Good Night, My Darling

by

Inger Frimansson  

ISBN: 9781-929355-37-2

Price: $16 (trade paperback) * 324 pages

Synopsis: Justine is a wealthy woman in her forties, living alone in a big house full of troubled memories of a tortured childhood. Now the memories come back to haunt Justine, but she is prepared. It is time for Justine to take revenge on everyone that has done her wrong…

- This was the break-through novel for one of Scandinavia ’s premier psychological thriller writers.

- More than 150,000 copies have been sold in Sweden and has now been published in 9 countries

- It became a bestseller also in Germany, where it has been re-printed six times since its first publication in 2002. In addition to the success of the original edition, the novel has also been published in several other editions by Bertelsmann.

- It was awarded with the Swedish Academy of Crime Writer’s Award for Best Swedish Crime Novel 1998.  

Good Night My Darling has also scored brilliantly with the critics both in Sweden and internationally. Here’s a selection of Swedish press quotes:

• “The story of Justine Dalvik’s upbringing and her exquisite scheme for revenge is both a frightening thriller and a splendid portrait of a woman.” - Kvällsposten
• “With this book, she stands out as one of the great authors of psychological suspense in contemporary Swedish literature.” - GT
• “Good Night my Darling is a terribly powerful tale, a thriller that gives me goosebumps.” - Västerviks-Tidning
• “The best crime novel of the year. /---/ Inger Frimansson’s new book is so good, I simply can’t put it aside.” - Jönköpings-Posten
• “In some lucky cases, one encounters an author who does not only create expectations, but fulfill them as well. Henning Mankell did that in his books about Kurt Wallander, and so does Inger Frimansson in her psychological thriller Good Night my Darling. But whereas Mankell often tries to pinpoint the external factors which  shape our lives, Frimansson concentrates on what we look like on the inside; what it feels like to be at someone’s mercy.” - Eskilstuna Kuriren

And here are a few U.S. reviews:  

from Library Journal - Mary Todd Chesnut  

Justine Dalvik appears to be an ordinary yet eccentric fortysomething Swedish woman living in her childhood home with her pet bird, but below the surface, there is a volcano waiting to erupt. Since her mother's death when she was a toddler, Justine's life has been silently careening out of control. She has endured intense bullying at school, emotional and physical cruelty at the hands of her stepmother, sexual abuse as a teenager, and betrayal by a lover in adulthood. In a story as fragmented and erratic as Justine's own past, Frimansson, one of Scandinavia 's most popular writers, weaves a tale of psychological terror that reveals what happens when a victim decides to take revenge on a world that has made her life a living hell. While this novel received very favorable reviews in Europe—and the Swedish Academy of Crime Writer's Award for Best Swedish Crime Novel in 1998—perhaps something has been lost in translation. The disjointed way in which the narrative changes from past to present makes for a difficult read. An optional purchase for public libraries.    

from Mystery Scene - Betty Webb

When it comes to bleakness, it doesn't get bleaker than Inger Frimansson's Good Night, My Darling, set in chilly Sweden . The book follows Justine Dalvig, a sad, middle-aged woman who shares her large house with a pet bird. In this harrowing psychological study, we learn that Justine endured a horrific childhood at the hands of Flora, her sly, sadistic stepmother. Now Flora is a helpless stroke victim, confined to a nursing home where Justine takes frequent visits - but not out of altruism. Flora wasn't the only person who made childhood hell for Justine. So did a schoolmate and an unfaithful lover. Like so many bullying victims, Justine becomes a bully herself, and with chilling prescience we watch her begin to plot vengeance on those who victimized her. Beautifully translated from the original Swedish by Laura Wideburg, Good Night is a peerless exploration into the mind of a dark, lost soul. Inger Frimansson is one of Sweden 's premier psychological thriller writers, the winner of theSwedish Academy of Mystery Authors Award for her books - and it's easy to see why.

 

from several sources (including Midwest Book Review) - "A fine crime thriller" - Harriet Klausner  

Justine Dalvik was a young child when her mother died, but her wealthy father, owner of a candy company, gave her his full attention so she coped with the loss rather well. It wasn’t too long afterward that he married his secretary Flora who tried briefly to get Justine to warm up to her. However when Justine refuses to talk to her, Flora turns physically and verbally abusive. School proved to escape either as a clique of girls led by Berit Assarson tormented her there. Years later Justine falls in love with Nathan, who wants to open up a travel agency for clients who want a taste of something different. He and Justine meet Martina, a young adventuress who uses her photojournalist skills to travel the world. On a trek together, Nathan vanishes and Martina is killed. Justine explains to the police an intruder entered their room so she locked herself in the bathroom until he left. At about the same time, Flora has spent the last few years in a rundown nursing home. Justine meets Berit who apologizes for her mistreatment of her when they were students however, she disappears with the police suspecting Justine of foul play because Nathan and Berit remain missing and Martina was murdered.

GOOD NIGHT, MY DARLING won the Swedish Academy of Crime Writer’s award as the Best Swedish Crime Novel. Readers will understand why as the story line starts off as a dysfunctional family drama but transitions into a suspense thriller. The audience doesn’t get to know Justine very well although ironically the tale is told by her. Yet that feeling of detached aloofness makes her a fascinating character able to hold the tense story line together as fans will wonder whether she is a psychopathic killer or a victim.

 

from ForeWord Magazine - "The Geography of Murder" - Edward Morris  

The most engaging mysteries are those in which location rises to the level of character. Surroundings, after all, tend to shape people’s outlooks, aspirations, motives, and prospects. Authors ignore this reality at their own dramatic peril. The wiliest detective and the most elusive criminal is he—or she—who knows the home territory best, whether it be the actual streets of San Francisco or the artificial waterfront of mythic Cabot Cove.

For crime-story devotees who inquire, “Where is it?” before they ask “Who done it?” this year’s harvest of newly published sleuthies is a trove of geographical delights.. . . . . . . . . . . .  

Justine Dalvik is the central figure in Inger Frimansson’s Good Night, My Darling (Caravel Books, 978-1-929355-37-2). While much of the story takes place throughout the village of Hasselby Villastad near Stockholm , Sweden , and in the wilds of Kuala Lumpur , the real geographical center is Dalvik’s ancestral home. “For her entire life, Justine had lived in this house, by the water next to Hasselby Villastad,” says the narrator. “It was a narrow, tall little stone house, just right for two or three people. There had never been more than three, except for the short time with the baby.”

Within this house, Justine’s mother dies and is too soon replaced by the menacing stepmother, Flora. Here, also, Justine retreats from the merciless taunts of her schoolmates. Here she bears the child that will not live. Here she rendezvouses with her lovers. Here she keeps the large, foreboding bird that flies about at will, alarming both her willing and unwilling guests. Although there are murders aplenty, this intriguing book is at bottom the story of a mind slowly going mad—but in the most inventive ways.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Whether it’s Louisville , the Louvre, or the loo, every place is an ideal site for a mystery—as long as it’s texture instead of backdrop.  

 

from Spinetingler.com - Diane Bane
What if Ingmar Bergman were to write a screenplay for a contemporary Snow White, with a really dark twist on the happily-ever-after?  Well, it might turn out to be something like Good Night, My Darling. Certainly it would have the dark, brooding Swedish atmosphere Bergman did so well. But believe it or not, Frimansson’s book is better.   

The King is a wealthy candy manufacturer, whose good wife dies when Justine, our Snow White, is only three.  Their castle is a tall, narrow, stone house beside a lake in Hasselby Villastad, a village not far from Stockholm . Daddy soon marries Flora, who makes that wicked queen with the mirror look like an amateur. When Justine becomes a young woman and meets a hunter in the forest, she seduces him, thereby ending any resemblance to the fairy tale. Or perhaps it was never there to begin with. This is psychological thriller that plays with your mind. 

The story is told primarily from Justine’s point of view, in the present when she is in her mid-forties and her father has recently died, leaving her the house by the lake. Flora, the stepmother, is in a nursing home dealing with the aftereffects of a stroke that has left her partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The narrative moves smoothly in and out of Justine’s memories even as it tells of her current life, in which she meets a new man, renews an old friendship, visits Flora regularly, and tends the pet blackbird that lives inside the house. This episodic manner of advancing the story is not easy to pull off, but Frimansson does it so well that you become enmeshed before you know it. The tension builds to such an unbearable degree that   you might want to stop reading, but you can’t. You are caught inextricably in Justine’s tale, which is, above all, a story of What Happens After.  

Good Night, My Darling won the Swedish Mystery Writers award for Best First Mystery in 1998. This is its first English translation and first time published in the US .  It is also one of the best books I’ve read this year.   

The author: Inger Frimansson, author and journalist, is considered by critics to be Sweden ’s premier author of psychological thrillers. They place her novels in the same class as the best English and American novels in the genre and she is very often compared to Minette Walters in particular. Inger Frimansson’s writing is characterized by the way she sees the dark and morbid reality behind what seems to be an idyll. Her style is concise and suggestive and she has since long established herself as one of Sweden ’s bestselling thriller writers. Frimansson is the only female writer to be awarded twice with the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers ’ Award (for Good Night, My Darling in 1998 and for The Shadow in the Water in 2005).  

ISBN: 9781-929355-37-2 /  $16 (trade paperback) * 324 pages  

Click here to read an essay by Inger on writing mysteries.