The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg

If you picked up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and then raced through the rest of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy like millions of Americans last summer, you can slake your newly-developed passion for atmospheric Swedish mysteries with author Camilla Lackberg. Princess is the first of her seven award-winning novels set in the coastal town of Fjallbacka to be published in the U.S. Less intense than Larsson’s novels, Lackberg’s mystery is full of intricate, unexpected twists and carefully drawn villagers.

Main character Erica Falck writes sedate biographies but yearns to try her hand at fiction. When she is drawn into the investigation of a childhood friend’s suspicious suicide, she finds herself writing a fictionalized version of what’s happening in her life. Her parents died suddenly in an accident and her sister’s abusive husband is eager to sell their childhood home where Erica is currently living in Fjallbacka. The police investigator on the case has had a crush on Erica since their childhood days and she begins to return his feelings while helping him. Her dead friend’s secretive life unravels like a tangled skein, as Erica finds no one seems to know her whole story. Connecting the dots will bring Erica into jeopardy.

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Suggested by Sarah Redman