Shadow

The success of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels has spawned a whole Scandinavian crime boom. Amongst these, Karin Alvtegen has marked her own cold territory with dark, brooding thrillers that are more psychological inquiries  than criminal investigations. Shadow - her fourth novel which was shortlisted for the prestigious CWA International Dagger in 2009 - is perhaps the finest example of her art, and a compelling, compulsive read.

The death of ninety-two year old Gerda Persson is hardly a cause for surprise. But the contents of her freezer - a cache of neatly stacked novels all signed and dedicated to her by a Nobel-prize-winning writer - raises some interesting questions about her life. Why has she got such a valuable book collection? What is her connection to the writer? And why does she bequeath her entire estate to a man who has never even met her?

Populated by believable and deeply flawed characters, Shadow is a taut, suspenseful tale of the dark secrets at the heart of an already fractured family. It's hard not to swept up in the revelations that Alvtegen drip-feeds the reader with expert precision. Like the early novels of Minette Walters, Shadow shows how psychological thrillers should be done.