Dead man
Dead bunny
Mute girl
And a Paradise in flames.
It is Midsummer’s Eve and a scorching heat wave blankets Ådalen as the town of Lockne gathers for a celebration at the old, local homestead. The enigmatic owner of the heavily debated, new strip club Paradise, has invited everyone to the festivities. His name is Lukasz Grēve, but the locals call him the Count. The women in Lockne are very fond of him, but rumors swirl around town that he embodies the very essence of malevolence; that he may just be the Devil himself.
As the night of Midsummer unfolds, a fight erupts at the party as the priest attacks the Count in blind fury. A few hours later, Paradise burns down to the ground and Lukasz is found dead in his nearby apartment. The very same night, at the village cemetery, a girl is discovered sitting in front of a grave. She is dressed only in her underwear and seems to be gripped by shock while cradling a lifeless bunny in her arms. The questions instantly pile up – who set Paradise on fire that night? What happened to Lukasz? And who is the girl who won’t speak?
Social worker Annie Ljung and child interrogator Sara Emilsson of the Kramfors Police must once again join forces. They are thrust into a homicide and arson investigation and are soon entangled in the mystery of the mute girl. Is she a victim or a witness? When they probe into the girl’s past, Annie is forced to once again confront her own lingering wounds and buried memories.
As they delve deeper into the investigation, Sara and Annie realize that the Count was largely disregarded by the townsfolk, but at the same time many seemed to have found him alluring and almost enchanting. The locals speak of strange affairs, break-ins and mysterious meetings, while others tell tales of the Count with longing in their eyes. Is his death a crime of passion or did someone want him out of town so fervently that they decided to take matters into their own hands? Sara and Annie try to paint a clear picture of the events on Midsummer’s Eve, but they only seem to get lost in a labyrinth of misty stray roads.
Come to Me marks the third installment in Ulrika Rolfsdotter’s series revolving around Annie Ljung, set against the wild nature of Ådalen. Through her multifaceted writing, Rolfsdotter breathes life into her characters, masterfully depicting the complex realities of what it is like to be human. Come To Me is at once a suspenseful story and a heart-wrenching tale about complicated relationships between child and parent, the fear of mortality and the anguish of loss. It is also a portrayal of a town in-between tradition and modernity, both heaven and hell all at once.
Author
Reviews
“It is very well written, touching, captivating and suspenseful all the way to the resolution. […] Ulrika Rolfsdotter is an author very much worth reading.”
Kapprakt (SE)
“The portrayal of the milieu in Ådalen, with its landscape and villages, is one of the strengths in the suspense novels about Annie Ljung. Ulrika Rolfsdotter also writes with great insight into human nature, and Annie’s professional role as a social worker […] which provides her own angle in the overpopulated crime genre. In Come to Me, Ulrika Rolfsdotter also succeeds in evoking a feverish, lustful atmosphere surround the Count who seems to have driven the village mad.”
Gefle Dagblad (SE)
“Ulrika Rolfsdotter tells a more important story after her spectacular introduction. It’s about the characters: the traumatized teenage girl, the desperate wife in her husband’s suffocating control. And, of course, social worker Annie Ljung who struggles with her relationship with Thomas, a local teacher, and the lonely police officer Sara. […] Ulrika Rolfsdotter writes skillfully about loneliness and misguided people in a beautiful, sparsely populated river valley.”
Dagens Nyheter (SE)