View source for Missing in Malmo (Anita Sundstrom Mysteries) by Torquil MacLeod

{{infobox1
|title=Missing in Malmo (Anita Sundstrom Mysteries)
|author=Torquil MacLeod
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Crime
|summary=The third book in the Anita Sundstrom series doesn't disappoint but does contain spoilers for the first book in the series.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=256
|publisher=McNidder & Grace
|date=December 2015
|isbn=978-0857161154
|website=http://www.torquilmacleodbooks.com/
|cover=0857161156
|aznuk=0857161156
|aznus=0857161156
}}

Anita Sundstrom wasn't best pleased when she was told to look into the disappearance of British heir hunter Graeme Todd: missing persons weren't really her thing and it seemed that it was only down to her because she was fluent in English.  There was a similar reluctance when her ex-husband asked her to look into the disappearance of his girlfriend.  But events took a sinister turn and Anita found herself deeply entangled in both cases.  The first case seemed to be linked to a robbery which took place in Newcastle some twenty years earlier and in the second case it seemed that Bjorn Sundstrom hadn't been entirely truthful with her about his relationship with Greta Jansson.

Firstly - a warning.  If you read this book without reading [[Meet Me In Malmo by Torquil MacLeod|the first book in the series]] a great deal of the pleasure of reading that book will be lost as you'll know exactly whodunnit before you start reading - and that book is worth reading.  As an author [[:Category:Torquil MacLeod|Torquil MacLeod]] wasn't yet the finished article, but then neither was [[:Category:Ian Rankin|Ian Rankin]] when he wrote [[Knots and Crosses]] and that's worth reading for the introduction it gives you to John Rebus.  It's the same with ''Meet Me in Malmo''.  If you're just looking for a good story then ''Missing in Malmo'' will fit the bill, but if you're looking for a good series to follow then go start at the beginning: this is one of those series where it's important.

And it is a good story.  It's ingenious in the way that it starts with something relatively innocuous.  A man away from home on business has gone missing: he wasn't even staying where his wife thought that he'd be staying.  Surely there was a simple answer that was obvious to everyone?  And Bjorn Sundstrom's missing girlfriend?  It seems that she'd left Uppsala to escape his possessiveness: perhaps she'd done the same thing when she realised that Bjorn had discovered where she was?   Bjorn's history of not being entirely truthful made it hard for Anita to trust what he said.  Then a body turned up in the sea.

The characterisation is particularly strong, with the Malmo police team being very well done.  It's an ingenious combination of characters, with the good, the bad and the odious all playing their part.  The plot is good, but perhaps not up to the standard of the [[Murder in Malmo (Anita Sundstrom Mysteries) by Torquil MacLeod|second book in the series]]. Of the two 'perpetrators' I spotted one fairly easily but the other came as a complete shock.  I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

For another feisty female investigator we can recommend [[The Glass Room (D I Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves]].

[[Torquil MacLeod's Inspector Anita Sundstrom Mysteries in Chronlogical Order]]

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