Coincidentally, I have just finished reading Johan Theorin's second "Öland" book - The Darkest Room - beautifully translated by Marlaine Delargy. Remember I did post that I was intending to catch up with earlier books written by this Swedish crime writer? I can assure you that this is just the chilling read for a stormy winter night.
The book starts with a local reference to a tradition that the dead meet to worship at a local church on Christmas Eve.... We are back on the Swedish Baltic island of Öland, midway between the Swedish mainland and the larger island of Gotland. A young family has moved into a run-down manor house with its two lighthouses at Eel Point, on the island's north-east coast. As Öland begins to face the Baltic storms and blizzards of winter, one of the family is found drowned close to the lighthouses. Add a burglary spree by a gang that likes to scout out their crimes with a ouija board.... and what follows is a moving story of grief, secrets, violence and tragic threads from the past reaching into the present.
I don't usually search out supernatural books but I can take a bit of shiver - and I have to say that Johan Theorin writes a wonderful mixture of modern crime and psychological chill. This is perhaps the most ghostly of his that I have read so far but he weaves the strands together so well that, as the suspense builds, it seems that both worlds are colliding in one tense crisis.
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