The Ice Beneath Her by Camilla Grebe

This is a Nordic Noir novel of the creepy scary type we Brits love. The author is young, blonde, Swedish and female and she sets the tone for the book. You can just imagine her working in the dress stores, walking the sludgy streets and sleeping in the sparse apartment blocks in which the drama is set.

It is a psychological thriller set against the backdrop of a cold snowy Christmas in Stockholm. The stylish dust jacket is stamped ‘Guaranteed To Keep You Up All Night’ and I can confirm this is true, well almost, in any case as I have to be up early for work, but I happily turned off the telly and read it by the fire through the evening. It took me a couple of days, and when I put it down I wanted to get back to it, to find out what happened.

I was intrigued by the main characters and their interactions - all of them, police, suspects, victims have their character flaws and these weaknesses, predilections, and traumas drive their actions and the plot. The prose is easy to read with no wasted words on description or extraneous characters. Grebe has written four crime novels with her sister Asa Traff which won various awards and also the Moscow Noir trilogy with Paul Leander-Engstrom. I imagine co-authoring hones the writing style and this shines through in the easy to read ‘The Ice Beneath Her’, her first book as solo author.

Translated by Elizabeth Clerk Wessel and published in Sweden 2015 and in the UK by Zaffre in 2016. Available in hardback for £12.99.

Guest Reviewer Louise Symonds