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I received this book for free from Grand Cen­tral Publishing in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

In a forest in Denmark, a ranger discovers the fresh corpse of an unidentified woman. A large scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. After four days, Louise Rick-the new commander of the Missing Persons Department-is still without answers. But when she releases a photo to the media, an older woman phones to say that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette, like the other children in the institution, was abandoned by her family and branded a "forgotten girl." But Louise soon discovers something more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates over 30 years ago. As the investigation brings Louise closer to her childhood home, she uncovers more crimes that were committed-and hidden-in the forest, and finds a terrible link to her own past that has been carefully concealed.

It’s been a while since I have read an adult mystery/thriller so I decided it was time and this one sounded good. When I requested it, I didn’t realize it was part of a series, but it seems they are more companion novels so it didn’t matter. I was also interested in the setting of this story since it takes place in Denmark. Overall I didn’t really care too much for the characters, but the story kept me interested. Like almost always for me, I did figure out the mystery quickly, but there was much more to it than just who was the person behind it.

Loiuse is now heading a department for missing persons. She is both nervous and excited about this new venture. I don’t know if I had read the previous six books in the series if I would have liked her character more, or at least understood her, but she just wasn’t a character I could really connect with. She seemed very particular about things, and doesn’t really seem to like people much or come across very friendly. In fact she was a bit off-putting to me. Regardless, she was decent at her job, and really does have the heart for wanting to do the right thing. A bit self absorbed, but not a character I hated. She has a tough past, and being back in her home town investigating this crime brings back a lot of that bad history.

Eik is her partner in the missing persons department. I didn’t like him at first, but he grew on me. We first are introduced to him when she picks him up from a pub and he is passed out and has some shots upon waking and going with her. He seemed to have no respect for others and didn’t really give a shit. Well, that turned out to not be true. He is fantastic at his job and he was a very hard worker. He seems like a complex character that we only just start to discover the depths of. He was very up front and didn’t hold back, but he also doesn’t really go much into his personal life. He has a way of getting people to want to talk and open up. I am interested to see if future books in this series have more of him.

At it’s core, this is a mystery. We have a dead girl who is unidentified. Then when they do discover who she is, it turns out that she was supposedly deceased thirty years ago… and had a twin sister, also deceased at the same time. We get into the depths of the mental institution and what was really going on. There is a lot of secrets and scandals that were covered up. Not only are we trying to solve the mystery of who committed the crime, we also are trying to discover why these girls were said to be dead, where they have been, and why all of this occurred. A lot of it was easy to piece together, but some of it was still a surprise. Especially going back and finding numerous missing persons cases that helped link everything together in the end.

The writing was fantastic and the mystery element was well done. I wanted to know more about the characters themselves, but like I said before, this is the seventh book in this series so that might be why I felt the disconnect. I love a good mystery that has bits of danger and an intricate story, so this was enjoyable for me in that way. I think I would like to go back and read some of the previous books to get to know Louise a little better since I think that was what made me just feel meh about this book. Characters are so important to me and I just felt this was lacking in that department. Overall it was good though and I would definitely read her other books.

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