The Stonecutter

The extreme darkness of the human spirit—a quality that marks Läckberg’s novel and the work of many other Swedish crime writers—is expertly portrayed in this audio edition by narrator David Thorn, who previously read earlier installments in the author’s Patrik Hedstrom series. Although it may take listeners a few moments to become accustomed to Thorn’s British accent, this discrepancy quickly becomes a nonissue given the narrator’s deliberate pace, which serves to underscore the bleakness of both the external and the internal terrain. This time around, Hedstrom is particularly invested in solving the crime; as a new father, he’s affected by the murder of an eight-year-old girl even more strongly than usual. And Thorn is especially effective in portraying the detective’s exhaustion from tending to his infant daughter, which only adds to the strain of working the grisly murder case. A Pegasus hardcover. (May)