Dark Secrets
Det fördolda
Crime, Mystery, Nordic Noir, Thriller
Hans Rosenfeldt, Michael Hjorth
Sebastian Bergman, Book # 1
Grand Central Publishing
2010
ebook
456
Swedish
Marlaine Delargy
March 27, 2018 April 4, 2018
It all begins with a call to the police. A sixteen-year-old boy, Roger Eriksson, has gone missing in the town of Västerås. A search is organized and a group of young scouts makes an awful discovery in a marsh: Roger is dead.
Meanwhile, Sebastian Bergman, psychologist, criminal profiler and one of Sweden's top experts on serial killers, is in Västerås to settle his mother's estate following her death. Sebastian has withdrawn from police work after the death of his wife and daughter in the 2004 tsunami.
When the Crime Investigation Department asks Sebastian for his help in Roger's case, his arrogant manner at first alienates the rest of the team. Pushing forward, though, they begin to make disturbing discoveries about the private school Roger attended....
About the book
Here it is another Einaudi book and here it is another book full of spelling mistakes. For the Italian version, what annoys me the most are the “yes” (sì) with the accent on the other way (I don’t even have the key on the keyboard to make that accent, how the hell do they print it?). Unfortunately, it interrupts the reading too much
As for the style, in my version the narrator’s point of views jump from one to another a little too much. For example, in one chapter Frederick starts talking about his feelings (even if in the third person) all of a sudden the team leader is talking (telling his feelings about another topic whatsoever). And this is not well defined, there is no space between the two narrators so you find yourself thinking “what the hell are they saying?”.
Always talking about space, sometimes it does not leave enough space between one scene and the other. For example an interrogation ends and immediately they are are talking about what has been said… Or even after this scene, we immediately jump to a scene in a house without a minimum of space between the two scenes. So it is very difficult to read. I repeat I do not know if it’s a problem of my version or it’s just like that in any languages.
The case is not so interesting, or at least it was at the beginning… then it turns out to be a typical case… maybe I’m too used to ruthless serial killers that a simple case of murder no longer fascinates me.
I do not like Ursula. when she calls her husband to make her boss and lover jealous, I’m like, seriously? O_o, really? Are we in middle school?? Or is it a team of homicide cases?
Leaving out Ursula, I really like Vanja. I do not know if I will find this team again in the next book, I hope so, I know that very likely I will find Vanja sooner or later but hell, I started to ship her with Sebastian 
despite this I liked the final twist…
I liked how the case ended, I had discovered who the killer was in the middle of the book but not his motive, I also liked Sebastian at the end when he talks to the killer and how he managed to understand.
Despite some flaws (many on the translation) I liked the book, as I said I thought it was going to be more macabre, since it is “Nordic Noir”, but I am satisfied with my choice.
I read this book for the popsugar challenge, a book written by two authors.
