It’s midwinter in Stockholm, and the Solomon Community, a synagogue and Jewish school, is in the process of hiring a new head of security. Expert Efraim Kiel has arrived from Jerusalem to help the community director select the best candidate. But just as ex-policeman Peder Rydh assumes the position on a temporary basis, tragedy strikes.

First, a preschool teacher is shot and killed in front of her students on the school grounds, and then two 10-year-old boys from the community go missing, only to be found shot dead the next day. Rydh’s former colleagues, investigative analyst Fredrika Bergman and police superintendent Alex Recht, take the lead on the case of the teacher’s murder, but they believe there’s a connection among all three killings. Together and independently, they begin the search for the killer. The stakes get even higher when another child, the sister of one of the victims, goes missing as well.

Swedish writer Kristina Ohlsson’s latest thriller, THE CHOSEN, follows the investigation of these crimes, moving among Sweden, England and Israel as old secrets are revealed and personal motivations are uncovered. The hunt for the figure called the Paper Boy has begun.

"The crimes here are all gruesome, and the novel is more chilling than frightening or gory.... THE CHOSEN is entertaining, though often heartbreaking --- a fine thriller perfect for wintry weather reading."

Is the Solomon community being targeted by anti-Semites or a serial killer? Bergman, Recht and Rydh consider several angles but begin to believe that they may be dealing with a different type of threat altogether. The investigation quickly comes to focus on the parents of Simon Eisenberg and Abraham Goldmann, the two murdered boys. Though their parents are reluctant to share the details, the fathers of the two families knew each other as children in Israel and served together in the Israeli military. And though they claim not to be close, the two families emigrated to Sweden at the same time and are both raising their children in the Solomon community.

The suspicions raised in the investigation by Bergman and Recht take Bergman to Israel to try to understand what may have caused the Eisenberg and Goldmann families to leave their home. But she and Recht are also interested in the legend of the Paper Boy, a shadowy child killer familiar to the residents of the kibbutz where Saul Goldmann and Gideon Eisenberg grew up. The threads become even more tangled as it becomes apparent that Efraim Kiel served in the Israeli army with Goldmann and Eisenberg, that Eden Lundell, the head of Swedish counterterrorism, is interested in the case as well, and that there actually may be two killers and two figures known as the Paper Boy.

With the requisite twists, turns and reveals, Ohlsson guides readers through her tightly plotted narrative as some of her characters race to save Polly Eisenberg, and others work to keep dark events and terrible secrets hidden away. While the investigation itself is often thwarted or working with far less than enough information, Ohlsson allows readers insight into some of the criminal and complicit characters, though she wisely does so bit by bit over the course of the novel, with some shifts in time to keep things dynamic and tense.

Plot-driven rather than dialogue-driven, THE CHOSEN balances the personal and emotional lives of the characters with the details of the investigation and the motivations of the guilty parties. The crimes here are all gruesome, and the novel is more chilling than frightening or gory. The action moves at a good pace, and the familial relationships of the main characters are contrasted with each other to interesting effect. THE CHOSEN is entertaining, though often heartbreaking --- a fine thriller perfect for wintry weather reading.