Book Log 2012 #7: The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

Another drop in the torrent of Scandinavian crime fiction hitting the US, this novel follows a psychiatrist and police detective as they work a multiple murder where the doctor uses hypnosis - a practice he'd sworn off years before - to get information from the only surviving family member. A number of new crimes follow, and both protagonists have to work to figure out the how and why they're connected - if at all - in order to stop the killings and save a kidnap victim.

I was not a fan of the book to start, as things seemed pretty stilted - there were more formal introductions of characters and information in the first 75 pages than you'd find in all of pretty much any other mystery novel - but as things moved along the writing moved away from its Billy's Pan Pizza stiffness (perhaps an artifact of translation?) and picked up steam.

I'm still unsure that some of what passed would actually happen - the publicity over the doctor's use of hypnosis seemed to happen too quickly and too strongly, though I know little enough about Sweden to say if hypnotizing victims of crime would be that controversial. On the plus side, I did find that the typical world-weariness of the detectives in Scandinavian crime fiction was tempered somewhat, a positive effect of his doggedness.

Kepler is a husband and wife team of writers, and I wonder if that's to blame for some of the uneven tone at the start of the book. In any case, I did enjoy the book once it started rolling, and I think I'd pick up either of Kepler's other two books once they show up in the US.