Missing by Karin Alvtegen. New York. 2008. Felony & Mayhem Press. 9781933397863. Translated from the Swedish by Anna Paterson. 295 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Winner of the Glass Key Award: ‘Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.' Born into privilege, Sibylla lives by choice - of a sort - on the chilly streets of Stockholm. With no job, no home, and the scantiest of human contacts, she has developed elaborate strategies for finding the bare necessities of life, like a hot meal, a shower, a safe place to sleep. One of her favorite techniques - one she permits herself only as a special treat - plays out in the elegant dining room of the Grand Hotel, where with a little luck she can usually persuade a gullible businessman to buy her dinner and a night on clean, crisply ironed sheets. But then she picks the wrong businessman. When his dead body is found the next morning, Sibylla becomes the prime suspect. And when another person is killed in the same distinctive fashion, Sibylla becomes the most wanted woman in Sweden. For years, her anonymity has been a refuge; she has found a kind of home in the invisibility of homeless life. But with her anonymity shattered, Sibylla is forced into the one course of action that may allow her to go home again.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karin Alvtegen was born in 1966 in a small town in Sweden. Her first novel, GUILT (Skuld), was published in Sweden in 1998, to rave reviews. Two years later MISSING (Saknad) won Scandinavia's distinguished Glass Key award, for Best Crime Novel of the Year. BETRAYAL (Svek) (2005) was shortlisted for another Glass Key, and SHAME (Skam) was a finalist for one of England's prestigious CWA ‘Dagger' awards, for Best International Crime Novel of 2006. She has been called ‘a modern-day Strindberg' and ‘Sweden's Queen of Crime.' (Both SHAME and BETRAYAL are coming from Felony & Mayhem.) Karin Alvtegen is the great-niece of Astrid Lindgren, author of the ‘Pippi Longstocking' books. Her novels have been published in 25 countries, and MISSING has been made into a British television miniseries. Alvtegen lives with her husband and children in Stockholm.
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