Saturday, August 22, 2015

The Hidden Child, by Camilla Läckberg


After I read Camilla Läckberg’s The Drowning, I was reading a little bit about her online. I noticed another of her books with a dust jacket that looked familiar, so I checked my shelves and found The Hidden Child there. The Hidden Child was published a year before The Drowning, and is the book just before it in the series about Erica Falck, an author of true crime fiction, and her husband Patrick Hedström, a homicide detective. Set in a small town in Sweden, Erica and Patrick solve crimes.

In The Hidden Child, Erica is going through her mother’s belongings and finds some objects that raise questions about her mother’s life as a teenager during the Second World War. She finds a series of journals that reveal her mother to be very different from the cold, unfeeling woman she knew. She also finds an infant’s dress covered in blood, and wrapped around a Nazi medal. The intrigue begins when the man whom Erica asked about the medal turns up dead. When another of her mother’s childhood friends is found murdered, Erica realizes that she has uncovered a mystery that someone wants to stay buried. Her investigation into her mother’s childhood and Patrick’s investigation into the murders cause them to work together at times, and at other times at cross purposes.

As with The Drowning, the cast of characters in The Hidden Child is rich with a variety of personalities that reflect modern cultural and political values. Nazi sympathizers from both the past and present focus the reader on anti-immigrant sentiments that exist throughout Europe. Another character is afraid to reveal her relationship with another woman, and only reluctantly opens up to her co-workers. The plot is compelling, and the writing (and translation) excellent. Anyone who enjoys crime fiction will appreciate The Hidden Child. Camilla Läckberg deserves to be read and will hopefully find an appreciative audience in the U.S.

Camilla Läckberg. The Hidden Child. New York: Pegasus Crime, 2014. 526 pages. ISBN 9781605985534.

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