Fundamentalist Christians — in Sweden? Not just that, but Lapland, in this deeply felt character-driven mystery that starts with the partial dismemberment of a preacher and sends a smart Stockholm lawyer back to her snowy hometown. Larsson gets deep inside the heads of even minor characters who pop up only once in the narrative and never reappear. That’s a literary risk, but it’s a testament to Larsson’s talent that — even in translation — she somehow makes us care about all these fleeting Gunnars and Bengts. As befits current fiction-fashions, Christians come out looking less than sane, a slant that some will see as gratuitous.
Grade: A-