Fatal Gambit
by David Lagercrantz (Jonathan Ball Publishers)Reviewed by Anschen Conradie (Uit die perd se bek)
The exclamation ‘Elementary, my dear Watson!’, is synonymous with one of the most famous detectives in literature. Armed with superlative powers of deduction and an astonishing eye for detail, no riddle would remain unsolved on his watch.
Hans Rekke fits the bill of his Swedish 21st century successor. Described as ‘…Sherlock Holmes without the bravado…’ (222) he is a world authority on interrogation techniques, capable of impressive feats of logic and observation. Unlike Holmes, Rekke possesses a fragile psyche, however, and falls apart under pressure.
His proverbial Watson is a police constable, Micaela Vargas, daughter of Chilean political refugees who had settled in Stockholm, and sister to two brothers constantly on the wrong side of the law.
An innocent holiday snapshot taken in Venice is the trigger of a rollercoaster ride with tracks crisscrossing as far as Spain and Russia. The woman visible in the photograph shows an uncanny resemblance to one Claire Lidman, but she has been dead for fourteen years. Rekke’s abilities enable him to observe in the photograph that ‘…this woman’s gait has compensatory features…’ (20), compatible with a meniscus injury that characterized Claire’s motion, and this minute detail rings alarm bells in a Hungarian investment company headed by a vengeful rival who had sworn revenge on Rekke when they were only twelve years old.
The Rekke-Vargas investigative team was first introduced in ‘Dark Music’ (2022), the predecessor of this novel. The novelist is probably best known for his novels following those of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, featuring Lisbeth Salander.
Lagercrantz follows Doyle’s lead in creating an eccentric, but brilliant investigator: ‘Often it felt like he was walking at a different pace from everyone else…’ (120) but retains none of the playful amusement of his British counterpart.
The novel is a classic example of modern Scandinavian crime fiction; cold, calculating, and cruel, challenging the reader with more than just solving the riddle.
