Wednesday, February 22, 2017

10. Still Waters by Viveca Sten

(Sandhamm #1)
Listened on Audible
Translated from Swedish
2015 Amazon Crossing
387 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 2/22/17
Goodreads rating: 3.64 (5255 ratings)
My rating: 3
Setting: Contemporary Sandhamm Island, Sweden

My comments: This was translated from Swedish and is the first in a series of eight.  The first two have been translated but it doesn't look like the last six have been.  This was a good mystery, which I was very much in the mood for.  Set on one of the islands in the archipelago off Stockholm, Sweden, the story is told from two different perspectives, two adults who have been best friends since childhood.  Thomas Andreasen is a Stockholm cop.  Nora Linde is a mom and lawyer, married to a self-centered doctor.  Nora helps Thomas solve the mystery much more than any "friend" in the US would ever be allowed to do.  I would've been happy with a little less of Nora's life and problems with more focus on just the meat and potatoes of the mystery.  So I guess I liked 60% (the setting and mystery) of the book and didn't so much like 40% (the chick-lit parts) of the book..

Goodreads synopsis:  On a hot July morning on Sweden’s idyllic vacation island of Sandhamn, a man takes his dog for a walk and makes a gruesome discovery: a body, tangled in fishing net, has washed ashore.          
          Police detective Thomas Andreasson is the first to arrive on the scene. Before long, he has identified the deceased as Krister Berggren, a bachelor from the mainland who has been missing for months. All signs point to an accident—until another brutalized corpse is found at the local bed-and-breakfast. But this time it is Berggren’s cousin, whom Thomas interviewed in Stockholm just days before.          
          As the island’s residents reel from the news, Thomas turns to his childhood friend, local lawyer Nora Linde. Together, they attempt to unravel the riddles left behind by these two mysterious outsiders—while trying to make sense of the difficult twists their own lives have taken since the shared summer days of their youth.

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