Paperback: Still Waters (2015) is the first instalment in the popular Sandhamn Murders series set in Sweden.
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.
Still Waters is translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy.
About the author: Viveca Sten is married, with three children. Viveca lives just north of Stockholm. She has had a highly successful legal career as a lawyer and until recently held the position as General Counsel at PostNord (the Swedish & Danish mail service), but left in 2011 to focus on her writing. Since 1917, Viveca's family have spent all their summers at Sandhamn where her novels are set. She has written several non-fiction books prior to her crime novels. She is a great humanitarian and has for several years been involved in the Red Cross Centre for Tortured Refugees. Her warmth and caring has been passed on to her three children and last summer her daughter left for the US to tour with the volunteer organization Up with People.
The first five books in the Sandhamn Murder series have been made into miniseries in three parts by Sweden's largest commercial TV-channel, TV4. From the start in December 2010, it was huge success, with more than 1.7 million viewers per episode. The series has been broadcast in all Nordic countries and also in many European countries such as Germany, France and Italy and even as far away as Japan. In the fall of 2014, a Polish version with Polish actors premiered on Polish national television.
Viveca describes herself as driven, stubborn and caring, which is obvious when you meet her, read her books and see all the things she has accomplished in life.
About the translator: Marlaine Delargy works as a translator and adult learning support tutor. She studied Swedish and German at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and taught German in comprehensive schools for almost twenty years. She has translated novels by Åsa Larsson, Ninni Holmqvist, Kristina Ohlsson, Helene Tursten, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Therese Bohman and Johan Theorin - with whom she won the CWA International Dagger 2010 for The Darkest Room - among others, and serves on the editorial board of the Swedish Book Review. She lives in Shropshire, England.
Rating: 5/5
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