Critically acclaimed author Tove Alsterdal discusses why she believes she’s written her scariest story yet with her new crime novel, You Will Never Be Found.
When a teenage girl disappeared without a trace from a small rural town twenty-three years ago, a local boy confessed to raping and killing her and was banished from the close-knit Swedish community.
IndieBound At the start of Alsterdalâs taut, fraught U.S. debut, Olof Hagström returns to his familyâs house in Kramfors, Sweden, which he hasnât visited since he was convicted 23 years earlier at 14 for raping and killing a girl, though no body was found. Too young to be sentenced, the learning-disabled Olof was sent to a youth home. Inside, Olof releases a dog thatâs been shut in the kitchen, and finds the dead body of his reclusive father, Sven, in the shower. Olof drives away, but the dog blocks the road, where he stops long enough to be approached by Patrik Nydalen, a neighbor who soon realizes who Olof is. Olof tells Patrik his father is dead. Police detective Eira Sjödin, who was nine at the time of Olofâs conviction, investigates what turns into a murder case, in which the locals suspect Olof. In her compulsive hunt for the truth, Eira must deal with pernicious changes in Swedish policing and grapple with her motherâs descent into d