Beth and Ulf are in the summer house. Things aren’t great between them and haven’t been since the baby twins died. The silence and the frustration is palpable. They drink too much. News come on the radio of two escaped convicts from a nearby prison, considered armed and dangerous. And that’s when they realize someone is sneaking round by the old barn. To her own surprise all the suppressed anger in Beth comes out and she furiously attacks the intruder, striking him with an axe. In the aftermath of the shock, after a scared and fragile night with a corpse in the barn, they decide to go to the police. After all, it was self-defense. Wasn’t it? It’s on the drive there they get the news that both the escaped convicts have been captured without drama.

The opening of this nail-biting, nightmarish novel is as good as Inger Frimansson ever was. She varies her theme of murder and aftermath from the perp’s point of view with a steady hand. Don’t go into a book of hers expecting mystery or procedural (as I think a lot of people do). Frimansson is all about investigating the effects of the crime. This time she focuses on the couple, and what a shared secret like this might do to two people. It really is the most claustrophobic experience, with a keen eye for how small things in the everyday take on a new meaning. Like when a child innocently asks Beth the question if she’s ever seen a dead person. If she could have held that suspense all the way, this could be her best book.

But then sadly, she kind of spoils it with some rather silly turns of events, and a strained ending that comes all too suddenly. I wish she would have stuck with the small-scale suffocating psychological horror she does best. As it is, the ending drags the beginning down to a rating just above average. ( )