Aficionados of nordic crime fiction will recognize Camilla Grebe. She has become well known in Scandinavia and elsewhere as the result of her commercially and critically acclaimed Moscow Noir trilogy, co-written with Paul Leander-Engström, as well as the Siri Bergman novels, written with her sister, Asa Traff. THE ICE BENEATH HER marks the debut of Grebe’s solo efforts and is the first in a series. Mystery fans will find it to be the perfect way to ring in the new year.

THE ICE BENEATH HER introduces Peter Lindgren, a Stockholm homicide detective who is an extremely difficult and easily unlikable protagonist. The book gets rolling when Lindgren and his partner, Manfred Olsson, are called to the home of Jesper Orre, a wealthy and somewhat notorious CEO of a chain of trendy and popular clothing company stores. The crime scene is posed in a hideous tableau, featuring the beheaded body of a female as its centerpiece. The woman is unidentified, and the police spend a great deal of the novel attempting to solve that particular piece of the puzzle. Of equal significance, though, is that the murder scene bears an unsettling resemblance to a similar killing that took place a decade previously.

"While the plot expertly twists and turns in upon itself, the fully realized memorable characters help to propel the book as well.... Those who are eager to begin a new nordic crime series from the beginning can start right here."

Orre is also missing, and suspicion slowly begins to turn toward him as the doer of this particularly strange and bizarre murder, and possibly the one that occurred so long before. Hanne Lagerlind-Schön, a renowned criminal profiler, is brought in from retirement to aid in the investigation, much to the dismay of Lindgren, who had been involved with Hanne some years before in an affair that ended quite badly. The pair has some rough and sensitive edges that rub together uncomfortably as the case takes a number of unusual turns and the background of the missing Orre is brought more fully to light.

As THE ICE BENEATH HER progresses, the narrative shifts perspective and alternates between the present and the past, as the reader is introduced to Emma Bohman, a clerk in one of the stores under the umbrella of Orre’s company. Emma’s narrative details a chance encounter with Orre in his store, one in which she offers assistance to him just as he is going into a crucial meeting. As Emma’s story unfolds, we learn from her that their relationship blossomed from intimacy to love to an engagement before he abruptly disappeared. Emma’s life begins to spiral out of control at the hand of an unknown assailant who she increasingly comes to suspect as being Orre himself. She ultimately decides to confront Orre, and as her account slowly catches up with the book’s present, it gradually becomes apparent that the body in Orre’s home is that of Emma. The obvious question is “why,” but there are less obvious, unasked queries as well, ones that the reader will race to the book’s conclusion to discover.

While the plot expertly twists and turns in upon itself, the fully realized memorable characters help to propel the book as well. Lindgren is a hot mess, a self-centered individual of the type who consistently fails to live up to personal responsibilities with an attitude that would make even the most seasoned frat boy (or his Swedish equivalent) cringe. He is, however, a terrific cop. Hanne, for her part, has been trapped in a bad relationship for far too long, and the call of this investigation --- as well as the wake-up provided by an incurable illness --- gives her the impetus to make some changes.

These elements undoubtedly play out in the sophomore installment of this series, which has yet to be seen in the US but hopefully will be published soon, thanks to the yeoman efforts of translators such as Elizabeth Clark Wessel, who does such a fine job with THE ICE BENEATH HER. Those who are eager to begin a new nordic crime series from the beginning can start right here.