Wednesday 9 November 2016

The Crow Girl

The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund
Published by Harvill Secker
14th April 2016
Hardback Edition




It starts with just one body – tortured, mummified and then discarded.

Its discovery reveals a nightmare world of hidden lives. Of lost identities, secret rituals and brutal exploitation, where nobody can be trusted.

This is the darkest, most complex case the police have ever seen.

This is the world of the Crow Girl.

I began this book after a recommendation by a friend.  It's dark and frankly quite disturbing at times, and just when you think you have it all figured out in your head as to what's going on, then 'boom' the author throws you a curveball to shred all of your theories - or at least that is what happened to me anyway!

Let's not beat around the bush here either, this is a very long novel - over 700 pages but actually it doesn't drag and yes, maybe some of the length could be reduced but I didn't mind it too much, it just seemed like I was reading it for a very long time when I normally wizz through books so much more quickly.

Set in Sweden, we follow the lives of cop Jeanette Kihlberg, a working parent who barely sees her son and her stay-at-home husband Ake who is insistent that one day he will become an acclaimed artist, and psychologist Sofia Zetterlund, who has some, shall we say, rather disturbing clients.  When the body of a mummified child is discovered, Jeanette is on the case.  As her workload deepens, her path crosses with that of Zetterlund and the pair strike up a relationship to try to find the perpetrator.  I don't want to reveal too much of the plot here, but let's just say that there are more bodies to be found, more twists to be revealed and sometimes more detail than you might want to know!

If crime/thriller novels float your boat, then The Crow Girl is certainly worth a read.

Happy Reading

Miss Chapter x