The Darkest Day by Håkan Nesser
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
(This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2021):
Just like with Tana French, this was quite different than what I’d expect from a supposed crime novel. It’s really not a whodunit in a traditional sense (that part is obvious pretty early on) but rather a family drama, a story of a pretty screwed up family to begin with that gets torn up entirely by a double disappearance/murder on the darkest days of already grim Swedish winter.
“So the brainteaser ran as follows: We have two individuals, an uncle and a nephew. Along with a number of other relatives, they gather a few days before Christmas for a special occasion. The first night, the uncle vanishes into thin air. The second night, the nephew vanishes into thin air. Explain!”
This family already barely holds together as they all pretty much detest one another (“It’s not just that I can’t locate my feelings for them, thought Rosemarie. They don’t like each other, either.”), and the double disappearance of good-for-nothing Wanker Rob (“You weren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead, and he had nothing to complain of personally, but if you got pissed and then wanked in full view on TV, and went on to get yourself murdered and chopped into little bits, well, your life probably hadn’t been up to much.”) and a young law student with a secret Henrik shatters everything pretty quickly.
It’s like watching a trainwreck in slow motion — and it’s strangely fascinating.
And there’s also a police inspector Gunnar Barbarotti who hilariously makes deals with God to prove his existence in a very transactional manner, and who pretty realistically works on the case for months and months, and depends on lucky breaks rather than superior inhuman intelligence, like a regular person. This story would actually hold up without any police involvement, but he adds quite a colorful personality to the book.
“Their son Kelvin was three houses along the street, with the childminder he shared with various other children, but as he was not yet two, Gunnar Barbarotti decided to forego the questions in his case.”
It has a bit of an odd style that may not work for everyone and may take a few pages to get used to. There’s a weird combination of acerbic and almost clinical narration with matter-of-fact undercurrent that is odd enough to somehow work. It has enough darkness, but at times it’s almost comical. It has a slightly off-kilter sense of humor that I can see rubbing some readers the wrong way, but it worked well for me.
“Interesting way of putting it, thought Gunnar Barbarotti. But fine, if you went and masturbated on television, you were presumably not quite yourself.”
And it’s not at all about the investigation, really. As I mentioned above, the inspectors are not quite necessary to the plot, and there’s little of an actual police procedural here. Instead it’s character-driven drama more than anything else, rooted in the tangled and very messed-up lives of mostly unlikable people.
It was a slow burn, and yet I did not mind. There was just something fascinating in seeing a whole bunch of dysfunctionality unravel, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Barbarotti odd quirkiness in the sequels.
3.5 stars rounding to 4.
books are life 