After She’s Gone

Two years have passed since psychological profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön survived an attempted murder in The Ice Beneath Her. She and investigator Peter Lindgren have rekindled their love, and they are now working on a case together in Ormberg, a sleepy industrial town in decline. Hanne’s dementia is getting worse and she has lately taken up the habit of keeping a meticulous diary where she writes down everything she’s likely to forget. She will go to any lengths to keep up appearances, so she won’t lose her job, or worse: Peter.

Malin Brundin is 25 years old and fresh out of the police academy she’s been temporarily posted in her hometown of Ormberg as the local expert to work with Hanne, Peter and their team. They’re investigating a cold-case murder of a five-year-old girl whose remains were found ten years earlier. In a random coincidence, Malin was actually the one who found the remains of the young girl when she was 14. The victim was never identified and no culprit was found.

Jake Olsson is a young teenage boy living in Ormberg. He harbors a terrible secret, one that’s threatened to be revealed as he one night stumbles across a woman who seems to be lost, hurt, and confused. As he reaches out to her a car approaches and Jake quickly hides to see the woman being taken away. But she leaves something behind: a book – a diary.

Malin and the rest of the team are confounded when they learn that Hanne has been found wandering the woods, wounded, dehydrated and with no memory of what has happened. And what’s worse, Peter is missing.

As the story of Peter’s disappearance breaks, Jake realizes who the woman he found in the woods was. Terrified to have his secret revealed, he realizes he can’t tell anyone about the diary. Instead, he decides to keep the diary and as he starts reading he becomes engrossed in Hanne’s life. It’s a jumble of quick notes and diary entries, information about her colleagues, the case they’re working on, her thoughts and feelings, her illness, everything! The more Jake reads, the more he gets entrenched in Hanne’s world. Somehow, he feels a kinship to her.

When the body of a woman is found at the very same place where the remains of the five-year-old girl were found, it becomes clear that somehow the two murders are related to Peter’s disappearance and whatever it was that happened to Hanne in the woods.

Written in the same effortless style as The Ice Beneath Her, and with the same dark twists that leave you chilled to the bone – this is the stand alone continuation of Hanne Lagerlind-Schön and Peter Lindgren’s story.

After She’s Gone was named Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year by the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy in 2017. In 2018, it was awarded the prestigious Glass Key, naming it Best Nordic Crime Novel from 2017 by Crime Writers of Scandinavia.