The Fredrika Storm Series

With its yellow canola fields, beech forests and small hills, the picturesque region of Skåne greets its visitors with friendliness. Yet, however startling it is, the area is also home to some dark secrets and crimes.

It’s to this place that the troubled Fredrika Storm returns after spending a few years in Stockholm. Growing up in the small town of Harlösa, where the community could be suffocating at times, Fredrika decides to try her wings as a police officer in the capital. She moves back to her home region and lands a job as police investigator at the local station in Lund, after a traumatic event on duty forcing her to leave her position in Stockholm behind. Fredrika teams up with Henry Calment – in many aspects the complete opposite of her. Henry is a calm and reflective person who’s chosen to work as police investigator after many years of studying various subjects, and values his personal life with friends, good food and art. Fredrika, on the other hand, has always wanted to join the police force, and is an impulsive person who easily gets emotionally involved in her job. Despite both Fredrika and Henry having solid inner walls to protect themselves, they find solace in each other and their differences. Together they tackle criminal matters as well as personal ones.

In Birds of Sorrow, the first installment in the series, we get acquainted with Fredrika’s family and their internal disputes that go back many years. Meanwhile, a young woman goes through the ice on a cold January day, just by the little town of Harlösa. Fredrika and Henry are put on the case and soon realize that, since the woman was a newcomer to the area, few people actually knew her. What was her intention going there? When the duo learn that she was looking for Tobias Falk, a troublesome man who left the village twenty years ago, Fredrika and Henry realize that the case is more complex than they initially thought.

The second installment, White Angel, tackles the dark history of the Swedish mental healthcare. When two teenagers sneak inside the abandoned buildings of the old mental hospital, they suddenly come across an old skeleton hidden in one of the walls. Could it be the remains of Marie-Louise Sparre or Tommy Svensson, the two patients who disappeared from the mental institution thirty years prior, and maybe the last remaining clue to solve the riddle which has been haunting the town for so long?

In the Shadows, the third installment in the series, puts a spotlight on the old and infamous university in Lund and what happens behind closed doors. It’s late spring when a young woman goes missing and her worried mother calls the police for help. Fredrika and Henry step in to solve the case and are quickly drawn into a web of lies and secrets. What is the connection between the missing woman, the promising CEO of a tech company and a secret society at the university?

With a sharp eye for intelligent suspense and a steady hand, Frida Skybäck takes us through mysteries set against the backdrop of the Swedish south, often inspired by true events. In each book we follow the duo Fredrika and Henry, crafted with a caring hand. At once engaging and moving, the Fredrika Storm series grabs hold of the reader from the very first page.