(Original novel translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson Broyles)
* * * *
(This review is based on a review copy from the publisher via Net Galley UK)
An absorbing chain of consequences mystery novel.
Set in an economic and social backwater in rural Sweden, much more happens than just a murder and it continues to happen across more than two decades. At almost every stage there seems to be a new suspect, or at least a better explanation, but everyone has a slightly-different view of what has happened and each reacts to what he or she thinks has happened when the reality might be a little different or very different indeed. Small details that were once missed can change the way everything looks, but then, after twenty years even the most essential “known fact” in the investigation turns out to be a completely mistaken assumption. And over those two decades almost all of the principle characters do some level of harm to themselves or somebody else based on a flawed understanding of what others had done. The level of harm escalates into a cataclysm for the entire community and it doesn’t even end there.
This is all pleasantly comprehensible, because the narrative is a progression from one character’s point of view to another’s and so on and they tend to see flaws in each other’s logic and assumptions rather than their own. The truth is emerging, but it all seems horribly complicated until a belated admission of error leads to sudden clarity and great danger.
The Living and The Dead is published in the UK by Michael Joseph on the 8th of January 2026.
