Two silhouettes against a black ocean. One gun shot. And a vow of silence.
Jari Kekkonen loves to win and has his brand-new Mercedes, a beautiful family, and an elegant villa on the nice side of town to show for it. Sasho Palevski on the other hand, with his humble working-class roots and immigrant parents, was an infamous troublemaker when he was young. As an adult it has proven difficult to shake the reputation. Trelleborg is a small town where everyone knows everything, and the past is never forgotten. When Jari’s daughter and Sasho’s son become a couple, the two worlds collide.
Amanda is a beautiful social butterfly, and the beloved youngest daughter in the Kekkonen family. But she hides a great insecurity. Amanda lives in the shadow of her older sister Isabella, a soccer star and straight A-student who has dated the town’s golden boy, Sixten Ledin, since middle school. Then she meets Niko Palevski, the ambitious only child of demanding parents. He plays the piano and excels at school. While the Kekkonens are worried that Niko will walk in his violent father’s footsteps, the Palevski’s fret that party-girl Amanda is dragging Niko from his diligent path.
When Amanda is found dead, shot in the middle of the night on a pier in the dark Baltic Sea, Niko becomes the prime suspect. But are things really as they seem? Has Niko inherited his father’s violent tendencies, or is the young man innocently accused? And why does he refuse to say anything to the police? Niko claims to have made a vow of silence – but to whom? As the story unfolds, we learn there are sinister forces lurking in plain sight…
Vow of Silence is a smart, unexpected page turner that shows us how little we truly know about the inner lives of those closest to us. International bestselling master of the domestic thriller Mattias Edvardsson returns with this elegant story of young love – and what it can make you do.
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Reviews
”It is not only what is being told, but also how it is told. Mattias Edvardsson is out now with the fateful Vow of Silence, in which he breaks up the chronology and switches between before and after the disaster. This creates a central motor for the story. […] Mattias Edvardsson puts his characters under the harshest pressure imaginable to see how they react and what decisions they make. In addition to the pacing, Edvardsson also hits the tone perfectly, not least because he pinpoints the difficult teenage life with all of its abrupt changes. I am also fond of his concentrated descriptions of the environment, how he manages to paint a large and clear picture with few words and few details.”
Kalmar Läns Tidning (SE)