The Drowning (Fjällbacka 6)

Author/Guide: Camilla Läckberg

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: The story of a Swedish author, who has written a book called The Mermaid. However, happiness at his success is not shared by all and he starts to receive threatening letters..

ISBN: 978-0007419517
Genre: Crime

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What you need to know before your trail

Four months previous to the main action of the book a man went missing and then later he is found frozen in the ice. At the same time, Christian, a local author starts receiving death threats. The two men were friends. Are the two events connected at all?

Patrik and his colleagues start looking into the man’s past and also Christian’s and find that they have a large puzzle with many broken pieces that need to be put together. The past that we try to hide can often come back and bite us in ways that no-one could have foreseen.

Where life imitates art and vice versa, what a twisted web we weave.

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Travel Guide

The name for the book The Mermaid is apt given that Fjällbacka is a fishing community. Of course like the water itself, the title has deeper and darker connotations that we won’t go into here. But the novel develops a theme that has been bubbling away in the background certainly for the last novel in the series, The Hidden Child and whilst you don’t have to have read this to enjoy book six, it will make things a little clearer.

The scene which opens up the book has to be one of the most chilling to start a Läckberg novel off. This might be a small fishing and friendly community yet it is also closed off, hidden away and suffering from many hidden and forgotten secrets just bubbling close to the surface. The theme of ice and isolation runs through the entire book.

“The rocking motion of a boat.And when he was enveloped by the cold sea, all other sensations ceased.”

The other setting apart from the icy landscape is that of hidden secrets and within a small community such as Fjällbacka this is no easy feat. One man is dead, one receives death threats and now two more seem to be in danger. What is the link and who is behind the threats?

The landscape of Fjällbacka and its past comes back to haunt each and every one of the characters in some way. Like an iceberg, its not the parts you can see that’s the problem..