Rachel Stephenson's Reviews > Black River

I'm really glad I left it a week before writing this review. There was so much that I didn't like: the unimaginative concept (disappearances of attractive young women), the flat-pack Swedish setting (bleak northern town), the plucky detective with the obligatory traumatic past and a quirky habit (wine gums) who takes on a case no one else is interested in. I found the protagonist, the journalist Tuva, irritating; she seems to believe that you've only got a right to exist if you've suffered as much as she has, and she's utterly self-absorbed. There were some typos in the Kindle edition, such as "as if my magic" and "it's hot and it'd scold you". They aren't all that serious, but there were enough of them to be annoying. Then there are a couple of tics, mini-cliffhangers on the ends of paragraphs along the lines of "and that's when I see it", or "and then I see him."

On the other hand... I'm still thinking about the book, a week or more later. The reason is the atmosphere. I could practically feel the bug bites, and the landscapes, townscapes and people are beautifully drawn, even if in themselves they are pretty ugly. That takes skill I think, in a thriller, where the story is usually plot and suspense-driven.

Most reviews of Black River are 4- or 5-star. Maybe you have to be a thriller fan to enjoy it, and that's not me really, I just picked the book up on the strength of a few opinions I'd seen. I think my curiosity's been satisfied. On to something more my line...