"The Mirror Man" by Lars Kepler

An audio book

Jenny is abducted by a van driver. 5 years later she's still being held captive by Cesar (who has contacts among the police) and Granny. Frieda's been held for 7 months.There are other girls too.

Pamela has a daughter Alice, Jenny's age. Her partner is Martin, whose parents died when he was young. Alice and Martin go fishing on ice. Both go under. Only Martin survives - Alice's body isn't found. He's in and out of a psychiatric hospital for 5 years. Now it's time for him to leave. Pamela, now 41, wants to be a foster mother for troubled Mia - a replacement for Alice. While Martin (still having paranoid delusions) is walking the dog he finds Jenny hung in Stockholm. Martin confesses because of insensitive questioning, then is released. She suddenly sleeps with old friend Dennis. Martin has ECT and hypnosis.

Mia (who deals in drugs) is abducted, taken to the same place as the other girls. Martin heard Primus (a fellow hospital patient) on the phone talking to Cesar about the hanging. Primus' sister is brought in after her place was raided and lives lost. She tells Yuna, a detective brought onto the case, that Primus is often at an illegal gambling den down the docks. Yuna goes there undercover with minimal support. He and a colleague are suspected of being police. He's wounded, but they find Primus. Cesar might have been a patient too, before medical records were computerised. Yuna interviews old hospital staff.

The girls are kept in cages. Some of them used to be allowed in the house. Sometimes Cesar is there and invites one of them for a meal. Mia plans an escape. Another girl is killed by Cesar as an example to the rest.

Pamela is cryptically threatened not to let Martin give evidence. Someone tries to push Martin under a train. Under hypnosis with Eric he learns that he's Cesar. Later with Pamela he turns into Cesar and tries to hang her.

Alice is one of the girls held captive. Yuna works our that the girls are kepts in a mink farm. The ending drags a little. Martin's unaware of Cesar. Cesar looks down on Martin. Cesar and his mother have some strange religious belief about 12 wives/offspring.

There are many sentences along the lines of "Her heart is pounding in her chest", "tears well up in her eyes", "she can't help but smile to herself", etc.

Other reviews

• Kirkus reviews (the book jumps the tracks with a burst of forced twists and turns and an ultraviolent, head-shaking climax. A page-turner until it isn't, Kepler's latest becomes a case of too much too late.)
• Paul Burke (The bestselling Swedish writing duo Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and husband Alexander Ahndoril – AKA Lars Kepler ... The plot is fiendishly clever, gripping and twisty enough to make it difficult to guess what’s coming next. It’s a little long but that’s Kepler’s style, go with it)
• Michael Costanzo (the story does not shy aware from the gory details of Caesar’s crimes, while managing to avoid the perverse titillation that some authors flirt with. Kepler wants readers to be rightfully horrified. ... Saga appears exactly twice in The Mirror Man, once during the epilogue to set up the next book, and has only one line of dialogue. She is totally removed from the story in every other regard, robbing readers of a potentially great storyline involving her recovery after the events of the previous novel. Another point of criticism in The Mirror Man is its handling of mental illness. Intentionally or not, Kepler reinforces the idea that mentally ill people are inherently dangerous in some way)