Unwanted: A Novel [Hardcover]

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Unwanted: A Novel [Hardcover]

Product Details

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books (February 28, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1439198896
ISBN-13: 978-1439198896
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

By : Kristina Ohlsson
Price : $15.99
You Save : $9.01 (36%)

Customer Reviews

Sara Sebastiansson steps off to make a phone call during a train delay to let her male friend know she and her young daughter, Lilian, would be a little late. When she hangs up, she realizes that the train is pulling away without her, with Lilian still on the train. By the time she catches a taxi and meets the train in the next city, Lilian is gone. The police are immediately called and a search immediately commences.
Alex Recht is the lead detective on the case and he has investigated alot of missing children cases over the years. He immediately begins looking into Sara's life and believes her estranged husband Grant could be behind Lilian's disappearance, but he and his team are having no luck finding Grant.
When Lilian is found dead in an ambulance bay at a hospital, Alex kicks up his search for Grant. His detectives, Fredrika and Peder, are both intelligent and leap deeper into the investigation. Fredrika wants to find out who the young woman was who asked Sara for help with her dog after her phone call at the train station, believing she either saw something or was involved. Peder delves deeply into Grant's life, trying to figure out where he could be hiding.
Meanwhile, a baby is taken out of it's pram at it's home and hours later found dead in the bathroom of another home. Now, the team realizes they may have been looking at the investigation all wrong and valiantly try to piece the evidence and clues they have together and find out who the killer is and why he is writing "Unwanted" on the children's foreheads after he kills them.
Unwanted is a phenomenal detective novel set in Sweden with complex and riveting characters and twisted and chilling plot. Unwanted is a page-turner that will keep readers up well past midnight. I can't wait to see what Kristina has in store for her readers next.

How quickly do we think we have someone all figured out? How does this deduction affect our behavior? What are we missing from life based on these quick assessments? Unwanted features young children kidnapped from their parents only later to turn up dead in meaningful places with the word unwanted written on their foreheads. A competent detective team consisting of grizzled veteran, the bull in a china shop overachiever, and the contemplative thinker begin digging into the sparse clues to uncover the villain.
They are sidetracked by their own prejudices and exploring the notion that if you look at anyone closely enough you will find something. They take many wrong turns in the investigation, even solving crimes they didn't even know existed. Of course as they tear apart their crime, their own lives become exposed to us the listener. Suffering through adultery and betrayal, their skeletons are as incriminating as they people they are set to investigate. The juxtaposition of the hero lying to his wife to cheat, while one of the villain's stands up for her son at all cost turns our preconceived notions upside down.
This book makes you realize the flaw of judging others too quickly. Like I said, if you look closely enough you will find fault with everyone, even those same faults we forgive in ourselves. We need to look beyond this because the next thing you know we are rejecting people for minor indiscretions and missing the truly evil we encounter. This is the brilliance of good crime fiction. It acts like a mirror reflecting back the depth of our own souls, our character.
Read this book for a great example of Swedish mystery, a police procedural that delivers. But also read it to understand this mystery called humanity a little better; it just might make you a better person.
Thanks to T Stevens for this review.