Emily Beyer
The novel “After She’s Gone” was written by Camilla Grebe, a Swedish crime novel author. The book tells the story of an investigation into a cold case, the remains of a 5-year-old girl found in a cairn near the small town of Ormberg ten years prior. Psychological profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön and her partner Peter are brought into the investigation straight from the capital. When the body of a woman is found at the cairn, Peter goes missing and Hanne is found at the edge of the woods covered with blood and with no recollection of the past few weeks, it is up to the rest of their team to discover if the new murder connects to their old one. Told from two different perspectives of seemingly unconnected Ormberg locals, the book thematises topics such as equality, acceptance, trust and deceit through many threads of the mystery, which all tie together in an unexpected ending. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in a thrilling and suspenseful reading experience filled with many twists and turns.
What sets this novel apart for me is how Grebe characterises and utilizes the voices of Jake, Malin and indirectly Hanne to narrate the story. At first glance, the teenager Jake has no connection to the murder case. He lives in Ormberg with his not-so-innocent, alcoholic father and older sister, who is still grieving the death of their late mother, watches horror movies with his best and only friend Saga and tries to avoid his bully Vincent and his gang. A big secret he is trying to keep leads to him running away when Hanne calls for help from the edge of the woods, taking her diary with him. From here on, Jake reads Hanne’s diary which gets him increasingly involved in the mystery. Jake is a character that longs to be understood but is hesitant to confide in others. In Hanne, he sees a friend, as she, like him, is unsure of herself and not able to see her worth. Hanne has dementia, but with the fear that her younger partner Peter will leave her if he finds out, she sets everything on trying to conceal her condition. Similarly, Jake feels he needs to meet the expectations of his father and the judging town he lives in, hindering him from being his true self. Through Jake and Hanne, Grebe works with the themes of trust and acceptance in a very relatable way.
Opposite Jake, the other voice of the book, Malin, is involved in the case from the beginning, more than anyone, including herself, would have initially thought. Malin is also from Ormberg and was the one to find the body of the girl out in the woods with her friends when she was a teenager. Her mother, aunt and cousin still live in town but she has now gotten a job as a police officer and a boyfriend in another city, trying her best to cut ties with her childhood home which has caused her all kinds of mental scarring and where she never completely felt she fit in. She reluctantly returns after being invited to work on the case as part of the team. As a local, Malin expresses the town’s perspective on multiple occasions. A big trigger for debate in the story is the home for immigrants that was fashioned out of an old factory that used to give work to many of the town’s inhabitants. While she denies it, Malin shares the dislike against the government for letting Ormberg’s inhabitants lose their jobs and either move away or live in poor conditions while immigrants are moved there, being supported and supplied by the country. Different views of characters on this range, and the original Swedish title “husdjuret”, which translates to “pet” explains the extreme view of some of the town’s inhabitants that do not see immigrants as equals and feel to be above them. Grebe shows how the people of Ormberg, a fictional town, are too preoccupied with their problems to have compassion and empathy for others, which reflects reality to a certain extent. Marlin’s character ironically, as it later turns out, is in the worst position to make these claims.
Grebe’s writing style immerses the reader in a suspenseful atmosphere, which makes the book a thought-provoking and thrilling read. The book has a captivating narrative which intertwines societal reflections with complex characters, which is why I would highly recommend it.
Emily Beyer