Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin
Early in the 1970s, a young kid goes missing from the island of Land on a misty fall day. He never turns up. Julia, his mother, is still coping with her son’s absence twenty years later while she lives on the Swedish mainland. The postman has delivered a package carrying a child’s battered and repaired shoe, Julia learns from her father, a retired sea captain who still resides on the island. He’s pretty sure her son owns it. Julia reluctantly makes her way back to the island where she was raised, and soon she and her father are putting a puzzle from the past together.
They recollect tales of Nils Kant, a terrible local who was said to take pleasure in other people’s suffering but who was slain during World War Two when the island had been seized by the Nazis. However, there have been recent sightings of a man who like Nils Kant strolled around the fields at dusk. Echoes From the Dead is a riveting exploration of loss, sadness, and real evil that travels from the deserted sands of land to the Caribbean seas and back.
Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin
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Swedish author Johan Theorin’s fiction, Echoes from the Dead, has been translated. It won the Best First Mystery Novel prize from the Swedish Academy of Crime when it was first released in 2007. It is the first book in the Land Quartet series.
Instead of living, Julia Davidsson is merely existing. Julia’s relationship with her family has deteriorated since her 5-year-old son vanished 20 years ago, and she has developed a passionate attachment to drink. She is awakened from her coma and self-imposed isolation when her father, Gerlof, calls. He’s calling to let her know about an odd parcel he just got in the mail, which included just a boy’s sandal.
Julia, a nurse who is taking a mental health leave from her position, hesitantly makes her way back home and teams up with her father in an effort to finally learn what happened to Jens 20 years ago.
This novel caught my attention, I thought. It moved quickly, was tense, and was unpredictable. It dealt with the mystery of Jens’ disappearance as well as forgiveness, overcoming alcoholism brought on by depression, and attempting to come to terms with a tragic loss. Although Gerlof made a few jumps of logic or intuition that I thought may have been a bit too handy, the plot felt generally well-developed…
