When I started Dark Music I was not sure whether I would enjoy it. For the first quarter it introduced the reader to Professor Rekke and Michael, who has been attached to a police team investigating a recent murder. I felt the dialogue was stilted without nuance perhaps due to the translation.

Having said that as I persevered I was drawn into the story and started to care about them. A good book with a complicated plot. It is the first book in a new series as the ending sets Rekke and Micaela on a new investigation.

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for an early copy of this book for an independent review

David Lagercrantz wrote the final three books of the Millennium series- Dragon Tattoo- and this new series featuring a detective and an international psychologist - expert in interrogation techniques-has a reasonably promising start exploring the death of an Afghanistani man in Sweden - the story explore the world of musicians , terrorism and the CIA. It is a convoluted plot but it is the dynamic between Rekke and Vargas that keeps the book from becoming pedestrian. Much of the book is about establishing the characters and their dynamic so it will be interesting to see how this progresses… at times a plodding read but with moments of spark . An intriguing start.

I’m not quite sure just how I feel about this book it was very different to what I was expecting and although I did enjoy a large part of it I also had some reservations. I did find some of the dialogue quite clunky at times but in all fairness that could have been down to the fact it was translated. I think the problem I had was is this was much more a character driven book and not so much the crime thriller I thought it would be and it did seem to drag in parts.
In conclusion I can say this was just an ok book for me I didn’t hate it but I just didn’t love it either.
My thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books, MacLehose Press for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a promising book, but I found the writing style too off-putting so it was a real struggle to read it. It may make a good TV series though.

Story very well written, captivating mystery, easy to read & page turner.

I am voluntarily reviewing a copy I received free via NetGalley.

Dark Music is a murder mystery and the synopsis likens it to Sherlock Holmes.
Professor Rekke and Micaela Vargas are the two main characters and the book is clearly focused on them, rather than the plot or solving a murder.
For me, this is not the most interesting style of writing. I need a little more thriller/crime and a little less in depth exploration of the main characters. There was little of the darkness promised in the title. The location for the book could have been anywhere, I got no feeling for the Swedish location.
Thank you to Quercus and Netgalley for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Apologies, but I am not sure about this book at all!

The premise is the book is loosely based on Sherlock Holmes and his method of deductions, and in that respect, it worked. Rekke comes from a wealthy Swedish family, is an ex-child musical prodigy who becomes a psychologist but has numerous issues, is addicted to drugs, bipolar, etc, almost comes across as a tick box exercise.

Rekke is approached by the police to look into the case of an Afghani referee who is found dead in a forest shortly after he had an altercation with the main suspect during a match.

Most of the story centers around Rekke and Vargas, the daughter of a Chilean migrant who died under suspicious circumstances, her family is murky at best with a drug addict brother, and another brother who seems to be a local crime lord, she lives in the local 'bad' area.

Unfortunately, I found the story quite drawn out, and the effect Vargas seems to have on most of the males she deals with is laughable, the majority of men (especially those in authority) seem 'bewitched' by her, and some of the descriptions of these situations was a little strange.

Just wasn't for me

I received this book from Quercus Books via Netgalley. I had difficulty getting through this book. The premise is interesting. Two completely opposite characters come together to solve a murder. Two characters with each their own quirks and life stories. It's being sold as inspired by Sherlock Holmes which sounds quite nice, to be honest.

However, I did not like the characters at all. And, unfortunately, most of the book was focused on the two main characters and the murder and the overlapping story was of secondary importance. And that is a major flaw when characters are not likeable whatsoever. It is an easy read but what I mentioned above really puts the quality down.

This was definitely more character driven than plot so it depends on what you like in a story. For me I needed more plot to keep me interested. In saying that, there was a lot to like and I particularly liked Professor Rekke’s complex character. This is the first in the series and I will certainly be picking up the next one! Thanks for the opportunity to review this book.

Thoroughly Entertaining. This is the fourth book I’ve read by David Lagercrantz and I’m certainly a fan of his writing. He has that wonderful ability to pull you into the story, where you can be lost for many wonderful hours. Besides having a great plot, the unpredictability of the story is what appealed to me.
I really enjoyed Professor Rekke as a character, especially his incredible observation skills, it was certainly a stand out in the story. Michaela and the professor work well together, and I’d like to see more from them in the future. It’s definitely a book that keeps you guessing.

If you enjoy Thrillers, then this is a must read. 5/5 Star Rating.

This was an enjoyable read that was nearly all focused upon character developement, almost to the point where it completely negated the plot for a large portion of the book. Having said that though, I do like the authors writing and so I hope as it goes on it will get better.

How far from the original can a book allegedly inspired by Sherlock Holmes get before the allusion breaks? This does have a wonder-mind at the heart of what little investigating is going on, but there is not a lot that Conan Doyle fans could really pin down as on their exact wavelength. For one, the main focus of the narrative, Micaela, is no John Watson MD. She's a Chilean in the Stockholm police, put on a murder squad as she knows the prime suspect of old, in a case where a referee of a junior football match was found stoned to death shortly after the match, and just outside the stadium. Beppe, the suspect, was drunkenly antagonistic to the ref during the closing minutes, but refuses to admit anything, through days and weeks of interrogation. When some disreputable coppers (the kind who dismiss anything their superior comes up with, the kind who think they can judge Micaela from her fringe and how she might dress – that kind) are told to go and see what brainbox Professor Rekke thinks of it all, she can only smirk when he says Beppe is innocent and the investigation is a shambles. But taken off the case, she can no longer help solve the crime, and with Rekke the most erratic, irregular kind of guy, she can't get his full verdict on it all. Until, that may be, she manages to stop him in the middle of an apparent suicide attempt...

So what out of this is Conan Doyle's Holmes? Rekke is introduced in a way that allows him to show off his powers of observation and abductive reasoning, and he likes his drugs of a night when his mind gets dark. He's a musician, too. And there's a similar address for them both at one point, and brother in power. But by making him the character he is, the author has made him much more reactionary, never instigating anything, never snatching his accoutrements with a cry of the game's afoot! and fleeing to the crime scene. And he's not really there either to say the lawmen are asses, as it were, because in being so contemptible to both their job and to Micaela, on then immediately off the murder squad for finding herself Team Rekke, they start out with naff-all of our empathy.

And Micaela soon proves herself to be another problem. Coincidentally from the same banlieue-styled environment as Beppe, her past and her brothers add another layer to proceedings, but it's yet one more layer that doesn't exactly make the main plot any more enjoyable. So there's her side of things, the dodgy cops a-plenty, the issues the main murder brings, what with the victim having fled Afghanistan, and the whole dark nature of Rekke – little of this can be said to be here for our pleasure, making this not the most sprightly of page-turners.

Finally on the Holmesian references, this proves to be an entirely different kind of thriller – this is one of those more wide-reaching, geopolitical, post-Cold War kinds of novels, before it just about grasps a more intimate nettle. If you like that sort of read, and we've had a lot over the decades since the Soviet Union fell and the Red Peril disappeared, this might be fine – although until I saw what actual, specific aspect of its topic and setting I was to experience and learn about I did think it an awkward choice, reviving a real-world theme long since talked over and dealt with and forgotten.

This by no means is a failure, and I did have enough invested in the case to read every word, but I do think it will suffer by its nature. Why get the likes of me interested in a Holmes-goes-Scandi crime piece, when it turns out to be a different kind of thriller entirely? Rekke is allowed carte blanche to give snap, ever-correct judgements, yet we never get the more pleasurable bits where he shows his workings. Neither is he the cleaner kind of character one can grasp – there is a most awkward spell here where he is on drugs and depressed, and she's got a lump to the head, and neither seem that compos mentis, forcing us to always feel doubt and on thin ice as we read. I know genre fiction has changed greatly since Conan Doyle's day, but he would never allow us to feel so insecure and unassured. Nor would he produce something nearly this woolly.

All that said, I would be on board for the sequel as posited here, as long as it does what I'd come along for.

First of all thank you to @quercusbooks and #netgalley for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. It means a lot to me.

Dark Music is a murder mystery a la Sherlock Holmes. As with all mysterys I like to go in as blindly as I can and this time the synopsis did not take away from the story or spoil anything. I am happy about that.

Professor Rekke and Micaela Vargas are extremely well developed characters. Sadly so well that the first 30% of the book completely neglected the plot. Now I love good character development throughout a plot. But this was a bit too much and it also made me feel like it went a bit all over the place in that bit of the book. It felt a bit unbalanced.

Other than that once we returned to the plot and focused on solving this mystery I was amazed. I loved what this about. I loved how Micaela and Rekke worked together. I loved how Micaela found her way in the as it seemed very male dominant work place of hers. I love how Rekke did not care about people calling him unreliable due to his mental health and just moved on to solving the mystery.

It is a very well written mystery. I love Lagercrantz writing. I just wish his first books would not struggle as much with the character development. Hopefully the next one focuses a bit more on the plot or has a better balance between it. Other than that 3 stars from me.