The Savage Alter

[sawyl]

And now for something completely different: Åsa Larsson's The Savage Altar (published as Sun Storm in the US), the first of her novels set in Kiruna in northern Sweden and featuring the lawyer Rebecka Martinsson.

When an evangelical lay preacher is found murdered and mutilated in his church in Kiruna, his sister Sanna calls her old friend Rebecka Martinsson, a stressed out tax lawyer living in Stockholm, for legal advice. Against her better judgement, Rebecka returns to her home town — and all its bad memories — in an attempt to keep Sanna and her kids out of trouble. As the police investigation, lead by the heavily pregnant Anna-Maria Malle and her stoic sidekick Sven-Erik Stålnacke, starts to focus in on the three priests in charge of the church, Rebecka finds herself forced to face the things that drove her to move away from Kiruna in the first place.

There's a lot to like in Larsson's first novel. The setting is beautifully drawn — Rebecka's grandmother's house sounds wonderful — the murder is suitably grizzly and the perpetrators positively vile human beings. Rebecka is an engaging character, spiky, frequently unhappy, but there are moments when she lights up with an infectious joy. And Larsson certainly doesn't spare her the mill: her horrible, frantic life as a Stockholm lawyer feels grimly authentic, while the denouement requires her to confront her past in the worst way possible. Anna-Maria, too, is a delight. She's clever, tenacious, determined to help out despite being pregnant, and (like Patrik Hedström) a truly appalling driver.