GUILTY?

"Guilty?", is an easy reading and pleasant book. I am really enjoying reading it.

The story takes place in Sweden and features Hanna, a sixteen years old girl, who abandoned school and left the family home with Ali, her boyfriend, who is older than her. Two private detectives, Elin and Lars, will find her as requested by her parents. But she refused to go back to home and stayed with Ali. Quickly, Hanna is in trouble and her lawyer would call Lars and Elin for help.

Actually, Ali is what we can call a "loverboy". Here is how the author have described a loverboy. He is a young men, often even under twenty, who approached underage girls with an uncanny sense of who to target. They pick up girls who were hungry for recognition and socially unstable and they show them with compliments and gifts as well as went out with them. They play the great love for them and do everything to isolate the girl from everyone else. It often lasted only a few weeks and these girls were already emotionally completely dependent on their loverboy and then no longer accessible to friends and parents. At some point the loverboys would then get the girls into prostitution, using both psychological and physical violence.

Ali is found died and Hanna, who was there, is accused of having murdered him. Lars and Elin will investigate the case and try to clear Hanna because they think someone other than her was with Ali and and killed him.

As usual, nordic noir books go slowly and authors focus thoroughly on the context. Many details are given to readers leading them to engage progressively in the story. I like this way of setting up the plot.

I highly recommend this book.

We have a story that Christer Tholin takes to the limit of emotions. Hanna was a 14 year old that was beat on from her father and was abused by her sister. Her best friend was Klara, and one day they saw a 20 yer old working on his car and struck up a conversation with him. Hanna was in love and in a matter of weeks moved into Ali's apartment. Elin, who's our hero, was called by Hanna's family trying to find Hanna. Elin called her friend Lars who was also a private investigator and made the deal that she would receive a commission on the deal. It took 3 days to track Hanna down but once they found her, she stayed with Ali. The story goes down hill for Hanna from here. Ali was a "Loverboy" where he would get young girls to work as prostitutes for him. Hanna agreed to this after some time and prostituted herself for Ali. We found out Ali had only Hanna as a prostitute and he only made love to her. It goes downhill fast and ends up with Ali being killed with Hanna taking the blame. Our hero Elin works with Lars to clear Hanna. But Hanna really loved Ali and committed suicide. I've left out a lot because there were killers, you have to read the book to find out about them.
I gave it a 4 star rating.