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This is the follow up to Silenced and the third entry of the terrific Frederika Bergman crime series by Swedish bestselling author Kristina Ohlsson.

Detective Alex Rechte remembers well the case he had of a missing girl a couple of years earlier, so when a dismembered young woman’s body is found, he realizes right away who it is. As the site is excavated, another body is unearthed; this one a man that has been buried for a much longer time, decades in fact, and then another body is unearthed.

Investigative Analyst Fredrika Bergman is assigned the task of looking into the young woman’s life and finds that she has been researching a children’s author, Thea Aldrin, who was convicted of murdering her partner and suspected of foul play with her missing teenage son. Aldrin seems to have some sort of association to all of the bodies, but she is mute and cannot help. Bergman disturbingly also finds her own partner’s name among the young woman’s effects, but things have been strained between them so she is reluctant to pursue it.

Rechte is a recent widow, and work is his salvation as he becomes obsessed with the case. The third member of the team, Detective Peter Rydh, recently reconciled with his wife, and has her support as he delves into the murders that threaten to consume them all. This is a complicated yet fast moving story, and the detectives all find themselves with personal connections to the case that eventually involve an internal investigation.

Ohlsson excels at creating multi-layered stories with three dimensional, substantive characters, and she does it brilliantly here; the intertwining storylines culminate with a shocking ending. Scandinavian crime fiction fans should be enthralled.

Copyright ©2014 Booklist, a division of the American Library Association.

4/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE DISAPPEARED by Kristina Ohlsson. Atria/Emily Bestler Books (March 4, 2014). ISBN 978-1476734002. 416p.

I stumbled across this first novel and decided to give it a read because it’s published by Amy Einhorn, Putnam Books. Einhorn has published some of my favorite reads including The Help by Stockton, The Weird Sisters by Brown, The Postmistress by Blake, and Liane Moriarity’s The Husband’s Secret and What Alice Forgot. Needless to say, I was expecting a lot from this one. Sadly, it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Rose Baker is a typist for the police department in the early 1920s in New York City. She hears confessions ranging from bootlegging to murder and everything in between, but when she’s not typing she still considered the weaker sex, good for making coffee and filing. Prohibition has increased the workload, so a new typist, Odalie Lazarre, is hired.

Rose grew up in an orphanage raised by nuns, and is completely enchanted with the beautiful, flirtatious Odalie. They become “bosom friends,” and eventually Rose moves out of her shared room into Odalie’s apartment. Odalie has quite the past, but Rose looks the other way, her Puritan upbringing being pushed to the limit as Odalie takes her to speakeasies and summer parties.

Rose is the most unreliable of narrators, so it’s hard to know exactly what is going on but it seems like all parties and fun until it’s not and someone is accused of murder. Fans of Gatsby-esque settings and psychological mysteries like those of Patricia Highsmith will love this.

2/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE OTHER TYPIST by Suzanne Rindell. Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (May 7, 2013). ISBN 978-0399161469. 368p.

As a therapist, Jessica Mayhew is used to treating clients with odd quirks. Gwydion Morgan is a charming up and coming actor whose father is a famous playwright. He’s come to Jessica ostensibly to treat insomnia and a button phobia, out of fear that the two may hurt his budding career. He soon reveals that he’s also been struggling with a recurring nightmare, one in which he seems to be trapped in a box while hearing yelling and splashing outside.

As their sessions progress, Gwydion tells Jessica that he’s been remembering more and more of the dream, which seems now to be a memory of something quite disturbing: when Gwydion was a boy, his nanny drowned in a tragic accident. The dream would suggest that not only did the young Gwydion actually witness the event, but that it wasn’t actually an accident at all.

Charlotte Williams’s debut seemed like it had all the right pieces to be a great mystery. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its promise. The story was a bit dry and held few surprises.

1/14 Becky Lejeune

THE HOUSE ON THE CLIFF by Charlotte Williams. Bourbon Street Books (January 7, 2014). ISBN 978-0062284570. 352p.