A murder or two in the fall, in Linkoping, Sweden. A body is found in the moat of a castle, stabbed many times. The body is that of the owner of the castle, newly acquired from a family that has held it for generations. Is that family responsible for the murder?

The victim was the lawyer for a scumbag millionaire who has escaped prosecution for years. Is there betrayal there? Anger?

These are not all of the possible motives unearthed by Malin Fors and her fellow detectives. There are layers and layers until I, for one, had a little trouble sorting out who was who.

Fors is fresh off a case that involved her daughter, Tove. The danger to her daughter haunts her and causes Malin to doubt her ability to be a fit parent. It leads her to drink. Because she is a brilliant detective, even when curbed by her own bad habits, her supervisor, Sven, keeps her on the case. And she continues to drink.

Her drinking and defensive posture bring on major rifts in her relationship with her husband and daughter. Throughout the book she cannot make herself do what she needs to do to fix this.

Working on the murder gives her an excuse to stay at work every day, all day. And often at night. Certainly there are enough twists to keep several people busy.

Malin is also visited by ghosts, for want of a better term. The victim speaks beyond the grave, follows her and her team, reveals a little here and there about himself. It appears that she hears these voices. I am left wondering if this is some kind of paranormal experience or simply her own mind working through the case. Listening to the victim. I found it irritating.

I also had difficulty with her drinking. My experience with alcoholics has made me a little hard. I can say her actions do appear to be those of an alcoholic, and I couldn't accept this flaw. There is always hope, of course, for the future. Nobody, me least of all, expects my heroes to be perfect. I just want the drinking to stop. ( )

Another dark, damaged Scandinavian detective! ( )

Trist och tråååååkigt. Tyckte om de första två i serien, men det här... Malin Fors dricker och jag måste säga att jag bryr mig inte alls om vad som händer med henne eller hennes familj. Eller hennes utredande. Ett par gubbar mördad, och en döde som snackar skit sida efter sida. Hela historian är urtråkig, och jag måste verkligen fråga om Veckorevyn har ens läst boken när de skrev "Spänningsfaktorn är skyhög". Inte i denna bok. ( )

A force de tirer sur la ficelle... Une intrigue plutôt plate et terne ( )

Autumn Killing takes place in a particularly cold and rainy stretch of fall in Linköping, Sweden. The deceased is an lawyer turned Internet billionaire named Jerry Petersson who recently purchased an old castle from a royal family falling on financial difficulties. Class tensions pervade the book and the case, and Malin Fors hears the voices of the deceased Petersson and others, much like she did in the only other book in the series I’ve read, Summer Death.

The mood is quite creepy: the image of bloated, dead rats coming out of the sewers during the torrential rains that the sanitary sewer system can’t handle is vivid, and it also echoes the turmoil of Malin’s personal life as she heads for the bottom of her alcohol addiction. Be warned that the books spends a lot of time with Malin and her addiction, and that arc is pretty predictable. The mystery is fairly interesting, but it is not a fast-paced investigation.

My one concern about the book is that I’m not convinced that Malin Fors is the most talented detective in her department nor am I convinced that she is indispensable to the squad, both of which are used as excuses by her colleagues not to fire her or send her to rehab immediately. I’d rather see her in action and dazzling her colleagues, which she may have done in the first installment in the series.

I will say that the passages from the perspectives of the deceased people didn’t bother me so much in this book as they did in the previous installment. It didn’t seem as ethereal.

The writing is quite good, but the actual plot is a little lacking. I like formulas or I wouldn’t read mysteries or crime novels, but I’m not enamored with addiction and rehab stories so I can’t recommend this book wholeheartedly. I think I kept reading because Malin was such a vulnerable character, but not because I expected anything unexpected to happen to her.

Other reviews appear in Crimepieces and Reviewing the Evidence.