Why a Booktrail?
1968, 2006: The first installment of the Hammarby series following the caseload of Detective Inspector Conny Sjöberg
The Gingerbread House (Hammarby 1)
What you need to know before your trail
Ingrid Olsson returns home from a Stockholm hospital to discover a man in her kitchen. What is even more worrying is that he’s dead.
When the call comes in, Criminal Investigator Conny Sjöberg jumps into action, abandoning his wife Åsa and their five children in the middle of the night in the process.
Following investigations, they discover that he was a middle-aged family man, but how he ended up there, dead, is not so easy to discover.
The clues don’t come in until there is a potential link to another case and realise that there is a serial killer on a terrible vendetta . . .
Travel Guide
Katrineholm 1968
The freaky opening scene is in an old yet fairytale style house, a villa, on top of a hill, surrounded by tall pine trees. Behind this idyllic setting however, there are secrets which reveal that the reality is quite different.
This is a school and the scenes of bullying are harsh and bleak. Young Katarina is just one young child cruelly taunted and bullied by other children in her class.
This is no ordinary school and one child will take memories of the time there and and create hell from them.
Stockholm 2006
Already dark at 4pm, the Swedish setting is immediately apparent. Added to that the large white sheets of snow and the candlesticks twinkling in the windows, and it’s very evocative of a happy Swedish Christmas, but a mystery man is cruising the streets imaging himself in another world….
Darkness, isolation and a sense of remoteness and that’s just here and on the metro…
Hammarby
The home of Chief Inspector Conny Sjoberg, of the Violent Crimes Unit who comes onto the case and leaves his happy home life behind whilst he does it. The police station is situated at the end of Östgötagatan by the Hammarby Canal and the nearby cafe where the police congregate is on Skånegatan nearby.
Nice to get outside of Stockholm and to discover slightly further afield.
Sweden
A good guide to the Swedish weather and the Swedish Psyche. A character who is lacking in emotion and another who is determined to follow order. Swedish police procedurals are explored as is the contrast between the calm exterior and what is going on under the surface.
The food is also of note – where else can you read about Moose Steak? Life and nice meals in a happy Swedish home?
There are a lot of layers to this series of murders – the Middle East conflict and the Diary of a Murderer are aspects which round off this Swedish based novel nicely.
Streetview Maps
1) Enskede Gård T-bana
2) Skånegatan
Sjoberg lives here with his family
Sjoberg lives here with his family
Where Next?
