The hypnotist.

17 (audio/printed). The Hypnotist. Lars Kepler. First book I read half and half as an audiobook (while I drive) and printed version (at home); it worked quite well! The audio gave me the pronunciation of the Swedish characters, and literally a voice for the characters.

I got to this book because supposedly it was the next Swedish noir mystery after the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which Victoria loved, actually it was a gift for her), so I can't help to compare them: The Hypnotist is much better written, more concise, less repetitive than the former. However, the characters are more compelling and the topic is more interesting on the later.

The Hypnotist does a good job of bringing back the past to the present, of giving an oppressive atmosphere that makes every event dramatic. The story has two main streams of evil, the dismembered family which is found on the first pages, and the psychopath that is chasing the hypnotist. Yet, it was on the secondary plots that my stomach churned at the unjustified jealousy of the hypnotist's wife, and mostly at the pure evil of the pokemon kids, who defied her at the mall, attacked her father, steal and bullies the mentally disabled kid and were in general defiant of any adult authority.

Funny enough, in the context of the very sordid crimes of the novel (child torture, imprisonment and murder for example), the secondary crimes, the ones committed by the kids/teens were the ones I found more disturbing, perhaps because I found more real, more likely... and yet, those are in general loose ends, the author intentionally leaves those offences unpunished.

I found myself wishing that these crime novel had a little less evil, I mean, you can long for justice even if the murderer didn't kill a family with a toddler and dismember them. I think I'd wish for a less obvious and extreme, more subtle evil. For example, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the transformation to evil is marked by Mr. Hyde hitting an old man with a cane! And I despise Hollywood dumbing a psychological transformation down to a physical transformation into the incredible Hulk. But I digress,    I think that going for such sordid crimes is a bit excessive, the real evil, the worst evil is less bloody, is a corrupt government official, is a fundamentalist preacher. By the way, as I read the novel, drug gangs left 23 decapitated bodies in one of my favourite places of my hometown.