When young Swedish woman Eleanor finds her manipulative, angry grandmother Vivianne dying of a stab wound, she’s more depressed and bewildered than sad. Vivianne raised Eleanor on a steady diet of scorching belittlement after the girl was left an orphan. Eleanor’s now working to overcome the hurt while learning to cope with prosopagnosia, or face blindness (she can’t recognize faces, even her own in the mirror). The story quickly moves to Solhöga, Vivianne’s country mansion, where Eleanor, her boyfriend and aunt, and Vivianne’s lawyer aim to inventory the contents. The chore becomes a terrifying ordeal when various members of the party come to mysterious harm; the somber house and sad diary entries detailing the lonely days of a long-ago maid at Solhöga add to the forbidding atmosphere. Sten’s character-driven, psychologically immersive puzzle will keep readers guessing until the end about who killed Vivianne and what’s behind the mysteries at the house. Eleanor’s face blindness adds an interesting and thankfully not overused element to the tale; an apt complement to this is Sarah Strohmeyer’s Do I Know You? (Harper, November), which features a “super-recognizer” who remembers for years the faces of people she sees even once in a crowd.
