On a gray September day, on an island off the coast of Sweden, six -year -old Jens Davidsson ventured out of his backyard, walked out into a fog, a...
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Mar 18, 2009
Bernadette
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In the early 1970’s a young boy named Jens disappeared on a remote island in Sweden. Twenty years later his mother, Julia, and his grandfather, Gerlof, attempt to unravel the events surrounding the disappearance.
For want of a better word the book is literary in style, reminding me of David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars in the way it depicts very personal events that take place in a wider historical context. It has the same haunting sense of location too. When done badly the kind More...
For want of a better word the book is literary in style, reminding me of David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars in the way it depicts very personal events that take place in a wider historical context. It has the same haunting sense of location too. When done badly the kind More...
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Sep 08, 2010
Karen
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I'm just under half way through this book and I am struggling.It doesn't grip me and I couldn't care either way about the characters.Really don't care if Julia finds out what happened to her son when he disappeared 20 years earlier,did he drown or was he murdered I really don't care.However once I've started a book I need to finish it,maybe not right away but assuming I'll live for a few more years then I will finish it.Did finish it and it did improve slightly by the end.The problem could be th
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Jan 24, 2009
Linda
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This was the book that I won last year through a Goodreads contest. I just now got around the reading it and wished I hadn't put it off. This is an exceptional thriller with twists and turns around every corner and an ending that you don't see coming.
In 1970, on a day when fog covers all, a little boy disappears never to be seen again. Years later his grandfather, now living in an assisted living establishment, receives one of his sandals in the mail. Just that and nothing else More...
In 1970, on a day when fog covers all, a little boy disappears never to be seen again. Years later his grandfather, now living in an assisted living establishment, receives one of his sandals in the mail. Just that and nothing else More...
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Nov 27, 2008
Jmm
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Twenty years ago Julia Davidsson's 5-year-old son Jens disappeared into the fog on the remote Swedish island of Öland and was never found. Everyone except Julia believes Jens wandered down to the shore and drowned. Unable to accept that her son is dead, Julia withdraws from her family and stumbles through life using alcohol and medication to deaden the pain of not knowing. Then, after all these years, her father Gerlof calls to tell her that someone has sent him one of Jens's sandals in the mail
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Nov 29, 2011
Ellen
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jun 29, 2011
Xirxe
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Ach menno, manchmal denke ich wirklich, man sollte Klappentexte verbieten, soviel Unsinn wie da verzapft wird. 'Eine feine Mischung aus Krimi und Gespensterroman. Zum Gruseln gut.' meint die Für Sie über das erste Buch 'Öland' von Johan Theorin. Wetten, dass wer immer dies auch geschrieben hat, lediglich die Inhaltsangabe gelesen hatte? Von Geistern und Gespenstern ist in dem ganzen Buch nämlich weit und breit keine Spur zu finden. Und zum Gruseln ist die ganze Geschichte nun sicherlich auch nic
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May 04, 2011
Everybookhasasoul
rated it:
An original gripping thriller.
In the early 1970s a young boy called Jens disappears from a remote Swedish island. Fast forward twenty years and his mother, Julia and his grandfather, Gerlof, are attempting to unravel the mystery of what happened to Jens.
I have to admit I did not like the first couple of chapters of this book, I couldn't settle into the story and I found myself putting it down and having to come back to it hours later. However I am glad I stuck with it as More...
In the early 1970s a young boy called Jens disappears from a remote Swedish island. Fast forward twenty years and his mother, Julia and his grandfather, Gerlof, are attempting to unravel the mystery of what happened to Jens.
I have to admit I did not like the first couple of chapters of this book, I couldn't settle into the story and I found myself putting it down and having to come back to it hours later. However I am glad I stuck with it as More...
Dec 02, 2010
Fleur
rated it:
Many years ago a small boy disappeared. He climbed over his parents’ garden wall and disappeared into the mist.
Now, twenty years on, the first piece of evidence has come to light. A new investigation begins.
A simple story, but Johan Theorin builds on it very well indeed.
He builds characters.
First there’s Julia. it was her son, Jens, who disappeared. She has never come to terms with her loss, never learned to live with it. She was already separated More...
Now, twenty years on, the first piece of evidence has come to light. A new investigation begins.
A simple story, but Johan Theorin builds on it very well indeed.
He builds characters.
First there’s Julia. it was her son, Jens, who disappeared. She has never come to terms with her loss, never learned to live with it. She was already separated More...
Aug 10, 2010
Beth
rated it:
Johan Theorin’s ECHOES FROM THE DEAD is Swedish noir that builds its story on events from 1936 to the 1940′s to 1972 to 1992, periods connected by suspected murders and the memories of the residents of a remote area of Sweden, the island of Oland. On a very foggy morning in September 1972, 6 year-old Jens Davidsson walks out of his home and disappears without a trace. Twenty years later, his mother, Julia, depressed and overwhelmed by the disappearance, receives a phone call from her More...
Mar 10, 2010
Kat
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http://tinyurl.com/63cpzn
Finally, I get a decent book from LT-- one in which I'm not rolling my eyes at the writing every few pages or wishing the themes were less yawn-inducing. And, actually, I have no idea how well written the original book was since this is a translation of a Swedish murder mystery. Because it climbed to the top of the charts over there, I expect the decent writing is coming through in the translation (especially in terms of the descriptions of the island of Ölan More...
Finally, I get a decent book from LT-- one in which I'm not rolling my eyes at the writing every few pages or wishing the themes were less yawn-inducing. And, actually, I have no idea how well written the original book was since this is a translation of a Swedish murder mystery. Because it climbed to the top of the charts over there, I expect the decent writing is coming through in the translation (especially in terms of the descriptions of the island of Ölan More...
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Jan 03, 2012
Marco
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Het zou me niets verbazen als ik zo vroeg in 2012 al de ontdekking van het jaar heb gedaan. Skumtimmen (ik las de Engelse versie: Echoes from the Dead) is absoluut één van de beste debuutromans die ik tot nu toe heb gelezen. Johan Theorin heeft een sfeervolle en indrukwekkende thriller geschreven. Richting het einde wordt het wel iets minder, maar zeker voor een debuutroman is het nog steeds hoogstaand.
De start van het verhaal gaf mij echt kippenvel. Het begint allemaal vanuit het oogp More...
De start van het verhaal gaf mij echt kippenvel. Het begint allemaal vanuit het oogp More...
Mar 01, 2009
Lourdes
rated it:
Twenty years ago, Julia Davidsson's 5-year-old son slipped out of his grandparents' garden and vanished into the fog of this Swedish island, his body never found. But now, his grandfather Gerlof, who lives at a home for the elderly, has received one of the boy's sandals in the mail. He calls his daughter, and together they begin to try to solve the mystery. Their main suspect is the notorious murderer Nils Kant, a man who killed three people (or four, if you count his own brother's accidental dr
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Sep 12, 2009
Spuddie
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Translated from the Swedish, this compelling story mingles past and present very skillfully. Julia Davidsson has been mourning the loss of her five-year-old son Jens for twenty years. He disappeared into the fog one day and was never seen again, presumed drowned, but his body was never found and Julia is haunted by the fact that he may still be alive and wants to know what happened to him. She has, over the years, distanced herself from family back on the Baltic island Öland because it's just t
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Mar 15, 2010
Karen
rated it:
Another strong Scandinavian mystery. The father-daughter protagonists who come together to solve the mystery of little Jens' 1972 disappearance really grow on you, and the pace of the book is awesome. Theorin goes nonlinear, even in the present, which is quite a gift. The book, which addresses many key issues such as old vs new Scandinavian culture, island village vs mainland, etc is quite atmospheric. You can really feel the old shipping days and the lively Orland community that sadly got rep
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Jul 21, 2011
Minna
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I was going to do a comparison between this book and John Ajvide Lindqvist's Människohamn (Harbour) because the description of them were so similar and they were published at roughly the same time. The premise for the book is that a child went missing during a visit near the sea and that one parent (in this book the mother, in Harbour the father) can't get over the tragedy and seeks comfort at bottom of every bottle. In the now the parent has returned to the scene, trying to get closure and to f
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Dec 05, 2008
Jim
rated it:
The new word in this book is alvar, the limestone pavement habitat on the Swedish island of Öland – a topography that plays the same role in this story as the Yorkshire moor does in Wuthering Heights. And if this is an odd way to begin a review, well, it's an odd book.
Echoes from the Dead is another Scandinavian crime story riding in on the crest of Henning Mankell's deliciously cheerless Wallander novels – but it's less a policier than a sometimes whimsical, mostly sad family drama. More...
Echoes from the Dead is another Scandinavian crime story riding in on the crest of Henning Mankell's deliciously cheerless Wallander novels – but it's less a policier than a sometimes whimsical, mostly sad family drama. More...
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Mar 28, 2011
Jenni
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I read Echoes from the Dead as my third book for The Great Transworld Crime Caper. I hadn't heard of Johan Theorin before seeing the book on the list for the challenge, but the synopsis sounded intriguing and the fact that it won the CWA Best First Crime Novel in 2009 encouraged me to make it one of my picks.
The book is set on the Swedish island of Öland, Julia left after the disappearance of Jens, her son, twenty years ago but Gerlof, her father, has remained on the island. When he re More...
The book is set on the Swedish island of Öland, Julia left after the disappearance of Jens, her son, twenty years ago but Gerlof, her father, has remained on the island. When he re More...
Feb 18, 2009
Linda
rated it:
"When her father, Gerlof, rang one Monday evening in October, for the first time in almost a year, he made Julia think of bones, washed up onto a stony shore.
Bones, white as mother-of-pearl, polished by the waves, almost luminous among the gray pebbles at the water's edge.
Fragments of bone.
Julia didn't know if they were actually there on the shore, but she had waited to see them for over twenty years."
— "Echoes From the Dead"
I've More...
Bones, white as mother-of-pearl, polished by the waves, almost luminous among the gray pebbles at the water's edge.
Fragments of bone.
Julia didn't know if they were actually there on the shore, but she had waited to see them for over twenty years."
— "Echoes From the Dead"
I've More...
Dec 01, 2008
Charlotte
rated it:
What is going on with these depressed Scandinavian writers? The guy at Aunt Agatha's was telling me last week that he met a crime writer from Iceland who said that setting stories there is really limiting because they only have like five murders per year. So a serial killer plot is sort of out. Then we speculated about whether the murder rate would increase now that Iceland's entire economy has collapsed. All of which is to say, if you like drawn-out, sort of subdued murder mysteries that take p
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Mar 13, 2009
Laren
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This book is actually an English translation of a Swedish author's work. Julia is a nurse still so griefstricken after the disappearance of her son many years earlier that she is on disability. She still holds out hope that he is alive, which puts her at odds with her family. Then one day her father calls her to say someone mailed him a sandal - one just like the one her son Jens was wearing the day he disappeared. Julia pulls herself together enough to go back to the island where it all hap
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Oct 15, 2009
Michele
rated it:
At last, a real mystery. It is the story of a little boy who disappeared one day, and how his grandfather and mother found his murderer twenty years later. There were plenty of twists and lots of very annoying missed opportunities for communication. in the first pages, the author tells you that the grandfather's name, Gerlof, is actually pronounced Yair-loff, which distracted me so much that I could hardly attend to the plot.
Every time the name appeared, I would need three tries More...
Every time the name appeared, I would need three tries More...
Aug 06, 2011
This was a page-turner of a thriller, full of twists and turns. Translated from Swedish, it is the story of Julia, whose son Jens disappeared 20 years prior on the small island where Julia's parents lived. The crime, if there was one, remains unsolved, until one day Julia's father Gerlof receives an envelope in the mail containing one of the sandals worn by Jens at the time of his disappearance. Julia, who over the years has become dysfunctional in not coming to terms with her loss, makes her
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Jan 01, 2009
Jennifer
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A young boy goes missing in 1972, on a horribly foggy day, and is thought to have drowned in the nearby lake though his mother swears he was terrified of the water. His body is never found. Years later, his grandfather is sent a sandal that looks remarkably like Jens's. Is it possible that the local bogeyman, Nils Kant, isn't really dead? Could he have taken Jens?
A good winter book--Oland is a shivery cold island, or so it feels in the book, which takes place in autumn. And I have to More...
A good winter book--Oland is a shivery cold island, or so it feels in the book, which takes place in autumn. And I have to More...
Aug 21, 2011
Tanja
rated it:
En liten pojke försvinner i dimman på Öland på 70-talet. Han blir aldrig funnen. Hans mamma, Julia, klarar inte att släppa taget och gå vidare. Mer än 20 år senare ber hennes far Gerlof att hon ska komma tillbaka till Öland. Han och hans vänner har några teorier om vad som hände med lilla Jens. Dessutom har Gerlof fått en liten barnsko på posten. Han tror det är pojkens.
Det här är en historia om att släppa taget och gå vidare. Om ett förblåst höst-Öland utan sommargäster. Invävd är också en anna More...
Det här är en historia om att släppa taget och gå vidare. Om ett förblåst höst-Öland utan sommargäster. Invävd är också en anna More...
May 27, 2011
Sarah
rated it:
Johan Theorin's Swedish mystery about a missing boy and his mother is an extremely addicting novel. The story starts in the 70s, with the disappearance of Julia's young son. Skip to the present and Julia's father wants to see her, 20 years after her son went missing. What starts as Julia trying to make peace with the fact that her son is probably dead ends up turning into a mystery no one expects. The story is strong, and at the end, quite brutal. I enjoyed reading it, but my low rating is becau
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Mar 20, 2010
Joanna
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What is it about Swedish crime/mystery writers?? Although this is not a typical crime story, no witty, big mouch characters, detectives, computer hackers. Five year old boy disappears from his grandparents house without a trace on the foggy day on the small, quiet island on the Baltic Sea. Twenty years later his mother is still in depression, without life, energy, friends, close to falling into alcoholism. Her 80-years old father has just moved to the retirement home, when his friend brings hi
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Jun 23, 2011
Bartek
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I znów trafiłem na debiut.
Warto go jednak przeczytać, ponieważ Theorin umie budować klimat i mylić czytelnika. Historia jest opowiedziana z rozmachem godnym Lackberg. Korzenie zła sięgają lat trzydziestych, ostateczne rozwiązanie zagadki następuje blisko sześćdziesiąt lat później.
W latach siedemdziesiątych mały chłopiec znika z domu swoich dziadków. Nigdy nie zostaje odnaleziony. Jego zaginięcie odciska się na trwałe w psychice jego matki.
Wiele lat później sprawa może wreszcie zo More...
Warto go jednak przeczytać, ponieważ Theorin umie budować klimat i mylić czytelnika. Historia jest opowiedziana z rozmachem godnym Lackberg. Korzenie zła sięgają lat trzydziestych, ostateczne rozwiązanie zagadki następuje blisko sześćdziesiąt lat później.
W latach siedemdziesiątych mały chłopiec znika z domu swoich dziadków. Nigdy nie zostaje odnaleziony. Jego zaginięcie odciska się na trwałe w psychice jego matki.
Wiele lat później sprawa może wreszcie zo More...
Mar 03, 2011
Tracey
rated it:
This book actually turned out to be a lot better than I thought. The language at first came across rather stilted, but as i became more accustomed to reading the odd phrases I got more hooked on the story.
The three main characters Nils, Julia and Gerlof all had an integral part in the story, but for me the stand out character wasn't Nils, it was Gerlof. The old man saw things and probed in a natural way to make a slow burning book come full circle to an exciting ending and a mystery solve More...
The three main characters Nils, Julia and Gerlof all had an integral part in the story, but for me the stand out character wasn't Nils, it was Gerlof. The old man saw things and probed in a natural way to make a slow burning book come full circle to an exciting ending and a mystery solve More...
Jul 12, 2010
Steve
rated it:
Echoes From the Dead by Johan Theorin was also an award-winning first novel. Set on a lonely island in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden, the story follows a mother’s quest to find some peace after her only son disappeared on a foggy day many years ago.
Not a typical detective story, the daughter and her estranged aging father investigate a current death that may have bearing on their own tragic family history. This story does a wonderful job of creating the desolate landscape o More...
Not a typical detective story, the daughter and her estranged aging father investigate a current death that may have bearing on their own tragic family history. This story does a wonderful job of creating the desolate landscape o More...
