#BlogTour - Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

 The landline rings as Agneta is waving off her grandchildren. Just one word comes out of the receiver: ‘Geiger’.

For decades, Agneta has always known that this moment would come, but she is shaken. She knows what it means.

Retrieving her weapon from its hiding place, she attaches the silencer and creeps up behind her husband before pressing the barrel to his temple.

Then she squeezes the trigger and disappears – leaving behind her wallet and keys.

The extraordinary murder is not Sara Nowak’s case. But she was once close to those affected and, defying regulations, she joins the investigation. What Sara doesn’t know is that the mysterious codeword is just the first piece in the puzzle of an intricate and devastating plot fifty years in the making . . .

 GEIGER is a surprising novel which retains the ‘small’ while dealing with big, potentially cataclysmic post-cold war themes. By that I mean that, while many ‘big’ espionage novels tend to deal with macro events, often at the expense of character, Gustaf Skördeman’s debut has all the excitement of the thriller while retaining the character and small details of the detective-crime novel, and successfully marries the two into a very satisfying whole. 

The beginning of the book lulls the reader. The opening is slow and deliberately paced as the Broman family, popular, retired Swedish television entertainer, Stellan, his wife, their daughters and grandchildren, gather for a family dinner. It is a very ‘literary’ opening, a upper-middle class family, the musings of one of the daughters, the quiet tensions in such gatherings - it isn’t clear where this is going. And then, once the extended family has left, the mother, Agneta, takes a call and immediately shoots her famous husband in the head, and disappears. 

Where many novels would concentrate on Agneta’s mission, on what drives her, this story concentrates on the investigation into Stellan’s murder, an investigation into which Detective Sara Novak is drawn due to her history with the family. This history, the complicated relationship Sara had with the Broman sisters, with her own mother, who was the Stellan’s maid, as well as her current relationships with her own husband and children, drive the plot. Suspecting that Agneta has been taken by her husband’s killers, the investigation concentrates on Stellan, his past as Sweden’s ‘uncle’, his social life with the rich and powerful in media and politics, on trying to find who would have reason to kill him. This leads to shocking revelations which impact on Sara, her family, and, potentially, on peace in Europe. And, at points in the novel, we catch up with Agneta…

I enjoyed GEIGER a lot. It has been compared with I Am Pilgrim but I don’t see it. It’s much, much better than that.

Thank you @ZaffreBooks and @Tr4cyF3nt0n #CompulsiveReaders for the invitation to the #BlogTour.