Sara Blaedel's mysteries featuring Detective Louise Rick have made her something of a sensation in her native Denmark. A Harmless Lie, translated by Mark Kline, should shore up her international reputation as the author of psychologically attuned thrillers centered on two strong women whose personal lives are as messy as their work.
Louise is on leave from the Copenhagen Police and getting over a breakup when her brother, Mikkel, attempts suicide. Soon after Louise gets this news, she learns that the mummified body of Susan Dahlgaard, a 14-year-old who disappeared on a school field trip to Bornholm more than two decades earlier, has been found in a cave on the island. One of Susan's friends on the trip was Mikkel's wife, Trine, whose recent apparent flight--she has a history of leaving him--spurred his suicide attempt. As Louise negotiates family matters, her best friend, crime reporter Camilla Lind, is writing about Susan and wonders if Trine's disappearance around the time the girl's body was discovered is related.
Once A Harmless Lie finishes its shaggy recap of the interpersonal dynamics established in previous Louise Rick titles, it becomes a full-blown mystery with an ending hard to anticipate. The reliably humane Blaedel (The Drowned Girl) includes a sympathetic outsider, as she has done previously. This time it's a bug-obsessed outcast whose questionable claim that she possesses psychic abilities doesn't necessarily preclude the possibility that she is occasionally right. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer