Swedish sleuths
With a firm background in her country’s government affairs, security and anti-terrorism, Kristina Ohlsson has taken to penning crime thrillers. The subject of Silenced is human trafficking. Though she writes well, as it is only her second novel, she, like many budding authors, can’t resist overloading the plots.
I write plots plural, because the literary form of works of fiction have a major and a minor plot with a connection. More than a few times, as here, it’s difficult to tell which is which. Curiously, its 470 pages have chapters — unnumbered, with no headings. The reasons for these omissions escapes me.
What this reviewer takes to be the minor plot is the competition between two sisters — Karolina and Johanna — for their father’s affection. Their both being after the same man doesn’t make things any easier. As the man has a drug habit, money is always short. Only by illegal activities does the flow of cash keep coming.
Smuggling refugees into Sweden seems harmless enough and several people join the enterprise, not the least a prominent religious figure. Not just any refugees but those able and willing to pay handsomely to live in Sweden. After the payment of bribes to officials, the rest is gravy.
Ohlsson overplays her hand by having the group switch to smuggling in criminals and having them engage in breaking and entering, with aggravated assault. More loot, along with bodies. Some of the group want out, not having the stomach for violence. But can they leave knowing what they know?
Alex Recht of Stockholm’s CID and investigative analyst Fredrika Bergman are on the cases. As well as those of murder, with Thai drug connections. One of the sisters is raped, unreported. Which one? Where are the illegals housed, before being settled in the country?
Using clever interrogation, people in the group confess. The two sisters are also in on it and have developed a mutual vitriolic hatred for one another, so it is inevitable that one will kill the other. The author builds suspense as to which. The private lives of the sleuths are explored. Alex is married and a father. Frodrika is single and has a (married) lover. Not Alex. Silenced ought to have been 100 pages shorter. Too much is made of car rides and room-by-room descriptions of hours in one city or another. Alex and Fredrika are interesting characters and I look forward to reading how they solve future cases.