Review: ‘Blood Song’, by Johanna Gustawsson

The third book in the award-winning, critically acclaimed
Roy & Castells series, featuring true-crime writer Alexis Castells and profiler Emily Roy. Previous titles in the series, Block 46 and Keeper, have won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards and sold in 19 countries. A French, Swedish and English TV series is in production, adapted by and starring award-winning French actress Alexandra Lamy.
Spain, 1938
The country is wracked by civil war, and as Valencia falls to Franco’s brutal dictatorship, Republican Teresa witnesses the murders of her family. Captured and sent to the notorious Las Ventas women’s prison, Teresa gives birth to a daughter who is forcibly taken from her.
Falkenberg, Sweden, 2016
A wealthy family is found savagely murdered in their luxurious home. Discovering that her parents have been slaughtered, Aliénor Lindbergh, a new recruit to the UK’s Scotland Yard, rushes back to Sweden and finds her
hometown rocked by the massacre.

My Review

Thanks to Karen and Anne at Orenda, ladies I adore you, keep sending books.

Two stories: Brutal regime in Franco’s Spain. Brutal murder in modern Sweden. Ray and Castells are drawn into the investigation. Ray because the victims are her trainee, Alienor’s, family. Castell’s because she’s marrying the Kommissioner’s brother and they all work well together. The two stories intertwine and the chapters move between Spain and Sweden as events progress. The stories are brought together in a dramatic fashion.

I had the first Ray and Castell’s book (bought it in Harrogate in July), and I now have the second too, because this book was so good I couldn’t put it down and I need to go back and find out more about these characters. And they’re going on my list of crime novels with autistic women in them. Alienor is autistic, Her family are proper martyrs about the whole thing – her brother hates her and her parents act as though she is a massive burden, and she’s internalised it. Except her sister Louise, I love the relationship between them, even though we only see it in bits. I get the feeling Louise is to Alienor what my sister and bestie are to me – translators of the neurotypical world. The depiction of an autistic woman is not bad at all.

The part of the novel set in Franco’s Spain is painful and difficult to read, challenging but necessary I think. I like it when authors use the device of historical crimes, depicting something that needs remembering, and ties it into a contemporary fictional crime. From what I understand, reading the blurbs, Gustawsson does this in the other two books too.

The writing is evocative, both of the heat of Spain and cold of Sweden, the fear and pain of Gordi and the complex relationships of Alexis Castells with her French parents and Swedish husband and in-laws, as well as relationship between her and Emily. I found the climactic ending gripping. I couldn’t put the book down even when I desperately needed sleep. I did not see the resolution coming, at all. Although I probably should have worked it out.

I heartily recommend this novel.

AUTHOR BIO

Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press and television. Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series has won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in nineteen countries. A TV adaptation is currently underway in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. Johana lives in London with her Swedish husband and their three sons. She drew on her own experience of fertility clinics and IVF to write Blood Song and is happy to speak and write pieces about this.