The Deathwatch Beetle

In her ninth outing (after The Night of the Fire), retired Uppsala detective Ann Lindell, now a cheese maker, visits her lover Edvard Risberg on the Swedish island of Gräsö. She learns that a young woman named Cecilia Karlsson disappeared from the island four years ago, and her parents are still trying to find her. Unable to ignore a mystery, Ann visits Cecilia’s parents to see if she can help them by uncovering their daughter’s fate. When a neighbor of Cecilia’s insists that he recently spotted her in Lisbon, Ann calls in some favors from her former colleagues and digs deeper into the disappearance; is it a coincidence that Cecilia vanished the day after the (apparently accidental) drowning of a Gräsö resident? When a new death occurs, the police are brought in, and Ann and Edvard work with them to find out if there’s any relation to their case. Unlike earlier books in Eriksson’s Swedish detective series, this isn’t a traditional police procedural; instead, it’s a study of a dysfunctional family and their roles in a series of tragic events. Themes of obsession and misguided revenge also drive the plot.