The Stonecutter (Patrik Hedstrom 3)
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Review
‘The Stonecutter, by Camilla Läckberg … continues her excellent series… The main narrative is cleverly interspersed with flashbacks from the past, the relevance of which becomes apparent as the novel progresses. Läckberg is particularly good at portraying the claustrophobia of a small community in which everyone knows everyone else and the police may well be friends with killers’ Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘Camilla Läckberg is probably the hottest female writer in Sweden at the moment… Läckberg's job is to make the reader pleasurably uncomfortable – one of her ironclad skills’ Barry Forshaw, Independent
‘The interplay between the police detectives and the lives of the characters in the small town… are absorbing and realistic’ www.eurocrime.co.uk
Praise for ‘The Ice Princess’:
‘Another top-class Scandinavian crime writer reaches the British market’ The Times
‘A welcome new voice in crime fiction’ Woman & Home
‘Has a brooding quality redolent of its barren Swedish landscapes… intriguing and not a little disturbing’ Irish Times
‘Chilly, deceptive and lucid, just like the icy environment it describes’ Literary Review
‘Heart-stopping and heart-warming, ‘The Ice Princess’ is a masterclass in Scandinavian crime writing’ Val McDermid
"Camilla Lackberg is a more than welcome addition to the growing ranks of Scandinavian crime writers translated into English. With its sharp emotional nuances and psychological insight, ‘The Ice Princess’ builds in suspense as the author turns her clear eye on the buried secrets and contemporary relationships of a small, isolated community. I predict that Fjallbacka and its crimes and people will soon be as poplular here as they are in her native Sweden" Peter Robinson
Review
'The Stonecutter, by Camilla Lackberg ! continues her excellent series! The main narrative is cleverly interspersed with flashbacks from the past, the relevance of which becomes apparent as the novel progresses. Lackberg is particularly good at portraying the claustrophobia of a small community in which everyone knows everyone else and the police may well be friends with killers' Marcel Berlins, The Times 'Camilla Lackberg is probably the hottest female writer in Sweden at the moment! Lackberg's job is to make the reader pleasurably uncomfortable -- one of her ironclad skills' Barry Forshaw, Independent 'Lackberg is an expert at mixing scenes of domestic cosiness with blood-curdling horror! a must for white-knuckle junkies' Guardian 'Another top-class Scandinavian crime writer reaches the British market' The Times 'Has a brooding quality redolent of its barren Swedish landscapes! intriguing and not a little disturbing' Irish Times 'Chilly, deceptive and lucid, just like the icy environment it describes' Literary Review 'Heart-stopping and heart-warming, 'The Ice Princess' is a masterclass in Scandinavian crime writing' Val McDermid 'Camilla Lackberg is a more than welcome addition to the growing ranks of Scandinavian crime writers translated into English. With its sharp emotional nuances and psychological insight, 'The Ice Princess' builds in suspense as the author turns her clear eye on the buried secrets and contemporary relationships of a small, isolated community. I predict that Fjallbacka and its crimes and people will soon be as poplular here as they are in her native Sweden' Peter Robinson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Camilla Lackberg's first two books, "The Ice Princess" and "The Preacher" majored on Erica Falck, with major support from Patrik Hedstrom. This is very much Hedstrom's book, and Falck plays a lesser role. There remains a story arc around her sister that projects from the first two books, but you don't need to have read those to understand it, because there is a subtle recap.
It's a tale with an interesting construction, alternating between the present day and earlier times. A well to do lady has an affair with a stonecutter in the 1920's, and the question is how this intersects with the murder of the small daughter of one of Erica's friends. Lackberg captures very well the damage that the event causes to families but also to a small community. Unusually, there are a lot of unsympathetic characters, and the desire to give quite a few a good slap is very strong. There are incompetent policemen, selfish women, people who openly use others and people who interfere in others' lives. There are interesting comments on how we raise our children too.
The fifth star is withheld because if you've worked out the connection between the two stories, the last chapters lack suspense. But I'll look forward to the fourth book.
It's a tale with an interesting construction, alternating between the present day and earlier times. A well to do lady has an affair with a stonecutter in the 1920's, and the question is how this intersects with the murder of the small daughter of one of Erica's friends. Lackberg captures very well the damage that the event causes to families but also to a small community. Unusually, there are a lot of unsympathetic characters, and the desire to give quite a few a good slap is very strong. There are incompetent policemen, selfish women, people who openly use others and people who interfere in others' lives. There are interesting comments on how we raise our children too.
The fifth star is withheld because if you've worked out the connection between the two stories, the last chapters lack suspense. But I'll look forward to the fourth book.
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Camilla Lackberg is currently the country's most
popular author,in her native Sweden. 'The Stone
Cutter'is the third novel in the series ,and is
her most ambitious to date.
Detective Patrik Hedstrom has recently become a father
and his partner,Erica is experiencing post-natal
depression,when a young girl is found by a fisherman,
in his net---drowned.A post-mortem reveals it to be
murder.The dead girl's mother is a friend of Erica,
and as Patrik and his colleagues follow various lines
of inquiry,a can of worms is opened up in the close
community.Many of its inhabitants are ego-centric and suffer
from self-delusion,but we are cleverly kept in suspense,
as to the identity of the murderer until the end.
This is an intelligent .brave and meticulously plotted
crime thriller,where we also are left to consider the
often dreadful long-term damage caused by selfish and
inadequate parenting.
popular author,in her native Sweden. 'The Stone
Cutter'is the third novel in the series ,and is
her most ambitious to date.
Detective Patrik Hedstrom has recently become a father
and his partner,Erica is experiencing post-natal
depression,when a young girl is found by a fisherman,
in his net---drowned.A post-mortem reveals it to be
murder.The dead girl's mother is a friend of Erica,
and as Patrik and his colleagues follow various lines
of inquiry,a can of worms is opened up in the close
community.Many of its inhabitants are ego-centric and suffer
from self-delusion,but we are cleverly kept in suspense,
as to the identity of the murderer until the end.
This is an intelligent .brave and meticulously plotted
crime thriller,where we also are left to consider the
often dreadful long-term damage caused by selfish and
inadequate parenting.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
When the body of a young girl is found caught in a fisherman's net in the small Swedish town of Fjallbacka, it seems that she drowned accidentally. But when the post mortem reveals that her death was murder, local detective Patrik Hedstrom must catch the killer before they can strike again.
I'm a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction, but I've never read a book by Camilla Lackberg before, although she's apparantly one of Sweden's biggest authors and ranks above Henning Mankell in the bestseller lists.
This book has a strong domestic theme running through it, which serves to make the crime all the more shocking. Fjallbacka is a very small town, and Patrik Hedstrom is horrified to discover that the dead child is the daughter of his girlfriend's best friend. This relationship makes the investigation very claustrophobic, especially when combined with some of the other plotlines, including the vicious feud between the dead girl's overbearing grandmother and her neighbour, his wife and Asperger's sufferer son, widely regarded as the town freak because of his condition. Hedstrom's handling of the case is complicated by his feelings for his baby daughter, and the problems his girlfriend has adjusting to motherhood. The domestic aspects of this novel remind me of another Swedish crime writer, Liza Marklund, who also writes about the difficulties of combining a family life with a career investigating crime, although her protagonist is a female journalist.
At times I wasn't sure about Hedstrom as a lead detective, as he seemed to overlook obvious aspects of the investigation and sometimes floundered in his pursuit of the killer, but perhaps I just watch too much CSI and expect the detective to know exactly what they're doing. Hedstrom is only too human, which makes him a likeable enough character.
Throughout the novel the chapters alternate with another story set decades earlier, which follows a young woman from a wealthy family who falls pregnant outside of marriage and is forced to suffer a life of poverty. The two stories provide an interesting contrast and inform the progress of Hedstrom's present day investigation.
A decent introduction to another great Scandinavian crime writer and I will certainly get hold of the earlier books in this series, and look out for the next one.
I'm a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction, but I've never read a book by Camilla Lackberg before, although she's apparantly one of Sweden's biggest authors and ranks above Henning Mankell in the bestseller lists.
This book has a strong domestic theme running through it, which serves to make the crime all the more shocking. Fjallbacka is a very small town, and Patrik Hedstrom is horrified to discover that the dead child is the daughter of his girlfriend's best friend. This relationship makes the investigation very claustrophobic, especially when combined with some of the other plotlines, including the vicious feud between the dead girl's overbearing grandmother and her neighbour, his wife and Asperger's sufferer son, widely regarded as the town freak because of his condition. Hedstrom's handling of the case is complicated by his feelings for his baby daughter, and the problems his girlfriend has adjusting to motherhood. The domestic aspects of this novel remind me of another Swedish crime writer, Liza Marklund, who also writes about the difficulties of combining a family life with a career investigating crime, although her protagonist is a female journalist.
At times I wasn't sure about Hedstrom as a lead detective, as he seemed to overlook obvious aspects of the investigation and sometimes floundered in his pursuit of the killer, but perhaps I just watch too much CSI and expect the detective to know exactly what they're doing. Hedstrom is only too human, which makes him a likeable enough character.
Throughout the novel the chapters alternate with another story set decades earlier, which follows a young woman from a wealthy family who falls pregnant outside of marriage and is forced to suffer a life of poverty. The two stories provide an interesting contrast and inform the progress of Hedstrom's present day investigation.
A decent introduction to another great Scandinavian crime writer and I will certainly get hold of the earlier books in this series, and look out for the next one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Could not finish it as I lost interest
It does not happen very much, but I lost complete interest in this book. I could not connect with the characters and got bored reading it. Read more
Published 4 days ago by A. J. Parkes
Another great read from Camilla Lackberg
In this book, Patrik and Erica have a baby, and Erica is suffering from post-natal depression. This links them to the family whose daughter is found murdered at the start of the... Read more
Published 12 days ago by Wildpurl
The Stonecutter
The Stonecutter
I was introduced to the writer by a friend and have now purchased all her books.
It made good reading
I was introduced to the writer by a friend and have now purchased all her books.
It made good reading
Published 12 days ago by pbirdpatbird
Crime fiction at its best
Another good dark story intermixed with the domestic life of our detective and his partner coming to terms as a new Mum. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Richard Latham
A truly awful book
It is the possible the translation is not great but this is definitely one of the most poorly written books I have read. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Typograf
very enjoyable
This is a very enjoyable and readable book and I like the Scandinavian no-nonsense approach.
The story of Patrik (the detective) and Erica (his girlfriend, partner and... Read more
The story of Patrik (the detective) and Erica (his girlfriend, partner and... Read more
Published 3 months ago by A. Kubicek
Mind numbingly boring
548 pages of utter tedium. let me give you an example: "There was nothing that gave Lilian as much pleasure as cleaning the house. .... She began with the kitchen as usual. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Diane of Glasgow
Another Quality Mystery From Lackberg
Having been an avid fan of the like of Mankell, Nesser, Larsson and Nesbo for some years, I was a little late discovering Camila Lackberg. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Nick Huckle
A good holiday read
The book took a while to get going, but when it did I couldn't wait to discover "who dunnit" and why. Read more
Published 9 months ago by C. Duxbury
Eat, Pray, Love with a murder tossed in.
Is it just me? I bought this on a recommendation because I enjoy a good, slow-burning thriller. I loved the Dragon Tattoo series, Steven Dunne's The Reaper, read all the Mankell's... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Carmen
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