Island of the Naked Women

Fiction. Translated from the Swedish by Laura Wideburg. Sudden murder and the resulting psychological tension are the hallmarks of Inger Frimansson's acclaimed thrillers. In ISLAND OF NAKED WOMEN, Tobias, an author of mystery novels, must return to the family farm after his father became incapacitated due to a fall from the hayloft. Tobias resents his father's judgmental attitude, but he finds the allure of his father's young wife Sabina hard to resist. Meanwhile, Hardy, the hired hand, scoffs at Tobias's city ways, while encouraging Sabina's mentally challenged son Adam to turn into an Elvis impersonator; and Ingelize, who runs a nearby riding school, finds Tobias irresistible. The rural life becomes increasingly claustrophobic for Tobias, but before he can return to the city, death strikes a hard blow and chaos ensues.

From Publishers Weekly

When Tobias Elmkvist, a Stockholm novelist with career troubles, visits his farmer father, Carl, in the country, he finds himself attracted to Carl's younger partner, Sabina Johansson, in this Hitchcockian tale from Frimansson (The Shadow in the Water), who's twice won the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers' Award. Shortly after Tobias and Sabina give in to their desires in a barn tack-room, a disapproving local, Hardy Lindström, walks in and confronts them. Afraid of blackmail, Tobias plunges a handy screwdriver into Lindström's throat, apparently killing him. Later, after the writer returns to the barn and sees no trace of the body or blood, he wonders whether he imagined the fatal assault. Meanwhile, the police start to look into Lindström's disappearance. Frimansson vividly conveys Tobias's inner torments in a hypnotic psychological study sure to gain her new American readers. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Inger Frimansson (born 1944, Stockholm) is a popular Swedish novelist and crime writer. Having previously worked for 30 years as a journalist, her first novel The Double Bed (Dubbelsangen) was published in 1984. Since then she has written around twenty-five books including poetry, short stories, and books for children. Her breakthrough was with Godnatt, min alskade in 1998. Her crime novels are best described as psychological thrillers.

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