An audio book.
Set in Norway. In the first chapter an unnamed drunk 30+ woman is helped to her smart home by a vagrant gay 21 year old. She pays him to be a sperm donor.
Outside a cafe, Private Investigator Selma Falck receives a flesh wound from a sniper's bullet that killed a minor female MP, Linda (who'd been national handball goalie). Vanya was with them too. Selma thinks she (Selma) was the intended target.
Selma has been a lawyer, a handball player, a multiple Reality Show winner, an addicted gambler. A year before she'd nearly died in the wilderness. Her brother dead while doing his PhD. Her daughter (Anina)'s husband died on their wedding day. Selma is a grandmother. She has enemies, not least (though it seems unlikely to me) those who she's recently turned down job offers from. She thought her flat was secure, but someone is sneaking in, taking nothing, but making their presence known, sometimes leaving items with childhood meaning to Selma.
Lars, a journalist friend is asked to take over a piece of work from a journalist, Jonathan, who died in an accident 3 weeks before. He takes a memory stick to Selma and they try to work out (with the help of hacker sofware) what's on it. Einer does some research for her. His daughter was a victim of a child molester. Einer had killed the culprit and had gone mad.
One of the rejected clients mentioned a child welfare scandal. The MP briefly chaired a relevant committee. There's a file on the memory stick that refers to it too. We're info-dumped the background - babies were taken from their family and the EC courts are involved.
An unnamed widower's out-going wife was Greta. Now their son is buried with her.
Kyser, a high-ranking judge (she was Selma's classmate a law school), is found hung from a tree - a half-hearted attempt to look like a suicide.
Frederick (divorced) is handling the case. Neilson (used to be in army) is helping. Selma meets up with Frederick, who's making an effort.
Lars' oldest little son is in a life-threatening accident. Selma seeks out Jonathan's partner, Amelia, hoping to get clues about the password for the memory stick. But she doesn't need to because when she visits Jonathan's friend he (after threats) hands over a password-free version of the files - recordings showing how people wanted the evidence tampered with.
The 42 year old minister who deals with child welfare dies in the night. The judge was going to be involved with the child scandal cases once the EC had delivered their verdict.
Selma's invited to a police meeting. For some reason she withholds the strongest evidence that connects the cases. She meets Eva who says that when her daughter Victoria had beast cancer in her 30s, she got herself pregnant to a random male, Andre Kapalan. The son, David, was 3 when Victoria died. Andre's father is Beerger Neilson, who's been mentioned before as a government fixer. Beerger's wife died when Andre was 14. Andre couldn't cope, but finally returned and tried to get custody of his child. Beerger's convinced that have the child would have saved Andre. Andre killed himself with poison (actually an O.D.) having previously tried to kill himself by shooting and hanging. Beerger tried to punish the system the way the system had caused his son to punish himself. He thinks Selma is close to discovering he's the murderer. He also (unconvincingly) thinks that she's the only one who could know.
The lead up to the ending is exciting. The end itself is rather unexpected. He learn only in retrospect Beerger's attempt to kill Selma in her flat, her life being saved by an estate agent (ex-classmate) who's long had a grunge against her. The final chapter is a long letter by Andre to his father, lying about his liaison with Victoria, and begging for his father's respect.
It mostly works for me. Selma is too talented for my liking, too many lives are touched by tragic deaths, and some of the red herrings take up too much space. Why are we told the career history of the MP? Why, when they find out Andre is dead, do they not suspect the father? Narratives about web searches don't appeal to me.
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