Joakim and Katrine decide to move to a manor near the shore of Öland. There have been a number of strange deaths ever since the house was build using salvage wood from a wrecked ship.

I don't really know what to think of this story. I liked his first book better, I guess. I'm not really into ghost stories and I think I expected it to be slightly different. The writing style was nice and it was nice to read but nothing special. I still want to read his new book, because his first book was very good and maybe this story just wasn't my cup of tea.

Inhalt:
Seit Julias Sohn Jens vor einigen Jahren auf Öland verschwand, versinkt sie in einer Depression. Daran, dass er ertrunken ist, hat sie nie geglaubt. Als ihr auf Öland lebender Vater sie bittet zu im zu kommen, um eine neue Spur aufzunehmen, reist sie zunächst widerwillig von Göteburg auf die Insel.
Mit der Vergangenheit konfrontiert, beginnst sie ihren Verlust zu verarbeiten und die tatsächlichen Vorkommnisse aufzudecken.

Meine Meinung:

Rückblenden in die Vergangenheit wechseln sich mit Gegenwartserzählungen ab. Die Auflösung ist bis zum Ende des Buches nicht absehbar.

Ein sehr spannender Krimi auf der herbstlichen Insel Öland und für Fans skandinavischer Krimis sehr zu empfehlen.

When I had read Echoes from the Dead, I was not really expecting a taut thriller, with a sad and believable protagonist and a plot which racing between two time periods and an unlikely outcome, a twist in the very last pages. It kept me hooked up to the last page. I made the mistake of underestimating the book, and I was properly thrilled with its stature. And, then I made the mistake of over estimating The Darkest Room, and was not really thrilled by the book and its contents. Make no mistake of the fact, Johan Theorin is a great writer, and I still consider him a personal favourite, but somehow I guess he tried a little too hard to make this book exotic and in the process ended up in writing a book which neither could become a complete thriller nor a complete family drama.

The publishers note in my edition said, “In this powerhouse of suspense–at once a crime novel and a searing family drama…” So, from a purely crime fiction point of view I was sorely disappointed. The plot was not fast, it wasn’t well weaved, the crime never looked like a crime until almost 65% of the book had gone by, the criminal had, at most a total of 5 paragraphs dedicated to him and at the end neither did we get to know what was his fate. There was a subplot which at the end was revealed to be connected to the crime, but the sub plot was way too long and could have been shortened without causing any harm to the main plot. But I never skipped pages, because Theorin after all is a good writer. The book looked like a family drama, sounded like a family drama, read like a family drama, with a bit of supernatural thrown in. As for a work of crime fiction, it was not worth it.

The characters unlike the first book failed to make any mark on me. The semi-protagonist of Tilda Daviddsson gets way to little space to be fully developed, Joakim Westin also comes out as unfinished. His situation brings out sympathy but that’s not the credit of the writer. Reading about him made me bored, but thinking about a man who lost his wife made me sad. A character from the first book makes a cameo appearance and does the Mycroft Holmes thing by pointing out the crime, but sadly that doesn’t salvage the book. Even the old-new connection which worked so well in the last book failed this time. It was boring, and never felt remotely connected to the main plot.

Final verdict, this book, as a work of crime fiction doesn’t stand up. But as far as reading it like a family drama goes, there might be some merit. But then again why would a reader read Johan Theorin to read a family drama???

Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin set in Oland, Sweden starts when Jens Davidsson, a 6 year old boy goes missing on a foggy day. Years later his grandfather a retired sea captain receives a shoe, a shoe which Jens was wearing on the day he disappeared. He then, along with his daughter, sets off to find out what really happened on that day, and what became of his grandson.

Now, how many times do we come across a crime thriller which, literally, has a twist in its last page? It’s far and rare. And in today’s world of deceitful blurbs and dubious ways of giving away awards for crime writing, it has become much more difficult to come across a book which actually provides a roller coaster ride, all wrapped up in the garb of a run-of-the-mill plot, filled with oh-so-clichéd and drab characters, nothing exotic but believable. Johan Theorin provided us a book which had all the above points. Potent enough to make a crime reader like me suspect, that I am yet again stuck with a book which while calling itself a crime novel would present me with a bouquet of descriptions and scenes of the locale, the deep psychology of the characters, long paragraphs filled with over the top lines, and very little crime and thrill. I was properly and thoroughly hoodwinked.

The book begins with all the above mentioned shortfalls, and as one continues, it appears that though not as bleak like some fellow award winners, this book might just fall flat. But, something stops the reader from putting down the book. Be it the characters. The woman with a missing child, the elderly grandfather settled in an old age home, with a mission to find out the truth. The narrative, which jumps between the present day, and past, talking about a man who gets perceived as a villain, yet something about that man seems to not fit the bill as a villain. All these discrepancies within the over-tested formula of exotic locale, and the super tragic crime of a missing child, kept me interested. I ploughed on, and the book as it progressed, picked up speed. Though not much was happening, clues weren’t getting discovered, nor were people turning up dead by numbers. Yet, the local characters started revealing some odd bits. And when the ending came, I thought that was the best it could have been, only to be presented with a twist in the last page.

Surely one of the most entertaining and suspenseful crime novels I have read in recent time. Standalone thrillers if not treated right gets boring. But, it seems Theorin knew his job, and in the process created a book, which was worthy of all the Awards heaped upon it.