Open Grave

At the start of Eriksson’s outstanding sixth mystery featuring police inspector Ann Lindell (after 2014’s Black Lies, Red Blood), 84-year-old Bertram von Ohler, a professor emeritus who lives in a posh neighborhood of Uppsala, Sweden’s premier university town, learns that he has won the Nobel Prize in medicine. Meanwhile, Agnes, his housekeeper of 55 years, harbors old grievances against him and yearns for her girlhood home, a poor rural community on Gräsö, an island where Edvard Risberg, Ann’s lost love, lives—a world away from Uppsala. Ohler’s neighbors, former colleagues, and professional rivals, all alienated by his arrogance, simmer with resentment against him, and his unstable daughter, Birgitta, both fears that her father’s world is crumbling and hopes that it will. Unsettling incidents that the police dismiss as pranks take a darker turn. More a psychological study than a police procedural, this entry is for connoisseurs of subtle, character-driven crime fiction. Those who prefer action and thrills should look elsewhere. (July)