Marked for Life

“Kudos to another compelling entry into the ranks of Nordic crime fiction.”

Marked for Life gives you such a chill that ice forms along your extremities and sends you burrowing under the bed covers seeking not so much warmth, as a hiding place from evil.

When Hans Jublen, head of the Swedish Migration Board, is found in his living room shot to death, suspicion falls first on his wife. She claims to have found his body after returning from a late night walk, but who knows whether she is telling the truth or not.

Detective Chief Inspector Henrik Levin and his partner, Detective Inspector Maria “Mia” Bolander arrive at the crime scene to take charge of the investigation. There is no sign of a struggle and no weapon, but evidence tech finds palm and finger prints of a small child on a window. But the Jublens are childless. Who was the child who left the fingerprints, and what was his or her connection to Hans Jublen?

A search of the couple’s bedroom turns up a series of unsigned threatening letters, all with the same message: “Pay now or else you’ll pay the higher price.”  It seems that blackmail might be the motive for the murder, but blackmail over what? The letters are sent to the forensics lab for examination.

Public prosecutor Jana Berzelus is assigned to oversee the investigation. Mia Bolander is not pleased to be working with Jana. The woman is formal in attitude, and in Mia’s opinion, lacking any emotions at all. But what fuels Mia’s dislike more than the prosecutor’s cold personality is her social status. “Jana is old money, while Mia, with her working class background was mortgaged.”

DCI Henrik Levin is also aware of Jana’s cold personality, but is not resentful of her social status. He is more curious. “Henrik didn’t think that her strict personality matched her appearance. That long dark hair, those big brown eyes and the light skin deserved a more lively body language . . . Perhaps she acted out her feelings outside work . . . Perhaps not.”

Jana does act out her feelings, but only at night in a series of harrowing nightmares. “It was always the same dream, the same images. It irritated her; she didn’t know at all what it meant.”

For years she has kept journals of the dream, and in a small, conspicuous room in her apartment, keeps the results of her research into possible meanings of that nightmare. Jana is adopted and remembers nothing of her life before her adoption at age seven or eight, but senses that the nightmare must hold a clue to her past.

When Jana attends the autopsy of a young boy found not far from the murder scene of Hans Jublens, apparently shot with the same kind of gun, perhaps even the same gun, she is curious. She becomes more than curious when the autopsy reveals a ragged tattoo of the word Thantos—god of death—on the back of the boy’s neck.

In her bathroom Jana stands before the mirror. “Her heart was thumping away, her body trembling. With shaking hands she pulled her hair to one side, angled the little pocket mirror toward her neck and held her breath.” Reflected in the mirror she saw the ragged letters of a tattoo: “k-e-r.” Like the dead boy, Jana also has the name of a deity from Greek mythology carved into her neck.

When a search of Hans Jublen’s office computer reveals a series of ten different numbers and letters, Jana is both shocked and terrified. While the police are unable to discover what the numbers and letters mean, Jana recognizes one as identical to what she sees in her nightmares. There is connection between Jana, Hans Jublen’s murder, and the unidentified boy with the tattoo. Her past is returning in a series of memories, each more terrifying than the last.

The characterizations are superb, from Jana’s reactions to her slowly recovered memories, to DCI Levin’s attempts to balance his work with the domestic demands made by a new baby. Even the minor characters’ personal traits and dysfunctional habits are carefully described. The characters and their reactions to events are the engine that drives the plot.

As is customary in Nordic mysteries, the landscape impacts the action. Its winter bleakness mirrors the ugliness of the crimes the police investigate, while the loveliness of its short spring provides a contrast.

Marked for Life by Emelie Schepp is both compelling and horrifying as one evil secret after another is revealed in a chilling narrative. Schepp’s prose is unadorned with no ambiguities to mask the unspeakable crimes that are the foundation of the plot: child trafficking, drugs, murder for hire.

Schepp is on a winning course with this first book in her projected trilogy. She leaves enough questions that demand answers that mystery fans will not be able to resist buying the next volume. Kudos to another compelling entry into the ranks of Nordic crime fiction.