After the brutally inhumane cold in Midwinter Sacrifice (2011), you would expect the summer in Linkoping to be welcomed with open arms, but no, in the middle of July, the temperature reaches a record-breaking 45 degrees. Fire crews are battling the widespread forest fires to no avail. The city has come to a standstill because of the sweltering and paralysing heat. Anyone with any sense would either be staying indoors or have already escaped the city. The police station is sluggish. Most of the staff are taking their summer breaks. Detective Malin Fors is killing time waiting for her well-earned break in a month's time.
Then a telephone call changes the equilibrium. A naked teenage girl has been found bleeding in the local park. She cannot remember what had happened to her. Strangely, she smells of bleach and the wounds on her body seem to have been rinsed and cleaned up very carefully. Then, another call comes in to the station about a fourteen-year-old girl who has gone missing. Her parents have been away. She is supposedly staying with her boyfriend and his family and she hasn't been answering her telephone calls. Later on, she is found. Dead. Her body has also been scrubbed clean and there are afflicted wounds on her body. Is there a link between the dead girl and the naked girl from the local park? The summertime death is Malin Fors' second case.
I very much enjoyed the gripping plot of Summertime Death and felt that it was just as exciting as the debut, well, right up until the final few chapters where the climax became an anticlimax. Why? Because the denouement was all about some madness which I couldn't quite grasp and did not altogether gel with the realistic and pragmatic storyline of the beginning. Apart from that tiny blip, it was yet another page-turning and interesting read.
Summertime Death (2012) is the second book in the Detective Inspector Malin Fors series translated from the Swedish into the English by Neil Smith. The next book, Autumn Sonata, will be available from 25 October 2012.
About the author: Mons Kallentoft grew up in the provincial town of Linkoping, Sweden, where the Malin Fors series is set. The series is a massive European bestseller and has been translated into over twenty languages. Before becoming a novelist, Mons worked in journalism; he is also a renowned food critic. He spends every summer in San Sebastian in the Basque region of Spain for its food culture, sophisticated cuisine and endless discussions about gastronomy. His debut novel, Pesetas (paperback, 2011), was awarded the Catapult Prize, the Swedish equivalent of the COSTA First Novel Award. Mons has been married to Karolina for over twenty years, and they live in Stockholm with their daughter and son.
About the translator: Neil Smith studied Scandinavian Studies at University College London, and lived in Stockholm for several years. He now lives in Norfolk.
Rating: 4/5
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