Sarah O'Connor

“Love was love – in whatever shape it took,” (Läckberg 408).

The town of Fjällbacka is shaken after a famous photographer is found murdered before an exhibition opening. His friend, the famous author Henning Bauer and his family, are shocked by the death of their friend, even more so when the violence follows them to their small island home. Detective Patrik Hedström and his colleagues struggle to find a connection between the cases while his wife Erica Falck heads to Stockholm to find information on the murder of a trans woman in the 1980s, discovering that these three cases may be more closely linked than originally thought.

I read The Cuckoo for a book club and had no idea that it was the eleventh book in a series featuring detective Patrik Hedström and his wife Erica Falck, but I’d like to continue it or at least check out some of the earlier books in the series. I love a good Nordic noir, and while this was still on the lighter end of the genre it did get surprisingly dark in some instances.

The Cuckoo is very atmospheric, I loved the descriptions of the island where the Hennings lived and how bleak everything felt as more murders were happening and Patrik and Erica struggled to figure out how it was all connected. I do think there were way too many characters in this book, even by the end I had a hard time trying to figure out who was who and what they did, especially because a few of them had very similar backstories and names. But there were some good twists, and I loved how everything fit together. I wasn’t a huge fan of the big villain monologue at the end, but it’s something a lot of mysteries and thrillers seem to struggle to avoid writing.

I loved the relationship between Patrik and Erica and would have liked to see more of it, though from my understanding in other books they generally do spend more time together. I thought the characters balanced each other out very well, that they actually did seem to like and love each other, and I loved the dynamic of an officer and a writer bouncing ideas off of one another to solve a case.

I also think Läckberg did a fantastic job writing about the death of a trans woman. She wrote Lola with a lot of care and made sure to touch on topics of discrimination and violence against trans people but always made sure Lola was written and seen as a woman. It was really beautiful to see and I hope more writers take a page out of Läckberg’s when writing trans characters (though keeping them alive would be an added plus!).

Overall this was a fantastic mystery. If anyone has been a bit nervous about reading Nordic Noir because of it’s darkness, The Cuckoo is a great place to start. It felt more like reading a North American mystery with some darker elements peppered in, but a great stepping stone to anyone curious about the genre.

Publication: September 12 2022
Publisher: Hemlock Press
Pages: 432 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.75
Summary:

Two terrible events, without obvious connection, shake Fjällbacka to its core. A famous photographer is found brutally murdered in a showroom. Henning Bauer, the Nobel prize winner in literature, suffers from a violent act on the small island where he is writing the 10th book in his world famous series.
While Patrik Hedström and his colleagues at Tanumshede police station struggle to investigate the cases, Erica Falck researches a murder on a trans man in Stockholm in the 1980’s. She slowly realizes that the threads from the past are connected to the present time, and that old sins leave long shadows behind.