Customer Reviews

Missing (mystery)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sibylla Forstenström is the daughter of a rich but insensitive merchant and his wife. After a depression and an unwanted pregnancy she flees as an 18 year old girl from her family and the institution where she is kept. She starts to live as a homeless person and is capable of taking rather good care of herself for 15 years. But then things go wrong: she is wrongly accused of murdering a businessman and while she hides from the police three other murders follow. In the end she is capable of unravelling the true cause of these murders with the help of 15 year old Patrik, who she meets when hiding in the attic of a secondary school.

This was a very entertaining introduction to the work of yet another excellent Swedish author of thrillers. Definitely worth a read.

Missing is the story of Sibylla Forenström, a 32-year old drifter on the streets of Stockholm. Dressed in her best thrift-store suit, Sibylla cons a wealthy businessman into buying her dinner and a hotel room in a fancy hotel. When the police arrive the next morning she assumes the con has been exposed and flees. But the man has been brutally murdered, and the police identify Sibylla's fingerprints and charge her with the crime, revealing that she disappeared from a mental institution 15 years earlier. Two other murders follow, and Sibylla, whose survival on the streets depends on her anonymity, finds she is now the most wanted criminal in Sweden with her face on every newspaper. A fortuitous encounter with a 15-year-old loner with computer talents provides Sibylla with an ally who is eager to help her track down the real serial killer. Throughout the book, Sibylla's past is slowly revealed, adding depth to this well-written thriller. Originally published in Sweden in 2000, Missing came out in the US in 2008 and is a finalist for the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Mystery.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/A_Authors/Alvtegen_Karin.html

Having just read Stieg Larsson I continued with my streak of Swedish-based mysteries with Karin Altvegen's "Missing", which has also been nominated for the 2009 Edgar Awards Best Novel.

The book is small and reads quickly almost like a novella (I can only wonder what may have omitted in translation). The story of a 32-year old willingly homeless woman named Sibylla who suddenly finds herself accused of being a serial killer is compelling.

The first half of the book jumps between present and past. In the present, Sibylla is on the run from the authorities who think she has committed several gruesome murders; in the past, a young Sibylla is tormented and mistreated by her Upper Class parents who force her to give up a baby conceived out of wedlock and eventually having her committed to an asylum. Upon getting out, she has avoided her rich family and chosen to live on the streets turning small cons in order to get by and find shelter.

Could Sibylla be responsible for these murders and are we reading about the thoughts of an insane killer? Or, is the murderer someone unsuspecting? The victims end up being part of a pattern that Sibylla and a 15-year old boy she befriends named Patrik, who helps her try to track the real killer.

Fast-paced and well plotted, I can see why Karin Alvtegen is called "Sweden's Queen Of Crime". Hope to read more from her!

Sybilla Forenström was born into a life of privilege; however, she left that life and has spent the last 15 years living on the streets of Stockholm, doing what she can to secure herself meals, a bed, and a bath. One evening, she charms a businessman into buying her a meal and a room for the night. Unfortunately, she wakes up the next morning to the police knocking on her hotel room door. Thinking she has been caught out as the homeless drifter she is, Sybilla slips by the police and out of the hotel only to later find the man who paid for her dinner and room had been brutally murdered.

Suddenly, after crafting a life as a loner living beneath the pulse of society, Sybilla finds herself the most wanted woman in Sweden as another person is killed in a similar manner and the killer leaves behind a note signed in Sybilla's name.

Overall, this book was enjoyable. I was intrigued with how Alvtegen built the character of Sybilla through flashbacks to her life as a child and an exploration of her relationship with her mother, a cold and manipulative woman. I also appreciated how Alvtegen built the world of the homeless and the drifters. Alvtegen created a world with hierarchies, even among the homeless by distinguishing the circles Sybilla ran in--those who chose to remain clean and neat and live by a code of leaving things as they found them if they "crashed" in someone's cottage or storage area (leave no trace behind) from those who chose otherwise.

While the characters were well-developed, parts of the plot where a little too predictable and the ending of the book seemed too rushed to a neatly tied-up finish.

For fifteen years Sibylla has chosen to live off the grid. As an occasional escape from her homelessness, she sometimes cons lonely businessmen she meets in hotel restaurants into treating her to a meal and good night's sleep at their hotels. Unfortunately for Sibylla, her latest benefactor turns up dead the next morning, and she is the prime suspect.

As she runs from the police, additional bodies are found, making the once anonymous Sibylla well-known as a wanted serial killer. Her only way to save herself is to unravel the identity of the true killer.

Missing is a fast-moving thriller featuring an intriguing heroine. In addition to the murder mystery, a second mystery unfolds as the reader discovers the secret in Sibylla's past that led her to chose her unconventional lifestyle. Highly recommended.

If you liked the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, you will love this one. The heroine is a young homeless girl. How she survives in Sweden is amazing. The mystery follows her on the run from a crime she did not commit. Well written, gripping with a satisfying ending.

The complications of going off the 'grid': Sybillia is a homeless women whose entire life is anonymous and low key. Avoiding using her Swedish national ID card, she lives off her wits and a small sum her mother deposits in the bank each month.

For fun, she sneaks into fancy hotels, enjoying a plush bath and a warm bed before she returns to the street. However, after one such trip she finds herself accused of murdering a man staying in the same hotel. She has no defense, as she was there illegally, so she flees. She's identified by fingerprints and the manhunt is on: as she runs, other people are killed in similar ways. The national database provides her photo and life story, which is flashed on to the news.

In true The Fugitive style, she has to now find the actual killer in order to defend herself. This portion is the only weak area in the novel: it's almost too easy for her to solve it while the police haven't really investigated it once they found her as a suspect. The ending is only slightly surprising, but the fast pace and witty narrator makes this a pleasant read. Lightweight and fun...a nice break from the more depressing Scandinavian crime noir.

From the back cover:
Sibylla lives on the streets. She is a nobody. Then she finds herself thrust into the news headlines after a man who bought her dinner winds up dead. When another body is found, Sibylla becomes the prime suspect, and she is forced on the run from crimes she didn't commit. Missing is an unputdownable and unnerving thriller. More than a murder-hunt, it is also the story of one innocent woman's journey to salvation.

Review:
Not only is this a great crime novel, it is a fascinating story of a homeless woman - who she is and how she came to be where she is. It doesn't follow the exact typical formula of a crime novel (I spent quite a bit of time looking for red herrings and there weren't any!), but it does follow a fairly typical thriller formula, and it is done well.

What I really enjoyed was the insight into Sibylla's psychology, how the early events in her life caused her to take actions that lead to her being homeless. The kind of behaviour typically seen in homeless people, which can appear unusual or sometimes downright bizarre, is made understandable given Sibylla's perceptions, experiences and beliefs.

My only complaint about this book is that it is a book unto itself, I wish there was more to read about Sibylla.

"Missing" by Swedish author Karin Alvtegen is an engaging psychological thriller that centers on the dilemma of Sibylla Forsenstrom, a homeless 32-year-old, who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a businessman she had conned into paying for her one-night stay in an upscale Stockholm hotel. Sibylla's history of mental illness makes her the perfect scapegoat for the murder; but scapegoat for whom? Escaping the inevitable fate of the scapegoat becomes the driving motivation for both Sibylla and the reader.

As more bodies pile up the reader becomes privy to Sibylla's childhood memories and what drove her from a very comfortable upper class life to the constant deprivation of life on the streets. As publicity shines its bright spotlight on Sibylla, the reader also learns some of the tricks and traps used by and against homeless populations everywhere. Quickly realizing that law enforcement will not look for the real killer when they have such a convenient suspect close to hand, Sibylla begins her own investigation which eventually draws in Peter, a teenage ally bored by his mundane suburban life. Through Peter, Sibylla connects with a hacker who is able to put names behind the one solid clue Sibylla has unearthed: all the victims have been organ transplant recipients.

Eventually, Sibylla's fighting instincts pay off and she comes face to face with the real killer. But did she succeed in her quest only to become the denouement for the killer's careful plotting? Alvtegen has written a dynamic whodunit that keeps the reader focused on her central character until the final word.

Others have given a pretty good summary of the book. I'd like to add that this absorbing, suspenseful, rapidly moving story is highly reminiscent of the Ruth Rendell (who also focused on similarly troubled loners and the unpredictable course that fate hands them) at her peak. I was always involved in the fate of the woman who finds herself the prime suspect in a series of bizarre, serial like murders. And what made it especially notable was how she survived as an almost non existent, homeless person relying on the meager handouts of her parents, and on her wits. The ending was satisfying especially for the very courageous woman at the center of the story.