After years of anticipation (on my part, at least) Camilla Lackberg's first novel, The Ice Princess was finally published in the U.S. a month ago. (It's been in English translation in the UK and Canada since 2008.) I'm happy to say that the book really delivers--it reminded me a lot of Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back with its portrayal of a claustrophobic small town rife with secret scandals and tensions. In The Ice Princess, Lackberg did a great job of imbuing each character--even minor ones--with an interesting back story and relevance in the story's greater context. And she also set up an enjoyable relationship between main character Erica Falck and her new lover, Detective Patrik Hedstrom.

Given all of this, I was eager to get my hands on the second installment in this series, The Preacher. This novel is also forthcoming in the US, but I figured it would be awhile and so bit the bullet and ordered a copy from the UK. Unfortunately, I have to admit, that I was more than a little disappointed by this novel. Not really in terms of Lackberg's writing--she's still very good at balancing a murder investigation with a domestic subplot (here, Erica's pregnant with Patrik's baby, she's still having trouble with her sister, etc.) However, this doesn't pay off as much because of some rather notable shortcomings, which are as follows:

1. The murder plot here is much, much more grim. Now don't get me wrong--a faked suicide in the previous book is pretty grim (as were the background scenarios that lead to said murder), but this book takes it to another level. Several murders, preceded by bone breaking and other forms of slow-death torture, enacted on teenagers, over many years. Not nice stuff. It's a lot to take honestly, and if I'm going to read about those sorts of acts, they better be in the service of a pretty well developed, large-scale plot. And, also, you better have a pretty credible uber-sadist in the story, because well, there's got to be a pretty good explanation for why you decided that kind of pain needed to be inflicted on your characters.

2. This brings me to problem 2. The rationale for these murders--if not the exact murderer himself--is obvious within the first 100 pages. I'm not exaggerating. It became so overwhelmingly apparent how Lackberg was going to explain the "reason" for the above-mentioned violence/torture that I actually skipped ahead in the book to confirm that I was right. And I was. This is horribly disappointing for reasons I'm sure I don't have to explain.

3. The murderer is--and don't worry, I'm not spoiling here--presented as part of a large feuding family almost immediately. So the possibilities of who the actual killer are extremely limited from the get go. This makes the whole investigation, which is actually, admirably complicated, rather anticlimactic. Not that into this family's backstory, either.

4. Erica is actually not very present in this story at all. Which is a shame because she's likable and interesting and, because she's not on the police force, gives a murder plot a less procedural point of view. Patrik is definitely front and center here. And I like his character, too, but really--not as much. Given the fact that Erica has started writing True Crime novels, it seems to me that she could have been more involved here. And Lackberg even draws attention to the fact that she's twiddling her thumbs while she waits to have her baby. It's like she knows that there's not enough Erica in the story, but started writing it that way and can't go back. Instead, she uses the scenes with Erica to provide the comic relief--lots of horrible house guests descend on she and Patrik because it's summer and everyone loves coming to their small town over the summer. But those scenes aren't--with one macaroni-suffused exception--really all that good. So sad.

5. The novel's format is a little too reminiscent of The Ice Princess, which makes Lackberg's approach to plot development/reveal seem a little too mechanical. The investigation scenes are intercut with italicized passages in the voice of one of the victims, which is exactly what she did in her first book. In The Ice Princess this worked out rather cleverly--you actually thought the italicized passages might be narrated by the killer, until it becomes obvious that the speaker is dead as well. In The Preacher adding these passages is probably supposed to make the reader sympathize more with the victims, which is totally unnecessary, given what we're told they had to go through before they died. Of course we empathize with them. Now you're just rubbing our faces in the tragedy of it all, which we don't really need. It's overbearing.

That about does it for the major problems. I like Lackberg's characters, though, and I honestly like the way she handles their development, back story, etc. quite a lot. And I definitely would read another of her novels (there's one more in English translation, and she's gotten a big book deal to release all her books in the US)--but I might not be in such a rush to order the next installment this time.