The Darkest Room: A Novel, Johan Theorin

THE DARKEST ROOM: A NOVEL (Delta 2009) writ­ten by Johan The­o­rin and trans­lated by Mar­laine Delargy is the sec­ond crime fic­tion novel that is apart of a loosely con­nected quar­tet of books set on the island of Öland. The Swedish title is Nat­tfåk which trans­lates to “night blizzard.”

Theorin’s first novel, ECHOES FROM THE DEAD (Delta 2008), Swedish title, Skum­tim­men won the CWA John Creasey Dag­ger Award in 2009 and THE DARKEST ROOM was voted by crit­ics as best Swedish Crime Novel of 2008 and won the Glass Key Award in 2009. The two nov­els are loosely connected.

I am a big fan of Nordic crime fic­tion thanks to Jo Nesbo’s lyri­cal prose & tight plot­ting in the Harry Hole series set in Nor­way. I’ve been look­ing for sim­i­lar authors to try and have seen Johan Theorin’s name men­tioned along­side that of Hen­ning Mankell and Karin Fos­sum. The lat­ter two are authors I plan to read some­time soon.

There is noth­ing spec­tac­u­lar about Scan­di­na­vian writ­ers that I can see only that they appear to be bet­ter plot­ters as that is cer­tainly the case with Nesbo’s books. While Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tat­too may have been a cap­ti­vat­ing read for me, it was cer­tainly flawed in it’s struc­ture. Lastly, the char­ac­ters seem to make a last­ing impres­sion. Lis­beth Salan­der. Harry Hole. You remem­ber them well when the story is over.

Johan Theorin’s THE DARKEST ROOM is a ghost story wrapped up in a rather com­plex mur­der mys­tery. The­o­rin seems to have a tal­ent for writ­ing atmos­pheric sto­ries as he pens one beau­ti­fully here. The harsh Baltic weather with it’s crash­ing waves and unre­lent­ing bliz­zard plays an inte­gral part in the story. The mood of the novel and the nar­ra­tive tended to be qui­etly inten­sive, fore­bod­ing and infused with super­nat­ural elements.

This author is good at super­sti­tion. The char­ac­ters are beset with hear­ing creaks from doors or lis­ten­ing to the unde­fin­able knock­ing on walls or folks sum­mon­ing up dead spir­its. Strangers or strange events are some­times cloaked in shad­ows. Ghost sto­ries make for some good late night read­ing. Along with that you can add the angst of a fam­ily try­ing des­per­ately to run away from the past, dis­tanc­ing them­selves from the dark secrets that seems to attach them­selves indelibly.

THE DARKEST ROOM is a creepy, some­what com­plex story that at times is the­mat­i­cally intense with its top­ics of grief and loss. In the fol­low­ing review, I will reveal more than a few minor spoil­ers as I briefly recap some of the events of the story. So, if you’re not inter­ested in any details at all then this will be your cue to leave.

Joakim and Katrine Westin have moved with their two chil­dren from Stock­holm to the north­ern part of the island of Öland. They are the new own­ers of the old manor house at Eel Point. A short dis­tance away are the two empty light­houses and an old barn. The house has a his­tory, told along­side the main story arc, of those who lived and died at Eel Point.

When the story starts, Joakim is still com­mut­ing to Stock­holm. He’s a teacher there. Mean­while, Katrine begins the house ren­o­va­tions. Life for this fam­ily of four out in the coun­try seems idyl­lic until tragedy strikes. And from the tone of the story up to this point, you knew that some­thing bad was gonna happen.

Joakim learns that there’s been an acci­den­tal drown­ing at the manor house. He’d been in Stock­holm less than a day pack­ing up the rest of his stuff from his for­mer res­i­dence in the city. He had plans to stay overnight but he races back to Eel Point with his heart rac­ing, fear­ing the worst.

Ear­lier in the day, some­thing strange hap­pened to make Joakim call home. While impos­si­ble, he thought he heard his wife’s voice while he was at their old house in the city. Again, it’s impos­si­ble since she saw him off that morn­ing but he swears it was her voice that called his name. That nig­gling feel­ing gets to him and he calls home and learns that there’s been a drowning.

Police­woman, Tilda Davids­son is at Joakim’s home await­ing his arrival. Ear­lier, she broke pro­ce­dure and told Joakim over the phone that his daugh­ter, Livia had drowned and that his son Gabriel and his wife Katrine are at the neigh­bors. Joakim has to pull off to the side of the road to absorb the news of his daughter’s death. His only solace on the drive back is his dri­ving need to con­sole his wife.

Unfor­tu­nately, there’s been a mix-up with the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. When Joakim arrives at Eel Point, he sees that his daugh­ter Livia is alive. It was his wife, Katrine who drowned. Her body was found by the kid’s school teacher. This dev­as­tates Joakim and the mix-up with the names looks bad for Tilda, who’d just arrived on the island and is the only female police offi­cer in the newly opened police department.

Joakim’s loss is dev­as­tat­ing. He goes through the usual stages of grief of denial, etc. He decides not to tell the kids right away because he’s not up for it emo­tion­ally. The tone around this part of the novel was some­what depres­sive. Joakim grap­ples with his grief but even­tu­ally he dis­tracts him­self with con­tin­u­ing the ren­o­va­tions that his wife had started.

Mean­while, the nar­ra­tive shifts to some home bur­glar­ies on the island. A gang of thugs are break­ing into the sum­mer cot­tages while the res­i­dents are away for the win­ter. Tilda Davids­son is inves­ti­gat­ing the break-ins and from the cues of her 80 year old great-uncle, Gerlof Davids­son, she’s look­ing a bit into the drown­ing inci­dent as well. It’s hinted that maybe Katrine’s death wasn’t acci­den­tal after all.

Gerlof Davids­son, Tilda’s great-uncle, was a for­mer Baltic cargo ship cap­tain. He’s seen and heard it all. Tilda is hav­ing him record the fam­ily his­tory. She wants to know more about her grandfather’s brother who was a fish­er­man. Gerlof is good at telling sto­ries. It is he who sug­gests to Tilda that she should look into Katrine’s death. He even­tu­ally meets with Joakim who is look­ing to learn more about the his­tory of Eel Point. The talk from the neigh­bors say that Eel Point is haunted by dead spirits.

The story then gets more mys­te­ri­ous when it’s revealed that there’s a hid­den room inside the barn; it’s a short dis­tance away from the manor house and last place that Joakim saw his wife. Besides being old, it’s sup­posed to be haunted. Inside, there’s a wall with a list of names of the dead. Mostly the names are of the peo­ple who lived and died at Eel Point.

Joakim seems to also feel the pres­ence of his wife there and also the pres­ence of his dead sis­ter, Ethel. She’s a skele­ton in the closet of the Westin fam­ily. Turns out she was a drug user who died under some­what unusual cir­cum­stances. I’d hate to say what so I will stop there. There’s more to the plot that delves into the family’s back­ground and secrets. Still a lot left to read.

So how did I like THE DARKEST ROOM? I enjoyed this story very much! Like I said, the set­ting was just as sig­nif­i­cant as the char­ac­ters. The nar­ra­tive is told in third per­son and fol­lows the per­pe­tra­tors as well as the pro­tag­o­nists. I had no clue how Katrine’s death was gonna get solved. How­ever, there are two threads through­out the story that even­tu­ally tie together. The con­nec­tion wasn’t trans­par­ent to me.

The super­nat­ural ele­ments were sub­tle rely­ing mostly on the unknown. The premise was engag­ing and the pac­ing was unhur­ried and tended to get a lit­tle stag­nant & repet­i­tive. The char­ac­ters were inter­est­ing and made the pages go by fast. I didn’t really warm up to Tilda Davids­son much but enjoyed the scenes with Gerlof. Her per­sonal life was inter­est­ing though. She’d been hav­ing an affair with a mar­ried man.

The end­ing was com­pletely dom­i­nated by the impend­ing, dan­ger­ous bliz­zard that hits the island. The dénoue­ment devolved into sev­eral scenes of peo­ple fight­ing snow flur­ries, harsh winds, freez­ing cold tem­per­a­tures while the story con­cludes in a typ­i­cal show­down of good ver­sus evil.

I think this story will have you believ­ing in ghosts or spir­its when all is said and done. Over­all, THE DARKEST ROOM is highly rec­om­mended read. There’s no romance in it, sorry to say but then again I didn’t miss it. Vio­lence is graphic but mild. There was a line at the end of the book that was quite haunt­ing to me, con­sid­er­ing all the events that takes place in the story, that says that in the end, that’s what we will all be one day. Mem­o­ries and ghosts. B+.

Notes: This novel is cur­rently avail­able in paper­back and dig­i­tal for­mat. THE DARKEST ROOM is the sec­ond book in a loosely con­nected series. The first book is ECHOES FROM THE DEAD. The cover comes the UK. The US cover looked bor­ing in com­par­i­son. Trans­la­tion was kind of touch & go in a few spots but oth­er­wise, a good read. Updated x2: Edited for bet­ter clar­i­fi­ca­tion and word usage.