The Book Depository Missing by Karin Alvtegen
134 ratings
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Price: £8.99
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: Missing : Paperback : Canongate Books : 9780857860224 : 0857860224 : 17 Feb 2011 : A timely reissue of CWA-shortlisted Karin Alvtegen's acclaimed psychological thriller. The Book Depository Missing by Karin Alvtegen - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780857860224
MPN: 0857860224
GTIN: 9780857860224
Author: Maxine Clarke
Rating: 5
Review: Put aside two or three hours and read this book from beginning to end. It's a tense and involving read, and you won't want to be distracted. Sybilla is an outcast, living off the radar of the authorities in Stockholm. She has various safe places and strategies for surviving each month until her meagre payment from her mother arrives at a PO box. One of her ploys is to put on a smart suit she keeps in her rucksack (bought from Oxfam), go to a luxury hotel bar, meet a businessman, flirt, pretend to lose her wallet, and trick the mark into paying for her room for the night. Unfortunately, on one of these outings, the man she tricks is found murdered the next morning. Sybilla escapes, but soon finds that she is the main suspect, becoming the victim of a police and media hunt. Sybilla's survival over the next few days is interspersed with the story of how she came to drop out of society. She suffered a childhood of awful mental abuse, which made my blood boil to read about. With nobody to sympathise with her (to the contrary, everyone is against her and/or betrays her) she falls into a trap made of her own idealism and trusting nature, as a result of which she is abused even further by the authorities. The story of Sybilla's childhood leading up to her eighteenth birthday, is equally as harrowing as that of Lisbeth Salander, the main character of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, and Sybilla's solution, of living "off the grid", is remarkably similar to Lisbeth's. Matters come to a head when Sybilla discovers that her source of income has dried up. She's now desperate, and friends she's made since living rough cannot or will not help her now. The hunt for her intensifies. Eventually, she thinks of one hiding place where she is likely to be safe - and while there, she finds an unusual ally and a strategy for dealing with her dilemma. MISSING is a tensely exciting book with an extremely sympathetic and capable main character. I think Karin Altvegen is one of the very best talents writing crime fiction today. Congratulations to her for writing such insightful, exciting and thought-provoking novels, and to her English translators for bringing them so effectively to a wider audience. Review first published at the Euro Crime website.
Author: Ceskil
Rating: 2
Review: Oh dear, the first two chapters were good - I suspect that the synopsis for the book was OK too, which probably explains why it ever got past the publisher's readers. The problem for me was, that having created Sybylla, a complex edgy character who had learned to survive by remaining aloof and anonymous for years, the author goes all touchy feely and reduces her to a pathetic whimpering victim who unburdens herself to the second character she actually has real contact with. What was worse, so far as a credible plot was concerned, was that this character was a 15 year old boy, who, by a stroke of luck proved to be just the person who could help her prove her inocence of all alleged crimes. Contrived - yes. Full of cliche in terms of plot - yes. Worth reading even when you have nothing else to read - don't be silly. The joy of a Kindle is there is always something else to read. I chose not to finish the book.Missing
