Monday, July 30, 2018

THE SANDMAN, by Lars Kepler










Mystery/Thriller -- 3 1/2 stars



Thirteen years ago, Mikael Kohler-Frost disappeared along with his sister.  Then one night, he is found wandering on a railroad bridge outside Stockholm.  Unable to explain where or how they were held, the only thing young Mikael is sure of is that his sister is still alive and still with The Sandman. Jurek Walter, the man held responsible for their disappearance and for other similar cases, is locked up in a solitary unit of a mental hospital.  The police send a young undercover officer into Walter's unit in an attempt to get information to save the girl. Unsettling in the same way as The Silence of the Lambs, it unfortunately did not live up to its great beginning.  Just when the tension should have been ratcheted up, the whole narrative seemed to deflate, and the ending seemed to collapse in on itself.  This was too good a story to be wasted on a solution that could have been lifted from multiple B-movies.  

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