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    Unwanted
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    Unwanted
    Audiobook11 hours

    Unwanted

    Written by Kristina Ohlsson

    Narrated by Justine Eyre

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In the middle of a rainy Swedish summer, a little girl is abducted from a crowded train. Her distraught mother was left behind at the previous station in what seemed to be a coincidence. The train crew was alerted and kept a watchful eye on the sleeping child. But when the train pulled into Stockholm Central Station, the little girl had vanished. Inspector Alex Recht, assisted by the investigative analyst Fredrika Bergman, are assigned to what at first appears to be a classic custody fight. But when the child is found dead in the far north of Sweden with the word “unwanted” scribbled on her forehead, the case soon turns into the investigation team’s worst nightmare - the pursuit of a brilliant and ruthless killer.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJul 30, 2013
    ISBN9781624065583
    Unavailable
    Unwanted
    Author

    Kristina Ohlsson

    Kristina Ohlsson is a political scientist and until recently held the position of Counter-Terrorism Officer at OSCE (the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). She has previously worked at the Swedish Security Service, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Swedish National Defense College. Kristina lives in Stockholm.

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    Reviews for Unwanted

    3.5/5

    210 ratings18 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      To enjoy a book, I need to feel something about the characters. I could not get interested in any of the characters in this book.
    • 5/5
      A page turner for sure. Finished it in one day. Was a bit disappointed with how it ended. I felt that the motive was predictable way before the characters in the book uncovered it. All in all, a good book.
    • 4/5
      Unwanted is the latest of the Scandanavian crop. It's a fast-paced, character-driven read: three main characters in the police force drive the novel (though I understand that the civilian liason, Fredrika, will be the central character for this new series). The plot is probably the weak point: a "Man" is snatching young children from mothers for reasons unknown but apparently buried in the mothers' pasts. It doesn't take a wild leap of the imagination to figure out what this reason is, but Ohlsson strings out the unveiling of this reason over many, many pages past the "get to the point already" mark where these seemingly intelligent and seasoned officers should have seen the obvious and put two and two together. It does strain credibility a bit.Two of the three officers are likeable; the third, Peder, is utterly loathsome, which makes for some difficult reading. I'll be interested to see if he's a recurring character. Fredrika is a solid character; as a civilian liason to the police force, she keeps the novel from being a completely conventional police procedural and thus keeps it from being purely formulaic, and the tensions between her university background and her police course colleagues bring an interesting layer to the novel (in addition to the usual woman-on-the-force tension). Her unconventional private life is also quite interesting and provides interest outside the plot trajectory of the murder investigation.A solid series premire. The writing is good, the characters promising-- add some tension and more intricate work to the plot, and we could have a winner here.
    • 4/5
      Loved the way in which this author gives you the feeling you are putting together the answers yourself.
    • 2/5
      I was hopeful that this would be another great Nordic Noir but I was disappointed.

      The story was quite interesting but could be solved before the detective team actually thought about the connections.

      I was mostly disappointed that the detective team was so unlikeable. A novice civilian attachment to the team who knew everything better, the hero detective looked rather lost and the second in the team was an arrogant womaniser.

      OK, this was a debut novel, so let's hope the second will be better
    • 4/5
      Unwanted is the latest of the Scandanavian crop. It's a fast-paced, character-driven read: three main characters in the police force drive the novel (though I understand that the civilian liason, Fredrika, will be the central character for this new series). The plot is probably the weak point: a "Man" is snatching young children from mothers for reasons unknown but apparently buried in the mothers' pasts. It doesn't take a wild leap of the imagination to figure out what this reason is, but Ohlsson strings out the unveiling of this reason over many, many pages past the "get to the point already" mark where these seemingly intelligent and seasoned officers should have seen the obvious and put two and two together. It does strain credibility a bit.Two of the three officers are likeable; the third, Peder, is utterly loathsome, which makes for some difficult reading. I'll be interested to see if he's a recurring character. Fredrika is a solid character; as a civilian liason to the police force, she keeps the novel from being a completely conventional police procedural and thus keeps it from being purely formulaic, and the tensions between her university background and her police course colleagues bring an interesting layer to the novel (in addition to the usual woman-on-the-force tension). Her unconventional private life is also quite interesting and provides interest outside the plot trajectory of the murder investigation.A solid series premire. The writing is good, the characters promising-- add some tension and more intricate work to the plot, and we could have a winner here.
    • 4/5
      In the middle of a rainy Swedish summer, a little girl is abducted from a crowded train. Despite hundreds of potential witnesses, no one noticed when the girl was taken. Her mother, left behind at the previous station, alerted the crew immediately. But as the train pulled into Stockholm Central Station, the girl was nowhere to be seen. To Inspector Alex Recht of the Stockholm police, this looks like a classic custody row. But none of the evidence adds up and young Investigative Analyst Fredrika Bergman is convinced the case is far more complex than her boss is prepared to admit. So when the missing child is found dead in the far north of Sweden, with the word UNWANTED scribbled on her forehead, the rule book is finally thrown out of the window. Now on the trail of a ruthless murderer with a terrifying agenda, will Alex and Fredrika manage to put aside their differences and work together to find the killer, before it's too late?

      Solid debut novel and welcome addition to the burgeoning Scandi Noir genre though the setting is irrelevant to the story.

      The characterisation was excellent and the story had good pace though the ending was rather abrupt. Normally I am hopeless at guessing the killer and their motives however this time I was right for once and that earned this book an extra star :)
    • 3/5
      This was a good mystery for someone writing their first novel. I am hoping that Kristina Ohlsson's writing will become tighter as she continues to write, and she won't continue to offer so many obvious clues. It is one sort of excitement to sit there reading and wanting to be telling the characters/detectives something that they are obviously overlooking. But a really great mystery writer will leave the clue for us to find and not make it so easy for us to spot that we know the answer more than a hundred and fifty pages before the end and some part of us simply can't understand why the detectives didn't spot it too.
      I did really like the characters she's set up here; I think she has a good framework for a series.
    • 4/5
      This is the first book I've read by this author and am not sure if I will look for others in the series. There are so many other Scandinavian writers in this genre that I feel are better writers and have greater plot and character development.
    • 3/5
      Kristina Ohlsson may be relatively young (30 when she wrote this), but unlike most crime writers she has actually worked in the police and justice services. This was her first novel, and she's published another nine books since 2009, so she's no slouch. Frederika Bergman, a police investigator with academic credentials, is the character who links up with the later novels in the series and who seems to have a similar background to the author, but - rather like the Martin Beck novels - the narrative is in multiple point-of-view form, giving roughly equal prominence to several members of the investigating team. The plot is based around a fairly generic serial-killer formula, with a nicely executed false lead to make it more interesting. The tensions between the members of the police team were a little bit routine, but they were kept low-key enough not to be an irritation. I was strongly reminded of the later Martin Becks by the way the author felt obliged to give us a sociological underpinning for the criminal's descent into evil. There is clearly meant to be a political message here about violence and power in relations between men, women, and children, but it's advanced with some delicacy. You can't rule out the possibility that the lover you think you know well might have a double life as a psychopath, but it's probably vanishingly small...Overall I found this a good debut novel: nothing stunningly interesting, but enough entertainment to keep the reader engaged, and no serious annoyances. The translation might have been a bit bland, but I didn't really notice I was reading a translation, so it was probably doing a good job.
    • 4/5
      This was a genuine page-turner. The author focused on three main characters in the police department, so it offered an opportunity to get a full-bodied picture of the internals and externals of the investigation. I also liked that one of the detectives was female; it add a whole different dimension. The crime has to do with children, which is always hard for me to read, so I just skipped over difficult passages. Otherwise, really looking forward to the translations of the next two books in the series!
    • 4/5
      "A mother who didn't care at all must be worse than one who cared too much."Little Lilian Sebastiansson vanishes from a crowded train in broad daylight, leaving only a pair of shoes. Her mother, stuck at the previous station, alerts the authorities immediately, who assume it must be a custody row. Only when none of the clues adds up does Alex Recht's special team start to look outside the custody box. Fredrika Bergman, civilian recruit, can't believe how stuck in their ways this crack team is. Peder Rydh can't believe how Fredrika is favoured over proper policemen. Meanwhile more children are disappearing...Ohlsson is only the second author of Scandicrime whose work I have enjoyed (after Stieg Larsson - reviews of his Millenium trilogy 1, 2, 3) - I struggled with Asa Larsson and have yet to get through more than 10 pages of a Jo Nesbo novel. I've been listening to Camilla Läckberg's The Stone Cutter for a while now and if she would only stop introducing new strands of story more than half way into the book I think I could get along with that too.Ohlsson manages to keep herself to two main story threads, with a strong bias towards the police narrative (good) and only occasional changes of perspective to characters outside the main cast. She's not afraid to write fairly graphic domestic abuse and give her thorough knowledge of police workings, her biography page did not surprise me:Kristina Ohlsson (b. 1979) is a political scientist and until recently held the position of Counter-Terrorism Officer at OSCE (the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). She has previously worked at the Swedish Security Service, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Swedish National Defense College, where she was a junior expert on the Middle East conflict and the foreign policy of the European Union.I suspect much of the motivation for writing a somewhat unconventional female protagonist, as well as the relatively dark nature of the crimes described, come from her former working life. It's certainly gripping.In terms of the common denominator between the women whose children are taken, I worked it out pretty early, but possibly because I'm quite sensitive to the topic. I'd be surprised if you got all the way to the reveal without figuring it out, but I certainly didn't know who the bad guy was until the police stormed his flat. You'd struggle to know who he was earlier I think - a minor criticism of the book I have - because he isn't someone who floats in and out of the story in the way the criminal does in most police procedurals (I've started guessing who the perpetrator is in Castle by noting which characters are introduced in the 8-12 minute phase...).Time for a minor rant/apparently cultural observation.There seem to be a few common elements to a Scandicrimenovel that I just need to get used to: fairly very liberal sexual ethics and repeated mention thereof, running a parallel storyline from the perspective of the bad guy without really tieing into the main storyline at all for a long time, and lots of in-fighting in the police force/investigative forces.It's the relationships stuff that gets to me - I've whinged in the past about useless adulterous male protagonists and we have got a serious one in this novel (although to her credit, Ohlsson paints him as a fairly unpleasant character who happens to be a decent policeman, which is quite a change from the stock good/bad cop). I just find it quite strange to be pottering along, here's a new character being mentioned, little more, oh ok switch to the perspective of the new character BAM all their relationship history and their current top three relationship issues which are all tangled up with each other and causing major problems aaaaand back to the plot. Minimal *other* history - education, family, upbringing, faith, other hobbies... Is this a cultural thing? In the Millenium trilogy, lots of reviewers noted that all the characters seemed to do was drink lots of coffee and hop into bed between hacking hard drives!OK rant over. In general, enjoyable, quite fast-paced but plenty of scope for character development, and I was really glad to have the sequel on hand to read straight after this!
    • 4/5
      I am a big fan of Scandinavian thrillers and this first book in a series is a winner. I can't wait for the next one.
    • 4/5
      Top-notch new entry in the rapidly growing field of Scandinavian crime novels that have been translated into English. This is a police procedural centered on three interesting and three-dimensional investigators. They are trying to find out what happened to a little girl who went missing from a train. The plot, of course, thickens.For me, the compelling thing about this book was the characterization, and the interplay among the investigators. The characters have assumptions about each other that get tested, and they don't fall into the "character actor" slots that people in police novels often do. The plot was compelling, though the ending was a bit too easy to see in advance.I look forward eagerly to more novels in translation by Ms. Ohlsson. The "translated" bit matters, because Ohlsson -- like several other of these writers -- has a longer list in her native language than in English. She has published four novels in Swedish, of which only this one is available in English (another is due in the UK next month). I wish the publishers wouldn't dole out the Scandinavian lists like this, but I suppose it does give one something to look forward to.
    • 5/5
      I always have a hard time getting into books that take place in other countries - this one is in Sweden - because of the weird names and places that I'm not familiar with and the same was true with this one BUT holy cow, it drew me in and wow. Great murder mystery.This story starts with a little girl, Lilian, being abducted from a train on a summer day in Sweden. A futile race to find the little girl is stalled when she's found dead in the parking lot of a hospital with the words UNWANTED written on her forehead. Now the police department, stunned, is in search for a murder suspects when he strikes again! They are left scrambling and frantic to find the suspect before he murders again.The readers are taken through the investigation process while the author tells us just enough and yet so little that we are left guessing till the end.I love it enough to not want to put it down so of course I'm going to recommend this one!
    • 4/5
      A reasonable debut novel, and yet another Swedish author to add to the list. A tale of child abduction and murder, the concentration on the different police characters and the investigation does mean that the gloomy subject matter (albeit not graphic) does not overpower and cut short your reading of it. The psychology behind the violence unfolds well enough (predictable? in hindsight, yeah, probably). I did though grow weary of the male-female divide in the investigation team, rather unoriginal. The ending was a little disappointing, and even though I enjoyed reading it well enough, I was left untouched emotionally. Not up there with the best of the Swedish crime writers, but will give the next in the series a chance when it appears in translation.
    • 4/5
      he first book in a new and what I consider a wonderful new addition to the Nordic scene. In Stockholm, a three yr. old child is taken from a train, from there the chase in on. The characters and their back stories are interesting, I especially liked Fredrika, the book is amazingly well written for a new novelist. Can't wait to see what she does next.
    • 4/5
      A partent's worst nightmare is realized when a woman leaves the train to make a call. The train leaves without her and when it gets to its final destination, the woman's six-year-old child has vanished.After the police interview the mother, their first thought is that it is a domestic kidnapping and attempt to find the child's father.Fredrika Bergman is new to the investigative team and she wonders if the kidnapper isn't the child's father, who could it be?With excellent dialog and psychological insight into the investigators, their thoughts and family life, we observe their reaction when the case takes an unexpected turn. This makes the characters more human and makes us appreciate what they must be going through.This is a compelling story that is literate and has characters who come to life as we read.