Just Finished Reading: The Savage Altar by Asa Larsson

Rebecka Martinsson is making a new life for herself in a highly respected law firm in the city. It’s a struggle but she’s just starting to make the grade and is beginning to collect her own clients. Everything seems to be on track when she receives an early morning phone call – a voice from her past asking for help. The best friend she left behind in the small town of Kirana in northern Sweden has just discovered her brother – the charismatic preacher who has transformed the fortunes of that isolated religious community dead in his own church. If that wasn’t bad enough it appears that he has been ritually murdered and the tightly-knit members of his church are amongst the suspects including her friend. Of course she offers any help she can but had no idea where that simple response would lead her – back into a community she has grown to despise, back into a life she has turned her back on and back to a place that holds so many painful memories. But once Rebecka starts digging into the activities of the church and its ruling council she finds disturbing evidence of tax fraud and maybe, just maybe, something truly explosive. But with a multi-million Krona industry to protect some people will go to great lengths to silence her even if that means more blood in the snow.

I’m coming late to the Scandinavian crime scene (as it where) but at least I started off with a good one. This is a very impressive first novel. The main character Rebecka is very well drawn and nicely complex. She’s truly multi-levelled with a history (some of which we find out through flash-backs) that drives her. She is very real and I’d love to meet her. But this is not just a novel with a single strong character surrounded by puppets – no way. Rebecka’s life is full of interesting (as well as crazy) people she’s known for years and who know, or think they know, her. A person she doesn’t know beforehand, but gets to know and respect, is police Inspector Anna-Maria Mella who is heavily pregnant and supposedly deskbound until the birth of her child. But when she’s needed by her uncertain subordinate she can hardly say no. I hope to see more of her in future novels (I already have the second book featuring Rebecka but I’m not totally sure Anna-Maria makes an appearance). It’s my intention to read more novels by women – most of my novels are by men as you’ve probably noticed – as well as more books by non-Anglo Americans which provide an often interestingly different perspective on things. As always much more to come. (FB: 2003)