The Vanished

When DI Konrad Simonsen returns to work after a heart attack, he is assigned the task of investigating the death of postal worker Jorgensen Nielsen. While it is assumed that his death was caused by an accidental fall, not all of the evidence matches up. The case takes a turn when photos of a long-missing girl show up in Nielsen's loft. What follows is an overly complicated and meandering investigation that takes Simonsen and his team on a hunt for answers in the unrest of the 1960s and includes high school misfits, runaways, a psychic, priests, and hippies. Throughout the investigation, Simonsen remembers his own time as a young police officer and his tumultuous relationship with a girlfriend whose involvement in leftist movements ultimately tore them apart. These forays into his past only add confusion to an already muddled plot. The Hammer siblings (The Hanging; The Girl in the Ice) have fallen short of their apparent goal of an intricately plotted tale, having written instead a novel with too many competing threads, not all of which are effectively connected.