The Mountain King

This superb Scandinavian noir from de la Motte (Deeds of Autumn) opens with the disappearance of Smilla Holst and Malik Mansur, a college-age couple with a penchant for exploring abandoned buildings in southern Sweden. Leonore Asker, head of the Serious Crime Command in Skåne, is on the case—at least until national bigwig detective Jonas Hellman arrives from Stockholm to assist her. The two have history: they carried on an affair that ended when Asker reported Hellman for misconduct. After Hellman arrives in Skåne, he schemes to have Asker moved off of the case. She’s swiftly demoted to manage a team of “HR nightmares” in the Resources Unit—better-known by her colleagues as “the Department of Orphaned Cases and Lost Souls”—and discovers that her new colleagues have been working on a seemingly trivial vandalism case involving an extraordinarily detailed model railroad in the nearby locality of Hässelholm. As the plot slowly unfolds, that vandalism becomes key to discovering what happened to the missing college students, and to uncovering several other crimes carried out by a figure who calls himself the Mountain King. De la Motte nimbly juggles a substantial cast as his plot grows increasingly intricate, ratcheting suspense to near-unbearable heights. This crackerjack page-turner will keep readers up late. Agent: Federico Ambrosini, Salomonsson Agency. (Jan.)