Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams by Anders Roslund is very dark,and very good.
Swedish Detective Ewart Grens is a tortured man, With his career coming to an end, a career in which he's alienated many of his colleagues he's still mourning the death of his wife and child several years earlier,deaths that he blames himself for. After a conversation with a stranger at the cemetery, where she's visiting a grave containing the empty coffin of her daughter who disappeared 5 years earlier and was legally presumed dead. Grens becomes intrigued with the disappearance of the girl and discovers that another young girl disappeared on the same day.
With his bosses refusing to reopen the cases of the missing girls Grens takes leave and covertly mounts his own operation.

That's the beginning of a tale of trafficking and the dark web with Grens recruiting a motley band of fellow travellers as he tries to negotiate and infiltrate a murky world that he doesn't understand. As well as trying to fool the bad guys Grens is desperately trying to keep things under the radar in Sweden while hoping to convince the police force of another country that his investigation is official.

There's not much sunshine in this book,there are horrific crimes involved and Grens makes Kurt Wallander look like one of the Chuckle Brothers with his guilt , list of former friends who now regard him as toxic and colleagues who very obviously avoid him, a combination that sees him on the verge of a mental breakdown.

No matter how grim it's a great read, Grens is a very hard man to like, even his few friends he threatens or coerces into helping him. He's also a man determined to get results whatever the cost to his own well-being or career and there's a really neat twist at the end that I really wasn't expecting..and one that I saw coming quite early on.

I didn't realise until I'd finished the book that it's the latest in quite a long-running Ewert Grens series and I'll definitely be reading the previous books.

Quite difficult subject matter,this book won't appeal to everyone so please read the publisher's description before buying it.

This was a dark, tense, and grim read that I loved. It was well written with a compellingly brutal storyline and well developed characters. I couldn't put it down.

A nail-bitingly tense crime mystery that will keep you turning the pages late into the night. Great characters, great storyline. I kept turning the pages instead of turning off the light! This is one intense, twisted, dark and addictive novel! Not only is this a very well-written book with wonderfully-interesting characters, but the suspense builds at just the right pace!