Starred review from March 7, 2022
At the start of Swedish screenwriter and director Skördeman’s excellent debut, a contemporary Stockholm police procedural, Agneta Broman, a 69-year-old grandmother, commits a shocking act. Within moments after her visiting daughters and grandchildren leave, Agneta fatally shoots her 85-year-old husband, Stellan, who was once a beloved television presenter, and vanishes. Sara Nowak, a police detective on the prostitution unit who has anger management problems, used to play with the Bromans’ two daughters as a child and becomes obsessed with finding Stellan’s killer. Gradually, she uncovers a terrorist web spawned by East Germany’s dreaded Stasi, whose tentacles reach into Sweden’s highest political circles, and that threatens “something big” with dire consequences for the entire European Union. In powerful secondary plots, Sara wages a private war against the Swedish government’s refusal to defend prostitutes from exploitation and contends with the guilt she feels for putting her job before her family. Skördeman keeps readers fully engaged right up to the last shattering revelations. This tale of Cold War revenge and familial anguish will resonate with many. Agent: Johanna Gustavsson, Politiken Agency (Sweden).