The Sandman

by Lars Kepler
449 pgs  (Joona Linna series #4)

As The Sandman begins, a young man named Mikael Kohler-Frost is found wandering along a snowy railroad bridge near Stockholm, nearly dead from both sickness and malnourishment. It’s the first time he’s been seen since he and his younger sister Felicia went missing from their home 13 years ago.

Thirteen years ago, when the two disappeared, Detective Inspector Joona Linna with Sweden’s National Crime Force investigated the disappearance, but was never able to determine what happened. The official police verdict was that the children drowned in the river by their home, but Linna always suspected they had been victims of Jurek Walter, one of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, who is currently serving a life sentence in a maximum-security psychiatric institution.

Detective Linna always suspected Jurek had an accomplice working with him, but was never able to prove it. Now that Mikael has escaped, he’s sure there was one, and that he’s out there and still has Felicia. He has to somehow get Jurek to talk and reveal where Felicia is being kept. His only chance is Saga Bauer, a beautiful female agent willing to go deep undercover as a patient in the institution to get to Jurek.

The Sandman is the fourth book Lars Kepler’s (pseudonym for husband-and-wife team Alexandra and Alexander Ahndoril) series featuring Inspector Joona Linna, and I’m disappointed in myself for not knowing about the series until now. The book has some definite flaws, but I found myself not really caring about those, because I was enjoying the story so much. There are elements of the story that reminded me of Silence of the Lambs, and the chapters are so brief, it’s hard not to justify reading “just one more” before putting the book down.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆