Dark Music

By David Lagercrantz Maclehose Press, 384pp, £20

To crime fans, a thriller inspired by Sherlock Holmes, written by the author who successfully continued writing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, may sound like a dream. It’s really happened, though, and Stockholmbased David Lagercrantz has penned a classic murder mystery bringing together two unlikely allies, each needing the other’s expertise in order to uncover an international conspiracy. Local community police officer Micaela Vargas opens the story after being drafted into a murder inquiry, because she knew the suspect. She teams up with Professor Hans Rekke, a specialist in interrogation techniques, who is brought in to help obtain a confession. Bringing together a well-educated man from the upper classes with a young local police officer from Stockholm’s suburbs is an ingenious idea, and you’ll love the massive contrast in styles of the two main characters, as they cope with the ups and downs of a complicated investigation – one Holmes himself would have loved to solve.

Alan Jones