The Truth Behind the Lie
Pernilla’s six-year-old daughter Julia disappeared in a Stockholm shopping mall four days ago. She’s desperate to find her, but can’t call the police because she’s been keeping Julia’s existence a secret.
Kouplan is an Iranian refugee whose application for asylum in Sweden was turned down three years ago. He can’t return to Iran without risking his life, so he’s staying in Sweden illegally. He has to evade police, but he needs a way to make money, so he places a small online ad as a private detective.
He’s 25 but looks much younger. He has no experience as a detective, but he draws on his background as a journalist in Iran to figure out how to proceed. Systematically, he begins investigating Julia’s disappearance, and discovers that things are more complicated than he imagined. Kouplan has been called “a detective who finds human truths rather than clues,” and his own truths are as complicated as Pernilla’s.
This novel was awarded a prize as Debut Crime Novel 2015 by the Swedish Crime Writers Academy. The writing is spare but lovely, taking the reader deep into the experiences of these two characters.
Sara Lövestam has been called one of Sweden’s young rising stars. She taught Swedish as a Second Language to immigrants before becoming a full-time novelist. Her work often centers on marginalized characters. She’s written several Young Adult novels, but this was her first adult crime/suspense novel.
Lövestam says that, as the character of Kouplan began occupying her imagination, “I hadn’t written many pages before I realized that his story was greater than a single book.” She’s written three more in the series, all featuring this most unusual detective. The novels have appeared in French and several other languages, but are not yet available in English. Too bad – I can’t wait to read them!
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