Silenced

A vicar and his wife are found dead in their home. It looks like the man shot his wife and then committed suicide, after learning one of their two daughters died. At about the same time an unidentified man is found, killed in a hit-and-run. Both cases are assigned to Alex Recht and his team, not knowing the cases are related...

I enjoyed Silenced and liked the many twists in the plot and that it thematizes the topic of illegal immigration. The three main characters of the Stockholm police – Alex Recht, Fredrika Bergmann, and Peder Rydh – are well-developed and feel very realistic, each one struggling with his or her own problems. Only the fourth person in the team – Joar Sahlin – remains in the background and I wished this character was as well-developed as the others.

Quotes from the book

The world seemed unchanged, though her own was shattered for ever.

He had celebrated his twin sons' first birthday by leaving their mother, and since then he had screwed up pretty much everything else as well.

He stomach looked as though a basketball had accidentally found its way under her clothes.

"Come in and shut the door", said Ms Berlin in her inimitable husky voice, very probably the result of high whisky consumption and lots of shouting at subordinates as she climbed her way to the top.

"We think we're going to be rational and understanding in all situations, but unfortunately human beings don't work like that. We aren't mind readers, in fact the only thing we are good at is "realising" afterwards, when all the facts are at hand, what we should have done. And then we hold ourselves responsible. When there's no need."

"Damn the police. Every investigation leaks like a blessed sieve."

"I have to say I've no idea how you came to be promoted this far in the force, given how insensitive and unprofessional you are." Peder clenched his fists, bounced on the balls of his feet and wondered if he would make it out of the room without beating the hell out of his colleague first.

She had more friends than she had time for, and more leisure activities than she could ever fit in. But how did she end up with these voids of acute loneliness and inactivity?

What was the point, really, of falling in love with a man twenty years older than her who, married or not, would be leaving her long before she finished living her own life?

His face was strangely deformed. As if someone had slashed it down the middle with a knife and then sewed it back together.

Absence of sound can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the context. In this case there was absolutely no doubt: this wordless dinner was going to be a disaster.

"If you want ownership of how a story's presented and followed up, you have to be the one to break it."

There was no limit to people's imagination when it came to hurting other people.

Her father had said it was impossible to try to change the past, but you could always improve your own way of relating to it. Bruises were an indication of where you'd been, not where you were going.

"I'm going to have to leave you", she sobbed. "You and the children. I'm ill, Alex. They say there's nothing they can do."