Title: The Forgotten Girls
Author: Sara Blaedel
Series: Louise Rick/Camilla Lind (not sure what #)
Published: February 2015, Grand Central Publishing
Format: ARC Paperback, 312 pages
Source: Publisher
In a forest in Denmark, a
ranger discovers the fresh corpse of an unidentified woman. A large
scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but
nobody has reported her missing. After four days, Louise Rick-the new
commander of the Missing Persons Department-is still without answers.
But when she releases a photo to the media, an older woman phones to say
that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for
in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette, like the
other children in the institution, was abandoned by her family and
branded a “forgotten girl.” But Louise soon discovers something more
disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death
certificates over 30 years ago. As the investigation brings Louise
closer to her childhood home, she uncovers more crimes that were
committed-and hidden-in the forest, and finds a terrible link to her own
past that has been carefully concealed.
My thoughts: I was fortunate to pick this gem up at BEA last Spring and have been looking forward to reading it. I’ve been on quite a thriller/crime kick lately and this certainly fit the bill, plus it introduced me to a new series to get hooked on and, if you know me at all, you know how much I love reading series!
I loved getting to know Louise Rick. In this book, she’s just starting a new job where she will be heading a special search unit for missing persons. She has a new partner, Eik Nordstrom, and, while they get off to a rather rough start, it’s fun watching how their relationship develops during the book, especially when the case they are working on ends up having ties to Louise’s past.
There are a lot of twists and turns throughout this book. The first case Louise and Eik are given is particularly baffling – the missing girl turns out to be someone who was reported to have died and issued a death certificate thirty years ago, as was her twin sister. Given that they now know who this woman is, the head honchos want to close the case and have Louise move on to the next case, but Louise feels there’s more to it and starts to dig deeper. She even enlists her friend Camilla, a journalist, to help by digging into the history of the state mental hospital where the girls were wards.
While that case is ongoing, Louise and Eik stumble onto another case, that of a serial rapist, that another division is heading up. Louise ends up helping out on that case and finds that there are ties to her past which brings up a whole host of bad memories, and brings up some questions to an event that might not have been so innocent after all.
There are some developments that happen towards the end of the book that will have you eagerly awaiting the next one. As I was checking out where this book fell within the series, there was some discrepancy, so I’m not exactly sure – I do know that it’s the first book that Grand Central has published and that they will be publishing the sequel to this book next year. I definitely will be keeping my eyes out for that!!! I did happen to find a copy of Call Me Princess at one of the Barnes and Nobles by me that has a phenomenal used book section – pure luck on my part!!! Now if I can only find the other books, I’ll be all set!
Glad you enjoyed this one. I went to see what the series order was on this author's works. Like a lot of translated books, they seem to be published out of order. Not much we can do about that I guess. I'm going to keep it in mind.
Just reading the blurb I was hooked! Unless you had absolutely hated it I was going to add it to my TBR so I'm glad the the book lives up to it's premise. I hadn't heard of this one so thanks for sharing!