{"id":2935,"date":"2022-07-09T12:28:41","date_gmt":"2022-07-09T19:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2935"},"modified":"2022-07-09T12:43:45","modified_gmt":"2022-07-09T19:43:45","slug":"whats-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2935","title":{"rendered":"What’s going on???"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you want to read a mystery that will really keep you guessing? Paul O’Connor found one that came from Sweden.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Paul T. O\u2019Connor<\/p>\n

GEIGER. By Gustaf Skordeman. Translated from Swedish by Ian Giles. Grand Central Publishing. 424 pages. $28, hardback.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s been a pleasant afternoon for Stellan Boman, the long-retired but still beloved, Swedish TV star. His two daughters and his grandchildren have been visiting his home outside Stockholm.<\/p>\n

As the visitors are leaving, a landline rings, and Agneta Boman answers. She hears one word, responds affirmatively, and heads upstairs, where she withdraws a Makarov pistol from her bedside drawer. Once downstairs, she walks into the living room and fires a single shot into the back of her husband\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

From there Gustaf Skoredeman\u2019s thriller, Geiger<\/em>, becomes a ravenous consumer of your reading time. As we search for a reason that Agneta has murdered her husband, we are faced less with twists and turns and more with a series of ever-complicating developments. And, while we might want to scream, \u201cWhat the hell is going on?\u201d Skordeman has written a mystery that is understandable on every page, even if every page reveals only a small piece of what will eventually answer the above question on about page 423.<\/p>\n

Sara Nowak is a vice squad detective who would not normally have been called into the murder investigation. But she grew up with the Boman daughters; her mother was the family\u2019s maid for more than a dozen years. And the lead detective is Anna, one of Sara\u2019s best friends. Sara can\u2019t be part of the official investigation team, but Anna needs her help.<\/p>\n

This being a detective\u2019s story, Sara must, of course, be a problem employee, not as bad as Harry Bosch, but … She has an anger issue with the johns she arrests and a willingness to operate outside the rules on occasion. But operating outside standard procedure is what makes fictional detectives so effective, and that is how Sara takes the investigation into dark areas far afield of an act of domestic violence that the official team finds far-fetched.<\/p>\n

There are dark areas of Sara\u2019s personal life, also, and that is the parallel plot of this story. One daughter is rebelling as she graduates from what we call high school, the younger son is watching internet porn, and her husband is getting obscene photo texts from a lady of the night. After a career on the vice squad, Sara\u2019s \u201cMe-Too\u201d emotions are explosive and her family\u2019s affiliation with anything degrading of women infuriates her, sometimes leading to unreasonable reactions.<\/p>\n

Being back in the company of the Boman daughters is equally troubling to Sara. Long-repressed childhood insecurities and aggravations return as the sisters treat her as they did during childhood \u2013 as a lesser person, the daughter of the maid.<\/p>\n

As we encounter revelation after revelation, as the reason for the murder begins to take shape, Sara sinks lower, and the story becomes more frightening and heads into surprising places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you want to read a mystery that will really keep you guessing? Paul O’Connor found one that came from Sweden. Reviewed by Paul T. O\u2019Connor GEIGER. By Gustaf Skordeman. Translated from Swedish by Ian Giles. Grand Central Publishing. 424 pages. $28, hardback. It\u2019s been a pleasant afternoon for Stellan Boman, the long-retired but still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,5],"tags":[425,1265,1266],"class_list":["post-2935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","tag-detective-fiction","tag-murder-mystery","tag-swedish-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2935\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}