‘An absolutely prime slice of Scandicrime’ – Financial Times

It starts with the dead cats. Beloved pets gone missing, only to be found on grotesque display months later, slayed in a park or hanged in a garden. The sort of thing that shouldn’t happen in a good neighbourhood like this, the school mums mutter in worried voices.

Rikke thinks they’re exaggerating. But very soon, a far more unthinkable incident occurs in the large, four family-house in Tåsen where she lives with her two children and husband Åsmund. It is the kind of place they always dreamt of, a stone’s throw from the city, still quiet and green. Somewhere life could be just perfect.

When Jørgen, the neighbor from the apartment upstairs, is found murdered, the idyll is shattered. Or did that happen much longer ago?

Over the next few days, as police and press are swarming the house, things begin to unravel. For the neighbors, who start to realize how little they know about people living right next door. And for Rikke, who knows she cannot keep postponing the conversation that will either ruin or save her marriage. The investigators soon reveal that murder couldn’t have been carried out by an intruder. And another dead cat is found in the garden.

Helene Flood made a massive international breakthrough with her 2019 debut “The Therapist”, sold in 28 countries and earning rave reviews and numerous awards and nominations. With “The Lover” she has once again written a razor-sharp, super suspenseful and surprising novel about human relationships and the secrets we sometimes try to keep from ourselves, as well as from the people closest to us. With rare insight and narrative talent, she creates an extremely vivid and believable portrait of a small community that resembles us and everyone we know, until they are deeply shaken by the unthinkable.