The Invisible Man from Salem

When a young woman is shot dead in the apartment block of disgraced Stockholm police officer Leo Junker, the Detective finds himself drawn into the investigation; despite being suspended from duty.

Junker is given an uncomfortable reminder of his troubled youth, when he notices a necklace in the dead woman’s hand. There may be a link between the murder and a traumatic incident that happened many years earlier. Finding that link may cost Junker his life.

This is one of the best noir novels I have read in recent years, Carlsson has created a Stockholm where the streets are made all the meaner by their problems being masked by a thin veneer of Scandinavian order and egalitarianism.

Judicious use of flashbacks gives added depth to the troubled past that draws together Junker and the killer he is unwillingly hunting; building up a knot of tangled friendships and family relationships, casual choices with long term consequences, and “wrongs” that have to be answered for.

In Leo Junker, Carlsson has created a psychologically vulnerable central character with a closer link than he is comfortable with, to the criminals he pursues. A classic noir knight in tarnished armour unsure what the object of his quest might be, but compelled to carry it out anyway.

This is the first novel in a promising series that could make Christoffer Carlsson the next big star in Scandi/noir.