FATAL GAMBIT

A distinctive Swedish duo returns (Dark Music, 2022) in this missing person yarn.

Almost 14 years ago, Claire Lidman left her home and husband with neither notice nor note. She apparently perished in a fiery crash; her charred corpse was identified through dental records. Nearly everyone believes that she is dead, but her husband clings to hope. A recent photo—a holiday snap taken by a neighbor—surfaces with what looks like Claire’s face in the background. Enter professor Hans Rekke and police constable Micaela Vargas to investigate. “I may be a detective of sorts,” Rekke says, “but I am not a policeman or a lawyer.” He sees himself as “a pianist and Professor of Psychology, a fragile intellectual” who sprinkles his sentences with Latin phrases. But he underrates himself. For one thing, he has powers of deduction rivaling those of Sherlock Holmes: he hears footsteps coming from an elevator and he knows it’s Micaela, “with her punctuated eighth tempo,” and he concludes she’s with his brother, Magnus. Claire once had business ties with Gabor Morovia, whom Rekke has known since his youth and who now is a powerful, vengeful “lapsed mathematician and womaniser,” not to mention a rotter who also likes to torture and burn cats. Readers will enjoy hating this villain, who would have fit perfectly in a James Bond movie. He’s a demon on the chessboard, which plays a key role in the outcome. And readers will like the good guys, who have their own baggage to tote. Rekke is a pill popper who enjoys his “hardly addictive” OxyContin. Down-to-earth Vargas is a good cop who hates crime, especially when it’s committed by her career criminal brother. (One of his pals warns, “Stop digging dirt on your brother, you piece of cop shit.”) Tension builds to a crescendo in this well-crafted novel with an ending that suggests a third volume to come.

Quirky and satisfying.