You Will Never Be Found

At one point in Swedish crime novelist Tove Alsterdal's You Will Never Be Found, a character observes that a cabin contains "bookshelves full of cheap American thrillers." This may prompt regular readers of Nordic noir to wonder: Is there even such a thing as "cheap Scandinavian thrillers"? Adeptly written and plotted, with in-depth characterizations and rich topography, You Will Never Be Found is yet another fine contribution to the redoubtable genre.

The novel, translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies, is the second in a series set on Sweden's High Coast and built around police assistant Eira Sjödin. This time around, the Kramfors Police District loans out Eira to Sundsvall's Violent Crimes Unit, which is investigating the murder of a middle-aged man whose body was found locked in the basement of an abandoned house, two fingers of one hand recently removed. The police are leaning into the organized-crime angle when Eira discovers that, a year earlier, another middle-aged man was kidnapped and locked in a basement. That man, however, escaped with his life--and his fingers.

As Eira, single and in her 30s, looks for a link between the two kidnappings, she has the odd affair and tends to her dementia-suffering mother. Alsterdal (We Know You Remember) rewards attentive readers, threading her novel with blink-and-you'll-miss-them details that end up being vital to the investigation. You Will Never Be Found has a roving perspective but mainly sticks with Eira, for whom the stakes are raised with the disappearance of someone important to the case and, she's surprised to realize, to Eira herself. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

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