The Forgotten Girls

In the chilling fourth Louise Rick thriller to be published in the U.S. from Danish bestseller Blaedel (after 2012’s Farewell to Freedom), the former Copenhagen homicide detective craves a fresh start as head of the fledgling Special Search Agency, but the unit’s first case plunges her back into a nightmare she has spent decades struggling to forget. Before the body of a middle-aged woman found in the forest can be identified, a toddler’s cries lead Louise and her enigmatic new partner, Eik Nordstrøm, to a brutally slain babysitter, not far from the first corpse—the very place where a teenage Louise suffered the tragedy that would shape her life. As the dogged investigator and Eik—to whom she finds herself attracted despite his alcoholism and other issues—pursue links to a long-shuttered mental institution, it starts to look as if the past could prove key to catching a present-day monster. The swiftly moving plot and engaging core characters help make up for serviceable prose and a hard-to-swallow denouement. Author tour. (Feb.)