"In a small town you’re always fully exposed to other people. And to yourself."

The skeleton of an infant girl is found near a cairn by teenagers making out. It's 2009. A place where a local legend about the Ghostly Child is centered. The cairn is like a ley line for the small village of Ormberg, a crossroads, attracting all sorts of misery and mystery.
Fast forward to 2017 and we have a young woman found dead near that same cairn, a police profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön, is found in the surrounding forest suffering from hypothermia memory loss, and her partner in life and work, has disappeared.
This gritty story is told in tandem by two people. Jake a teenage boy whose guilty secret impedes the investigation and Marlin the policewoman who was the teenager who found the skeleton all those years ago. Alongside murder we become privet to personal struggles of Jake and Marlin and their places within this tight knit community.
Set in the Arctic depths of Sweden this is a gripping story with twists that make your head spin. Ormberg is an unlikely area for a refugee asylum camp, as many of the townspeople obviously feel. And the reasons for the resentments of the townspeople are interestingly handled. The locals feel like a forgotten people who themselves have been displaced and forgotten by their own government. So resentments breed. But of course things are never this simple. The asylum seekers stories are juxtaposed against the brooding background of this small village where the people have become trapped in a cycle of poverty.
Grebe has handled the situation of Hanne whose loss of memory seems more and more likely to be the onset of dementia with dignity and compelling insight. If Hanne is suffering this illness, how has it not been seen before now?
The challenge of refugees within small communities, the grappling for understanding and acceptance amidst fears of change and loss is faced head on.
Underneath of course is the ongoing mystery of the dead, treated in brilliant Nordic noir fashion by Grebe
I must admit that at first I wondered where this was going. I wasn't too far in before I was totally hooked. I couldn't put this intriguing thriller down.

A NetGalley ARC

After She’s Gone was named Best Swedish Crime Novel for good reason—realistic characterizations, a compelling mystery, and a haunting setting.

Swedish Police Detective Malin is called back to her rural hometown to investigate the murder of a five-year-old girl. Ironically, Malin found the girl’s skeleton eight years earlier when only a teenager.

Malin is part of a five-person homicide team. Two of its members disappear. When one, Hanne, crawls out of the freezing forest without coat or shoes, she can remember nothing of what happened. She was last seen with her boyfriend Peter, who is also on the team. However, Peter is still missing. Only cross-dressing teen, Jake, has seen Hanne emerge from the forest. He also picked up a book she dropped on the road. But he is afraid his secret will come out if he goes to the police.

After She’s Gone alternates between Malin and Jake’s viewpoints. Hanne’s diary also sheds a light on her thoughts before her disappearance. I enjoyed the many twists and turns. The reveal at the end totally blindsided me. The book is highly recommended to dark thriller fans. 4 stars!

My only question is, “How are Scandinavian countries consistently rated happiest when their environment, and their fiction, is so cold and dark?”

Thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

This is the fist time I've read any books by Ms. Grebe and it certainly won't be the last. After She's Gone was one of the best mysteries I've read in a while. Every few pages I would think I knew the who and why until I ran out of suspects. The side story of immigrants was thought provoking. One thing puzzles me, why write a diary if you want to forget?

After a horrifying experience in her teens Malin has become a police officer, determined to help people and use it as a way to leave her small town behind for good. When a task force is set up to clear old cases she is called back to Ormberg and the case that changed her life forever. Just a few days into revisiting the case of the dead child never claimed, Peter, an investigator, goes missing, and Hanne, a psychological profile and his partner, is found wandering, her diary missing and her memory gone. Malin must pair up with the lead detective and the obnoxious local to find find Peter and solve an old crime that never should have gone cold. The only clue they have is a young woman in a sparkling dress, but Ormberg is a classic small town and the person in that dress is terrified to come forward and admit who they really are. As they read Hanne's diary though, the one left on the ground when she was picked up, they find they must help even if they must risk everything.

Told from the perspective of three protagonists, After She's Gone follows Malin, Hanne, and young Jake as a cold case comes roaring back to life. While the old murder and active crimes make up the majority of the novel, I truly believe this is a story about identity. I ached for Jake as he fought for what he believed to be normalcy among his broken family and against a town filled with hate. He holds the key to the answers, but in his youth fails to see the importance of the diary he found. Risking the truth is too much for him and I think it was a powerful exploration into self worth and how the things we are taught can influence someone even when they know what is right. Malin is desperate to leave her hometown behind once again, regardless of her mothers deteriorating condition and the knowledge of the area only she can offer to the others on the task force. The novel explores the past that has shaped her, the future she imagines, and her innermost thoughts as she faces the difficult task of finding her missing teammates and recognizing the biases she still holds about the town. Finally, we have Hanne, an incredibly famous psychological profile with a well-kept secret, dementia is taking her memory away one day at a time. Her diary holds all the answers and it was so incredible that Hanne's chapters were really the diary and that as readers, we, along with Jake, knew the answers but were unable to help Malin with them.

The three are faced with a horrifying crime, one they thought was long forgotten, but is now seeping into the town and their lives once again. After She's Gone is the kind of book you read with a notebook beside you, ready to write down any hint or thread of truth. There's so much going on in the novel, but Camilla Grebe ties it all together quite nicely. Not only is there traditional crime, murder and kidnapping, the novel also touches on crimes of life, such as prejudices, refugees, and the hate one experiences for their sexuality, their beliefs, for their mental state. I found the chilling tale, set in the dark woods of fictional Ormberg, Sweden, fascinating and I could not put it down.

While I did not read the first novel in the Flickorna och mörkret #2 series, I do think After She's Gone read perfectly well as a standalone. Camilla Grebe provides plenty of information for you to know the characters and I never felt as though a story from the previous novels carried over. The novel, while fictional, reads quite like a true crime novel and the town is very much like any small town today. I could picture the characters and the setting and I could feel the emotions that rolled from the characters like waves. Camilla Grebe has given us a novel with a strong narrative that is relatable and terrifying all at once.

Told in two time lines and by two narrators, this tale of death, lies, and memory in a small town in Sweden is a good read for fans of the genre. Malin thought she escaped her past but she gets pulled back in. Peter and Hanne, the profiler and investigator who were working the murder case both have problems; Jake finds Hanne's diary which has clues. Who is the most reliable narrator? Is anyone a reliable narrator? Fans of the genre know that there are going to be cabals of bad people, nasty things done, and a twist that will catch you unawares. As always with Swedish noir, the initial set up and the need is better than the middle and you might find yourself trying to sort through the characters. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's a good read.

This is the second book by this author I have read. She is totally amazing! Her ability to suck you into the story is extraordinary. This is about a cold case murder in a small Swedish town. I love learning a bit about this country although the mystery is the book’s focus. And I found myself wanting to know more about the characters after the story ended. They became so real for me. Anyway, a good read and an amazing who done it. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the arc. My review represents my own thoughts about the book.

Malin and her friends stumble upon a child's remains - the victim was never identified and the case was never solved. Eight years later she is a police officer in the same town and finds herself investigating the same case. Meanwhile, a boy has an embarrassing secret and has a diary that may hold the answers to a police officer's disappearance. This is the sequel to The Ice Beneath Her and is available now!


I tried to get into this sequel to The Ice Beneath Her, which I enjoyed but it missed the mark for me. I felt the format was difficult tp follow - going back and forth between Jake's perspective and the diary then back to Malik's perspective. I also had a hard time getting invested in the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Zaffre Publishing for the free advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Ballentine Books, and Camilla Grebe for the opportunity to read this Scandinavian crime thriller. As this book ramped up towards the end, I literally could not put it down - I even did an extra mile on the treadmill to finish it which is saying something!

Malin is called to work a cold case in her hometown involving the murder of a young girl years ago - a case that Malin actually set in motion when she was a teenager. She has a love/hate relationship with her hometown - all the businesses have shut down, there are few people left (her mom, aunt and nephew still live there), and the government moved refugees into an abandoned building. The townspeople are none too happy to see that these refugees are receiving more help from the government than they are as citizens.

As Malin's team investigates, one of the investigators is missing and another has been injured and is discovered to have dementia. Another hometown teenager, Jake, finds the diary of the investigator with dementia - Hanna had obsessively written in it so as not to forget anything. But Jake has his own secrets that prevent him from disclosing the diary. Written in alternating voices, this story has a twist ending that I certainly never saw coming.

A great read!

Malin is a young police woman that has done everything she can to escape her back water town of Ormberg but when they reopen a cold case of a murdered little girl (a body she discovered as a teenager) she is called back to assist in the investigation due to her familiarity with the forest and terrain.

Peter and Hanne, he an investigator and she a psychological profiler, are also called into assist. After just a week into the investigation Peter goes missing and Hanne is found wandering the woods barefoot and bleeding with no idea of where she is or what has happened.

The cold case just got more complicated.

Jake is a teenager and local resident of Ormberg who just so happens to stumble upon a diary that holds the secrets that could solve the case. However, due to the circumstances that surround his coming to find the diary he is unable to go to the police in fear his secret will also be exposed.

Then another woman turns up dead in the forest where the murdered girl of years before was found. Coincidence? I think not.

The chapters alternate between Malin, Hanne, and Jake. While we're in Jake's chapters we also read chapters of the mysterious diary. I found all three characters interesting but Jake truly stole my heart. I adored him. Camilla Grebe has written an excellent police procedural with enough slow burning suspense to keep those pages turning. This is the 2nd book in the series though I have not read the first book and I felt this read just fine as a standalone. 3.5 stars rounding up!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is the second book in a series that has been translated from Scandinavian. I am not sure what language it was originally written in. What I can tell you is that, very much like one of the main characters, I can not remember the first book at all. So if you choose to read this book as a stand alone, this is the rare time when I would tell you that you will be okay. The story is told from 3 perspectives: a young 15 year-old boy, a police officer who was raised in the small town where the murders take place, and a senior police detective who has dementia. I liked how Ms. Grebe used the young boy to help fill in the history that the older detective had forgotten. It was a unique approach and worked well for the story. As in her previous book, Ms. Grebe also did a wonderful job of surprising the reader. Writing like this makes me continue to search out translations of Nordic stories.

Thank you Netgalley and Ballentine books for this review copy. I really enjoyed this story and how it developed. Very quick read for me. After reading this I want to pick up more books from the author.

This is a run of the mill thriller that frankly, I didn't care about. A cold case that suddenly comes back into focus. A hick town in Sweden. A diary.

Eh, I'll just watch True Detective.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

If you like Scandinavian thrillers, then you will love Camilla Grebe. Told in two compelling voices, this thriller is an atmospheric, dark and twisty read. The mystery slowly unravels and just as the reader thinks they know what happened, Grebe throws in another twist that leaves you guessing until the end, an end that has one last surprising twist! Well done, a great follow up to The Ice Beneath Her!

There were things I liked about this book and things I did not like at all - here are my Pros and Cons:
Pros
1. Solid murder mystery.
2. Creative twist at the end.
3. Good descriptions of the town and the surrounding forest.

Cons
1. I figured out the murderer long before I got to the end. I even figured out the twist, albeit much closer to the end. There were way too many obvious clues given in my opinion.

2. I got a little bored in the middle. You know how it is weird if you hear a song performed at a tempo slower than you are used to hearing it? That is how this book felt to me… almost like it was written at half tempo. I would have enjoyed a quicker pace – more action, more things happening.

3. Too many social issues crammed into one story in my opinion – alcoholism, cross-dressing, scummy insurance lawyer, refugees, clashing religions, mental disability, childless couple, bullies, memory loss, racism, and there are probably more I am not even remembering at the moment. That seems a lot for one teeny tiny town (which is emphasized ad nauseam in the book), much less for one story. The author included a statement at the end of the book indicating she was trying to address one specific social issue in this book. I wish she would have limited the plot to that one issue instead of trying to include ALL of the ones listed above. It was ultimately distracting for me.

4. I didn’t connect with a single character. Not one. Too many stereotypes - everyone felt more like caricatures than real people to me.

I know it seems like I didn’t like this book, but that isn’t entirely true. It was a good murder mystery. I just didn’t really connect to the characters and the pace was just too plodding to hold my interest entirely. This book falls solidly in the middle of the pack for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine for a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was extremely well written and complex. The characters were well written and kept you guessing until the very end. I will be looking to read more from this author and will recommend this book to others.

This was a different type of book than I normally read and I had a hard time getting into the story. The story has many Scandinavian references I was not familiar with and this made it hard to follow the story. It is a very adult book with complex issues that may not be appropriate for younger readers. The book has a good premise and the characters are well developed. Overall this was not my type of book but would fit very well with readers more familiar with this genre.

I seem to be reading a lot of police mysteries/thrillers that are set in Finland/Sweden/Iceland lately. I don’t know why I am drawn to them, but I am. It is a combination of fascination with how their laws work and the culture.

The first 30-35% was slow. I don’t like books with slow beginnings. But, in this case, it worked. This plotline needed to be built up. I needed to read about what happened to Malin and Jake. I needed to see what formed them into the people that they were. I also needed to read about what was happening to Hanne through her diary. Once all the backstories were explained, then the ball started rolling. And man did it catch momentum.

Jake was the character I connected with. He had a lot of turmoil over the past year and kept to himself. It was his secret and what he thought about himself because of it that hurt my heart. His character growth came when he started to read Hanne’s diary. He related to Hanne and started to care for her. Not going to give anything away but Jake was the true hero of the book. He came to accept himself for what he was. His actions at the end of the book broke a cold case wide open and released secrets that were long buried.

I didn’t care for Malin. While she was a great detective, I didn’t care for her on a personal level. Her dislike for her fellow team member had no reason. She didn’t like him. I did agree with Manfred that she was racist. She protested way too much throughout that scene. She wasn’t a sympathetic character. Even with everything that was revealed at the end, I couldn’t help but go “Oh well” when it happened.

I felt awful for Hanne. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be losing my memory. Especially if I had a job where my memory has to be sharp. Hanne’s confusion and sadness came across the pages. I understood why she needed the diary. To be honest, I thought that Peter was drugging her at one point in the book. His secretiveness (or what Hanne perceived to be) was suspicious. I also wondered if she was going to remember everything that happened to her.

I thought that the plotlines were well written. I got involved with the mystery behind who the woman was and how she could be related to the girl found 8 years earlier. The author did a fantastic job of pointing out latent racism. The resentfulness that people had against the refugees could have been pulled from the headlines. Same with the bullying that Jake endured.

I was surprised at the end of the book. I wasn’t expecting the “bad guys” to be who they were. It was a twist that came out of nowhere. I was thinking how Malin and her partner picked up was the killer. Also, the confession was chilling. Talk about no remorse. I was also surprised at how Malin was tied into what happened. Again, a twist that I didn’t see coming.

I would give After She’s Gone an Adult rating. There are sex and sexual references (nothing graphic). There is violence. There is language. There are triggers. They would be imprisonment, refugees, bullying, and homophobia.

I would reread After She’s Gone. I would also recommend this book to family and friends.

I would like to thank the publisher, the author, and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review After She’s Gone.

All opinions stated in this review of After She’s Gone are mine.

Have you read After She’s Gone.

Let me know your thoughts!!

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review

I found the new characters less engaging (Hanne and Peter take a backseat to a tough lady cop with a tragic past and a teenage boy who wears women’s clothes) but the writing is still sufficiently bleak enough to have kept me turning pages. The mystery is less compelling than the setting. For ScandiNoir diehards only.

Quickly I realized this book is not for me.I had a really tough time following this story. I did not connect with the characters or the story line for that matter. DNF at 25%. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this complimentary book. All opinions expressed are my own.