You Will Never Be Found

The discovery of the body of a missing person, Hans Runne, drives Alsterdal’s often gripping but haphazardly plotted sequel to 2021’s We Know You Remember. Found in an abandoned house in a mining town in Sweden’s far north, Runne had two fingers severed from his left hand not long before he died. Police detective Eira Sjödin, along with her boss, Georg “GG” Georgsson, and her other colleagues, cover all kinds of territory, geographical and cultural, as they look for clues into what becomes a murder inquiry. Various personal issues—Eira’s mother is in a care home with dementia, her brother is in prison for manslaughter, and she’s attracted to the much older GG—slow the action. The pace picks up after GG disappears. A strong sense of place—in particular, the remote, sparsely populated north of Sweden—helps compensate for the meandering narrative and the author’s sometimes clumsy efforts to impose profundity and unearth big themes about societal change (for example, a mining company’s expansion becomes a seismic metaphor about dislocating communities). Scandi noir fans will hope for a tighter plot next time. Agent: Astri von Arbin, Ahlander Agency (Sweden). (Jan.)