THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

The related murders of two teenagers following a pre-Christmas, pre-millennium party shakes up a southwestern Swedish town where the aftershocks are still felt 20 years later.

The first victim is 18-year-old Mikael Söderström, a rich kid who abused a female classmate; he gets his head bashed in. Another partygoer, Killian Persson, is subsequently found dead in the crashed, fire-consumed car of a neighbor. Killian’s gloomy best friend, Sander Eriksson, who can’t wait to get out of tiny Skavböke to study law in Stockholm, thinks he caused Killian’s death by saying mean things to him after catching him in flagrante with Sander’s crush, Felicia Grenberg. In a closed-in community where adulterous couplings have led to animosities (“the whole village saw its own reflection in a dark pool”), the town’s sole cop, Gerd Pettersson, and her imported young backup, Siri Bengtsson, have their work cut out for them limiting suspects. A massive landslide caused by the detonation of dynamite in the Söderströms’ basement intensifies their efforts. Twenty years later, when the now-retired Siri is making cabinets for a living, there’s another related murder with grave repercussions. Stolid police officer Vidar Jörgenssen can only hope he will succeed where his predecessors failed in digging up the truth. With all the book’s twists, turns, and delayed reveals, the reader may be grateful for the opening list of characters. As with Carlsson’s excellent previous efforts, including Blaze Me a Sun (2023), this “novel about a crime” goes beyond clever plotting to examine Swedish identity, life in a new era, and the ties between living and dying: “There was no end, and it was impossible for anyone or anything to cease to exist one day, to be erased from this life.” Carlsson’s reliance on a familiar trope is initially disappointing, but the book’s deep, daring complexity brushes that concern aside.

Brooding and brilliant.