buried-angels-lackbergWhat could possibly be cooler than a husband and wife / detective and crime writer team? Not very much – unless they’re also Swedish.  Scandi noir heaven. The team in question is Detective Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck and Buried Angels by Camilla Lackberg is their eighth case together.

Easter 1974. A family vanishes from their home on an idyllic island off the coast of Sweden. The table is set, but the house is deserted, apart from their one-year-old daughter, Ebba.  Now, years later, Ebba is back on the island because she and her husband have suffered the loss of their child. They plan to make a fresh start by renovating the house and running it as a bed and breakfast. Within days, however, they’re targeted in an arson attack. Detective Patrik Hedstrom, whose wife Erica has always been fascinated by the mystery of Ebba’s abandonment, is assigned to the investigation.

When dried blood is found under the floorboards of the old house, it seems that the cold case involving the missing family is about to be brought back to life. And soon, Patrik and Erica are consumed by the hunt for a killer who will stop at nothing to keep the past buried.

Camilla Läckberg’s strong, character-led thrillers, set in and around the ‘peaceful’ seaside town of Fjällbacka, have become hugely popular with fans of the Scandinavian genre, especially in the UK where her sales outstrip those of Stieg Larsson. She’s sold nearly five million books in her native Sweden – a country with only nine million people in total! She’s very much a celebrity there, having been (and married) a reality TV star and co-written a best-selling cookery book.  We all know how much great detectives like Brunetti and Montalbano are fuelled by great food: makes perfect sense to me.