Title: Some Kind of Peace
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description (Goodreads):
Siri Bergman is a thirty-four-year-old psychologist who
works in central Stockholm and lives alone in an isolated cottage out of the
city. She has a troublesome secret in her past and has been trying to move on
with her life. Terrified of the dark, she leaves all the lights on when she
goes to bed—having a few glasses of wine each night to calm her nerves—but she
can't shake the feeling that someone is watching her through the blackened
windows at night.
When the lifeless body of Sara Matteus—a young patient of Siri's with a history of drug addiction and sexual abuse—is found floating in the water near the cottage, Siri can no longer deny that someone is out there, watching her and waiting. When her beloved cat goes missing and she receives a photo of herself from a stalker, it becomes clear that Siri is next. Luckily, she can rely on Markus, the young policeman investigating Sara's death; Vijay, an old friend and psychology professor; and Aina, her best friend. Together, they set about profiling Siri's aspiring murderer, hoping to catch him before he kills again.
But as their investigation unfolds, Siri's past and present start to merge and disintegrate so that virtually everyone in her inner circle becomes a potential suspect. With the suspense building toward a dramatic conclusion as surprising as it is horrifying, Siri is forced to relive and reexamine her anguished past, and finally to achieve some kind of peace.
When the lifeless body of Sara Matteus—a young patient of Siri's with a history of drug addiction and sexual abuse—is found floating in the water near the cottage, Siri can no longer deny that someone is out there, watching her and waiting. When her beloved cat goes missing and she receives a photo of herself from a stalker, it becomes clear that Siri is next. Luckily, she can rely on Markus, the young policeman investigating Sara's death; Vijay, an old friend and psychology professor; and Aina, her best friend. Together, they set about profiling Siri's aspiring murderer, hoping to catch him before he kills again.
But as their investigation unfolds, Siri's past and present start to merge and disintegrate so that virtually everyone in her inner circle becomes a potential suspect. With the suspense building toward a dramatic conclusion as surprising as it is horrifying, Siri is forced to relive and reexamine her anguished past, and finally to achieve some kind of peace.
My musings:
I love Scandi crime and Camilla Grebe has been on my TBR
list for a long time, so I am very happy that I finally got the chance to pick
up one of her books and take the plunge into a new addictive crime series!
Siri Bergman is a psychologist (first big tick of approval –
I love psychologists as MCs, they add such a unique perspective to the story)
who is still recovering from the death of her husband five years ago. Still
reeling from her loss, she now lives alone in their isolated cottage near the
coast just out of Stockholm (second tick of approval – a remote, atmospheric
setting). Things start spiralling out of control in Siri’s life when one of her
patients is found floating in the sea not far from her house, and Siri has the
feeling that she is being watched. One night, waking in the dark, she finds a
wet footprint just inside her front door – someone has been in her house (third
tick of approval – a constant sense of danger and foreboding for our MC). When
her cat disappears and Siri receives a threatening note she realises that there
is someone out there who wishes her harm. But who is it, and why would they
want to hurt her?
You can see that Some Kind of Peace contains all the
elements I love about a good thriller: an interesting MC, an old house, a
remote atmospheric setting and constant tension that had me turn the pages
frantically. The foreshadowing was so well done that I just knew something
terrible was about to happen, but there were enough suspects to keep me
guessing until the end. Whilst there is a murder, the descriptions weren’t as
gruesome as some books in the genre, which suited me fine, as the underlying
tension more than made up for it. As Siri’s life started to unravel, I was
pulled along with it like in a tidal rip, aided by short, crisp chapters that
moved the story along and made it flow. I also really enjoyed the case notes of
Siri’s sessions with her patients, which added an interesting element and extra
depth to the book, and found out after the fact that Grebe’s sister, who
co-authored the novel, is in fact a psychologist.
Summary:
All in all, I really enjoyed my foray into this new crime
series and am very happy that it can now fill the void left by the end of the
Frieda Klein series by Nicci French, which also featured a psychologist as a
main protagonist and which I have followed for years. I am looking forward to
meeting Siri and her colleagues again in future books and can’t wait to find
out what the author team have in store for them next.
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