Still Waters - Viveca Sten

Still Waters by Viveca Sten

First Paragraph:

Everything was completely still and peaceful as only winter can be, when the archipelago belongs to those who live there, and the raucous summer visitors have not yet taken over the islands.
     The water was dark and shining, the cold of winter lying heavily on the surface.  Odd patches of snow rested on the rocks.  A few mergansers stood out like dots against the sky, and the sun was low on the horizon.
     'Help me,' he yelled.  'Help me, for God's sake!'

My Thoughts:

First of all, if you notice the word 'mergansers' in the above paragraphs and don't know what that is - a 'merganser' is a fish-eating duck.  FYI.  I didn't know what it was and so I looked it up.  The things you learn, right?

I listened to this book on audio and it was narrated by Angela Dawe.  Her narration was good, except for her squeaky voices for children and some women.  This is the first book in Swedish author, Viveca Sten's, Sandhamn Murder series.  It is apparently very popular in Sweden and has been adapted for TV as well.  I liked it very much.  Set on an island, it was interesting to read about Swedish vacation houses, lighthouses, boating, climate and water temperature in 'summer', and a number of other things.  The crime part of the book was well enough done, though I did figure out the solution pretty early on.  This is a first book in a series though and I enjoyed getting to know the main protagonists, Thomas Andreasson and his friend, Nora Linde.  They will appear again in the next book, Closed Circles.  I'll likely read that one soon.  Fun to have a new series set in a part of the world that I find fascinating.  And in case you wondered about my 'read warm books in winter and cold books in summer' - well, this one takes place in Swedish summer - such as it is.  Ha!

Blurb:

On a hot July morning on Sweden’s idyllic vacation island of Sandhamn, a man takes his dog for a walk and makes a gruesome discovery: a body, tangled in fishing net, has washed ashore.

Police detective Thomas Andreasson is the first to arrive on the scene. Before long, he has identified the deceased as Krister Berggren, a bachelor from the mainland who has been missing for months. All signs point to an accident—until another brutalized corpse is found at the local bed-and-breakfast. But this time it is Berggren’s cousin, whom Thomas interviewed in Stockholm just days before.

As the island’s residents reel from the news, Thomas turns to his childhood friend, local lawyer Nora Linde. Together, they attempt to unravel the riddles left behind by these two mysterious outsiders—while trying to make sense of the difficult twists their own lives have taken since the shared summer days of their youth.