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. While the cops were suspicious of Max, he could not tolerate being away from Angela, so he disguised himself and snuck into a hotel with her where they satisfied his lust. But, as luck would have it, Bobby Rosa caught a picture of the two of them together and used it to blackmail max. Bad idea. More deaths occur, and in the end, the cops can’t pin the murders on Max or Angela, and they are the only ones to survive this mess.

Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley is another prolific and talented author who I’ve not read and reviewed before. Midwest Dave reviewed one of his books in 9/15, but I missed that review. Then, this book was strongly recommended by another friend. Thanks Robbie. Maybe I should stop being amazed when I run across such authors since it seems to happen so often. Devil in a Blue Dress was Mosley’s first novel, written in 1990, and it was a 1995 movie starring Denzel Washington. It’s written as a current day crime novel, which looks back at African-American life in Los Angeles in the post-war 1940s. Mosley introduces his sleuth, Easy Rawlins, who then becomes the protagonist in 12 subsequent novels. Mosley has written 40 other books, some nonfiction, and five of those novels have been made into movies. Wow! I can see why Dave was raving about him, and I already have downloaded another of his novels.

There was a post war exodus of African-Americans to Los Angeles, especially from Texas and Louisiana. But, while the weather in California was like heaven to them, life in LA was not easy and many often felt it was too overwhelming. Numbers of them fled back home, and doing so was not far from Rawlins’ mind. But, he had just bought a small house which he was supporting with his labor at an aircraft factory. But then he got fired because he failed to kowtow to his white boss. Racism was alive and strong in L.A., and you had to know how to play the game. The house was his pride and joy, and he was not about to just give it away. Faced with his mortgage payments, Rawlins accepted $100 to help a white man find a woman, Daphne Monet – who had been seen wearing a blue dress. It seemed like a simple thing, and thus begins the noir story of murder and desperation. I thought the plot got rather convoluted at the end, but I’m hooked on Mosley.

Kill All The Judges

This is my fifth Deverell book, another crime novel, this being the third in the Arthur Beauchamp series. Beauchamp is now 69 years old, a retired trial attorney of note in Vancouver, Canada, who is two years from his last stint in the courtroom and who once again gets lured back to take a new case, of course a case that should be impossible to win. While just as clever as the other four that I’ve read, there was a cumbersome quality to this one, especially in the first third of the book. I actually re-read the first 25% of the book because I was confused about what was happening with the characters, something I’d be unwilling to do with most other authors.

While Deverell is developing the story of the death of several judges, he also reintroduced the character of Brian Pomeroy, a younger and gifted lawyer, but one who is lost to the ravages of polysubstance abuse, narcissism, martial disharmony, and writer’s block. Beauchamp refers the case of the apparent killer of the judges to Pomeroy only to see the man come fully unglued. Pomeroy, a frustrated author, is lost between the story line in his own unfinished novel and the case he is supposed to be defending. His own characters are the very same characters that are involved in the legal action, but their behavior in his book does not always correspond with their actions in the main plot of Deverell’s book. And, Pomeroy keeps trying to spice up his own story by adding new juicy characters. So, it’s confusing, and when Pomeroy crashes and is admitted to rehab, Beauchamp comes to the rescue of the case and reads the manuscript, he too is confused. Some of the manuscript seems to be predictive of the action of the persons who are still alive.

Are you still with me? Deverell further develops the character of Wentworth Chance, yet another young lawyer who idolizes Beauchamp. In the course of the book, Beauchamp’s wife runs for a seat in parliament for the Green Party. Beauchamp’s 14-year-old grandson comes to visit and immediately inserts himself into the action. There is bawdy humor and tongue-in-cheek spoofery of the legal system. Try this author, and your vocabulary will get a work out. I’ve already acquired another Beauchamp book – stay tuned.