Eighteen Below

Starred review from October 8, 2018
In Ahnhem’s intricately plotted third Fabian Risk novel (after 2017’s Ninth Grave), police detective Risk is struggling with his deteriorating marriage and his troubled teenage son, Theodor, when he and other members of the Helsingborg crime squad, led by Astrid Tuvesson, become involved in a bizarre case. Wealthy IT magnate Peter Brise appears to have died in a car crash, but forensic evidence proves that Brise died two months earlier. As the bodies of other wealthy people pile up, Risk and his fellow officers realize that serial killers are stealing the identities of their victims. Meanwhile, Risk’s Danish police counterpart, Dunja Hougaard, is stuck in out-of-the-way Zealand, where she’s tracking a ring of disaffected teens known as “happy slappers” who randomly assault people—and Theodor is involved with them. Readers will sympathize with Risk, a decent man caught between the demands of his family and his job, and such well-drawn supporting characters as Tuvesson, who’s sinking into alcoholism. Ahnhem unflinchingly unveils the monstrous crimes lurking beneath Scandinavia’s seemingly placid surface.