Status
Call number
Description
A chilling true crime story of poisonous family secrets, love gone wrong, and a cold case that refused to stay buried... In late summer of 2012, millionaire landowner Göran Lundblad went missing from his farm in Sweden. When a search yielded nothing, and all physical evidence had seemingly disappeared, authorities had little to go on--except a disturbing phone call five weeks later from Göran's daughter Maria. She was sure that her sister, Sara, was somehow involved. At the heart of the alleged crime: Sara's greed, her father's land holdings, and his bitter feud with Sara's idler boyfriend. With no body, there was no crime--and the case went as cold and dark as the forests of southern Sweden. But not for Therese Tang. For two years, this case was her obsession. A hard-working ex-model, mother of three, and Missing People investigator, Therese was willing to put her own safety at risk in order to uncover the truth. What she found was a nest of depraved secrets, lies, and betrayal. All she had to do now, in her relentless and dangerous pursuit of justice, was prove that it led to murder.… (more)
Genres
Similar in this library
Publication
User reviews
I knew nothing about Goran Lundblad's murder or the surrounding family drama. And a drama this is! I couldn't "like" the victim, a wealthy man who lives like a pauper and plays the system so that his daughter can receive financial aid to pay for college. Still, he was a man who didn't deserve to be murdered, by any stretch of the imagination. The circumstances surrounding his murder are fascinating, in that morbid kind of way of true crime.
This book is extremely detailed, which will put off some readers. I enjoyed it, for the most part. This isn't a condensed version of the crime and how it was solved. We follow the timeline as it plays out, with all the stops, starts, and lulls of the real investigation.
The author provides a lot of information about the Swedish legal system, so those of us living in other countries get a firm understanding of the difference in how things work there. I found this aspect quite interesting.
My major stumbling point: I was confused by the 'Afterword'. This book is true crime, written in narrative style. As with all narrative true crime, I assumed this was factual, with the possible exception of occasional liberties taken with assigning specific emotion to a person's reaction or maybe altering bits of dialogue for better flow. Yet, the first line of the Afterword is, "This book constitutes one of many possible versions of a long and complex history and a gruesome crime." So now I'm stumped. That statement implies that perhaps the story didn't play out exactly as written. Maybe some details were changed. Maybe a whole bunch of things happened differently. I'm left wondering if I read a true crime nonfiction book or if I read a fictionalized version of a true crime story. Or is that line some sort of legal disclaimer to protect the author from being sued by the two convicted killers? That line needs better explanation. If this is not a completely factual true crime story, the subtitle should not call it true crime and it should have been clarified right at the opening. I'm left perplexed.
The book gave a lot of info about police procedure -- what the police need to do and how they need to do it while investigating -- which I found quite interesting. I did think Therese took a few too many chances, though! Yikes! Overall, I found this really interesting and quite enjoyed reading it.