See me fall by Mons Kallentoft

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A FAMILY´S WORST NIGHTMARE OCCURS?

A missing daughter, a father who swears never to stop searching, and a breathless pursuit through the dark underbelly of a glittery wonderland. This is paradise lost.

Stockholm, 2015. Tim Blanck drives his 16-year-old daughter Emme to the airport: she is going on holiday to the party island of Mallorca. It’s Emme’s first trip alone with friends, one step closer to adulthood. But she never returns. Surveillance cameras capture Emme Blanck leaving a night club in the early hours of the morning and disappearing into the dark. After that, she’s gone.

Fast forward three years. The Spanish police have closed the investigation of Emme’s disappearance. Tim, ex-police officer turned private investigator, has moved to Palma de Mallorca to pursue the search for his missing daughter. He dreams of reuniting his family, but his ex-wife, Rebecka, is still in Stockholm. Even though Tim’s obsession with finding their daughter has torn their marriage apart, deep down Rebecka hopes Tim won’t give up the search.

Tim is contacted by a wealthy German to shadow his young wife who he believes is having an affair. Tim takes the job, but soon the wife’s lover – an English escort – is murdered, and the wife disappears without a trace. Tim’s German client is suspected of killing the lover, but he keeps insisting on his innocence. He asks Tim to clear his name and find his missing wife. Before Tim has time to get to work, his client dies in jail – the police claim the man took his own life but Tim is convinced he was murdered…

The pursuit of the truth leads Tim to the corrupt elite of Mallorca. And when a brothel owner shows him a photo from a private party at a hotel where the English escort worked, Tim catches a glimpse of his daughter’s jacket. A cold lead becomes hot again: someone has seen Emme on the night she disappeared. As Tim plunges deeper into murky political waters, he cracks the door to the depth of the island’s corruption – and to the lengths people will go for money.  As the noose tightens, Tim finds himself racing to find both his lost daughter and to save his own life. Where shall he go – and who can he trust?

See Me Fall is a feverish page turner that is impossible to put down. But it is also a poignant story of loss, longing, a father’s boundless love for his child, and the darkness hidden behind the slick façade of a holiday paradise. What happens when a family’s worst nightmare occurs, and how does it affect those left behind? How deep does corruption go on an isolated pleasure island where everything has a price?

Taut action scenes, singular psychological depth, and a language that is  seething with passion: See Me Fall is a rare masterpiece of a thriller that echoes the grit of the classic film Chinatown.