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Sara Sebastiansson and her 6-year-old daughter, Lilian, are taking a train to Stockholm. At one of the intermediate stops, Sara gets off the train to make a phone call. When she returns to her seat, she finds that her daughter is missing. In the confusion of people boarding and disembarking from the train, no one has seen what happened to the little girl. Could the abductor be Sara's ex-husband, Gabriel? When Lilian is found dead, the police rush to judgment and settle on him as their prime suspect. As time goes on, other children are taken and quickly killed. The case is truly puzzling. The team cannot easily determine the killer's motivation although it is easy to see that there is a method to his madness, particularly in his selection of the sites where he leaves the bodies to be found. The investigative team consists of Alex Recht, who is very experienced and respected in the department. Peder Rydh feels fortunate to be assigned to work with Alex and has a real passion for the job. His main weakness is that he has a need for recognition. Also on the team is a civilian, Fredrika Bergman, who is an investigative analyst. She isn't able to express much empathy with the victims of crime. Because she takes a highly analytical approach to crime solving, she has a very contentious relationship with her teammates, who pride themselves on their ability to achieve results by using their intuition, by feeling rather than questioning. The case is far from the normal investigation that the department handles, and it is Fredrika's logical approach that begins to show results. She doesn't jump to conclusions and looks at every detail of a crime. Alex slowly recognizes the value in what she does; it takes Peder much longer to concede that she may be on to something. UNWANTED is an excellent book. In addition to developing an engrossing plot, Ohlsson has done a superior job in characterization. It's intriguing to see Fredrika move from being an irritant to her teammates to someone that they actually value and for the experienced Alex and egotistical Peder to acknowledge their own weaknesses. The only flaw for me was the conclusion, which came to an abrupt ending. I would have liked to understand the villain a bit more. UNWANTED is a debut novel. I can only hope that the next two books in the series will be translated quickly, as I thoroughly enjoyed Ohlsson's writing and look forward to seeing how the team works together in the future. § Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts(4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, March 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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