The Summer of Kim Novak

In this brilliant Swedish thriller and sensitive coming-of-age story, a traumatic event shatters the summer of two boys in love with their young teacher.

Sweden in the '60s. Erik and his friend Edmund spend their vacation by a forest lake daydreaming about Ewa, a young substitute teacher with an uncanny resemblance to the actress Kim Novak. The boys are having the time of their lives until a shocking discovery disrupts their world. Twenty-five years later, Erik comes across a newspaper article about unsolved crimes and is overwhelmed by memories and questions from that summer of his youth. What actually happened back then? The Summer of Kim Novak has all the tension and mystery of Nesser's world-famous thrillers, combined with a coming-of-age tale of remarkable psychological precision.

'Atthe start of this moving elegy for lost innocence from Nesser (the InspectorVan Veeteren mysteries), 49-year-old Erik, the book's narrator, promises totell the reader about 'a terrible and tragic event' that occurred the summer hewas 14. In 1962, as Erik's mother is dying of cancer, his grieving father sendsthe boy to the family's ramshackle lake cabin with 14-year-old Edmund, a fellowstudent Erik hardly knows, and Erik's older brother, a reporter who intends towrite the Great Swedish Novel that summer. After a lazy month of swimming andfantasising, handball champion Berra Albertsson is found dead in a gravelparking spot near where the boys are staying, his skull caved in, and hisfiance, Ewa Kaludis, the boys' substitute teacher and the object of theirdreams, is a suspect. Erik and Edmund embark on a protracted murderinvestigation that leads them into the mysteries of sex. Nesser sensitivelyprobes the agonies and ecstasies of adolescence, making this an exquisiteexample of Nordic noir's ability to reveal the darkest emotional depths beneatha cloudless summer sky.'  Publishers Weekly, starred review