Läckberg considers herself a crime dilettante since discovering such literature on her father's bookshelf at a tender age this has remained her reading fascination. Läckberg's books have received special praise for detail and "in-depth characterization". Those around are observed for behaviour, then the protagonist is hidden in a plethora of characters-although the readers are never deceived per se.
What interests is primarily psychology:-just how 'horrible' people are capable of being! Läckberg - sometimes called the Swedish Agatha Christie - became a writer after her husband and parents enrolled her in a creative writing course as a Christmas present: 'For me actually, specific images – snapshots – come first, and then the story starts to come together from those bits and pieces. I am very visual when I write, I "see" the story in pictures and writing a book is like having a movie running in my head 24/7.' The scenes are described in a few words which gives the reader a simple pattern to work from-they have to provide the rest:- "I read about furniture makers I’ve never heard about, designers I cannot pronounce, and magazines which seem interesting enough to look through. Needless to say Google's search-engine works overtime during my research!"
Although her actual creative process is shrouded in mystery some suggest Läckberg first looks for a motive then works from there; these-as her plots-she terms 'finite' attributions: money, jealousy, revenge, loss etc. 'Understanding why someone does something terrible like a murder is interesting.' The characters are definitely the strong point: they are complicated people who are far from perfect, their innermost workings are interesting, often amusing, having a patina of realism. At the end of each book is a 'imaginary peripeteia' as in ancient Greek drama, a reversal showing everything from a new perspective.
Läckberg often uses a familiar narrative ploy of running two stories alongside one another (In the Stone Cutter the current murder investigation and the story of Anders Andersson, a stone cutter from Stromstad in 1923. In the Hidden Child the assassination of a retired history teacher juxtaposed against Erika's mothers wartime diaries). Although the protagonist is sometimes known before the finish thus avoiding a cliched denouement at the end-the writing is skillful enough to still demand our attention.
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