Teaser Tuesday -- The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg

Recently I wrote about The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg for the Teaser Tuesday reader's meme. This week will carry on looking at Lackberg's crime fiction with The Preacher, only the second of her novels to be translated into English. Lackberg lives and writes in Fjallbacka, a small fishing village/tourist location in northern Sweden. In these two novels Lackberg uncovers some bleak and sinister secrets of some of the most prominent families in the village. As with other Scandinavian murder mysteries we get to observe the local police as they struggle to solve increasingly violent crimes, sometimes involving their own neighbors and acquaintances.
Teaser Tuesday is described by its host, Miz B over at Should Be Reading ,as a "weekly bookish meme" open to any reader who wants to play along. If, like me, you're always curious about what people are reading or on the lookout for the next great read, then this may by your meme. To play, just click on Miz B's link above for the simple rules.




The Preacher
by Camilla Lackberg

" 'May you burn in hell, Gabriel Hult, along with your father.' She whispered the words and left as abruptly as she'd come. . .Then Gabriel and Laine were alone. . .They exchanged a complicit look. They both knew what it meant that old bones had resurfaced." p. 87

Book description from cover: In the fishing community of Fjallbacka life is remote, peaceful, and for some, tragically short. Foul play was always suspected in the disappearance twenty years ago of two young campers, but their bodies were never found. Until a young boy, playing on the rocky outcropping of the sea, discovered the body of a young woman--and, underneath this victim, the skeletons of the two missing campers.

Young Patrik Hedstrom, detective for the local police, ( character from the Ice Princess and expecting a baby with his companion writer Erica Falck) is put in charge of the investigation into the three murders. With his impending fatherhood, he is keenly aware of the pain of the parents over the loss of their daughters and their need to know, finally, what happened to them. This urgency increases when a second girl goes missing from a local caravan camp site. Hedstrom focuses his attention on the Hults, a feuding clan of misfits, religious fanatics, and criminals. The suspect list is long, but time is short for the detective to find the killer (s) before the missing girl suffers the same fate as the other three women.