Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

 

A landline rings, just as Agneta Broman, the wife of Stellan Broman, a post-war Swedish TV celebrity who the Swedish viewing public saw as an “uncle” to the nation, is waving her grandchildren goodbye. She answers the phone only to hear one word: “Geiger”. She immediately digs out a gun she’d kept hidden for years, shoots her husband dead, and disappears.

So starts this absolutely brilliant Swedish crime/espionage thriller.

Sara Novak is a vice cop who grew up a friend of the Broman’s daughters, Lotta and Malin. She was always the poor friend, her mother the Broman’s housekeeper, and as the narrative continues we learn the Broman daughters bullied her somewhat. She’s drawn into the investigation and it soon becomes an obsession. 

The police only know that Stellan is dead, and Agneta is missing, and are unaware that she was the one who murdered her husband. But as the bodies pile up and things point to a motive linked to the cold war and the conflict between the Communist East and that Capitalist West, it isn’t long before a nest of international intrigue is discovered.

The publishers billed Geiger as the most gripping debut since I Am Pilgrim, and I have to say I thought the analogy was apt. This is an ambitious thriller, encompassing big themes, not least, the Cold War and its legacy, establishment sex rings and cover-ups. Sara is an interesting protagonist, while Agneta makes for a brilliant antagonist, reminiscent of the anonymous English assassin in Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. In both novels the police and protagonist are unaware of the identity of who they are after until near the end, and this is a device which works as well in Geiger as it did in Forsyth’s classic.

At the time of writing this review, Geiger is my book of 2021. There’s still a good few months to go, so other titles might well surpass it, though I suspect even if this were to happen Geiger would remain a close contender. Either way, this is a brilliant novel and highly recommended.