The Invisible
by Mats Wahl
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
ISBN: 0-374-33609-1
A Swedish Law and Order without the Law part of the show, the point of this book may be lost in a cultural shuffle. A case of a violent crime leaves a teenage boy missing with no trace and a detective weeding through the thinly veiled racism and anti-immigrant sentiment in the town to find him. But the detective is not alone; in a plot device surely lost in translation, the boy is an invisible party following, almost haunting the unwitting detective, but ultimately more haunted by what has happened to him and his invisibility. The narrative is very matter of fact, the description is stark, the ending frankly a little cheesy, and though some of the characters are developed more may be archetypes. The book does hold a certain charm for mystery and crime lovers, or fans of Swedish writing, and has even been made into a movie. It is recommended for libraries with large collections that contain the movie.
