A little boy on vacation in the fishing village of Fjällbacka goes out early one summer morning and sees the body of a young woman in a crevice called the King’s Cleft. When the police come to remove the body, they discover bones of two more women beneath it. The medical examiner finds that many of the bones were broken, not only in the recent corpse but in the old remains, in exactly the same way.

Eventually, the older bodies are identified as Siv Lantin and Mona Thernblad, two young women who disappeared 25 years before. Although those crimes were never solved, Gabriel Hult reported that he saw his brother Johannes with Siv Lantin the night she disappeared. Johannes later committed suicide, according to his family because he was innocent and couldn’t bear the suspicion.

Patrik Hedström is on vacation with his massively pregnant wife Erica, the main character of Läckberg’s first novel, but he is called back to head this investigation. Soon the situation becomes more urgent, because another young woman who is staying in a local campground with her parents disappears while hitchhiking into town.

Fearing that Johannes Hult is perhaps not actually dead, Patrik has his body exhumed. Johannes is indeed dead, but he was murdered, not a suicide, and semen found on the most recent victim’s body belongs to a close relative of Johannes.

This situation still leaves Patrik with several suspects in the feuding Hult family, all descendents of a leader of an odd religion that believes in faith healing. Gabriel Hult inherited the property of patriarch Ephriam Hult, known as “The Preacher,” leaving Johannes’ sons Stefan and Robert poverty stricken. Gabriel’s son Jacob runs a farm for reforming delinquent teens and continues with his grandfather’s religious work, although he does not have the ability of faith healing that his father and uncle supposedly possessed as boys.

While Patrik stresses over the case, Erica suffers in the oppressive summer heat and tries to cope with holiday guests who descend upon them without notice.

As with Läckberg’s previous novel, The Ice Princess, I liked this book perhaps more than it deserves. Patrik and Erica make attractive, likeable main characters, and the characterizations seem to have more depth in general than I’ve found with other Swedish police procedurals. However, again, Läckberg’s writing seems clumsy at times, particularly the dialogue.

Aside from a confusing typo early in the book where Johannes is referred to as Stefannes, I had a serious problem with the chronology of the mystery. The older crimes took place in 1979 and yet 30ish Patrik and Erica both say they remember them, not that they heard of them. This discussion confused me so much that I actually looked up the original publication date of the book, thinking that it may have come out earlier than I thought, but it was published in 2004. Although I suppose this timing is not impossible, it may have worked better to have an older police officer clue Patrik in to the details of the case.

The police investigation details also seem a little odd. It is hard for me to believe that any police station in Sweden would still have a modem connection. In addition, maybe they do things differently in Sweden, but blood tests for DNA analysis seem excessive. Of course, they are necessary for the plot, which, if that is the only reason they are done, makes them a cheat.

The Ice Princess depended for its plot mostly on Erica poking around where she shouldn’t be, and I think that works better for Läckberg than a police procedural, about which she seems to need to do more research. Nevertheless, despite these criticisms, I still find myself liking these books a lot.