The Forbidden Place - Susanne Jansson

Susanne Jansson's creepy thriller feels a bit like it is trying to have its cake and eat it. It relies on tried and tested shocks and revelations, it has a properly creepy location, it hints at mystical forces at work, but it also tries to bring some kind of rational and even scientific response to the the events that take place in the forested wetlands and quagmire of Mossmarken in the west of Sweden. Jansson actually does this rather well in her debut novel, delivering a good crime thriller with hints of underlying darkness and her restraint is something of a virtue, but in the end it does also feel a little bland.

What The Forbidden Place has going well for it though is very definitely its Scandinavian character for location and personality  Biologist Nathalie Strom has rented a cottage in Mossmarken to study greenhouse gas emissions. The bog is a mysterious place with different natural properties, including preserving dead bodies. One recovered body, the Lingonberry Girl is believed to have been a sacrificial offering to the gods of the bog dating from the Iron Age. There are rumours however of disappearances in the area and some believe that there are more recent bodies to be found in the bog.

Nathalie has more than just a scientific interest in the bog. She spent holidays there with her family as a child and is very aware of a rather sinister side of the place, or at least she associates it with some personal traumatic events that took place there. Her familiarity with the nature of the place and an instinctive awareness of its dangers lead her out one night where she rescues a young student she has recently met and become intimate with. Johannes has been attacked, a bundle of coins placed in his pocket, ready it seems to be offered to appease whatever mysterious forces rule the bog.

Johannes is in a coma, so there are a few theories about what has happened. Maya, a photographic artist who occasionally helps out the local police force with crime scene photos, examines a few of the legends surrounding the bog and meets the more eccentric characters of the district. Through them she weighs up the magic, myth and ancient rituals related to the Lingonberry Girl with scientific discoveries and historical facts, balancing sightings of ghosts with quantum physics and theories of emptiness and negation.

As well as presenting a rather balanced view on all matters spooky in The Forbidden Place, Susanne Jansson also manages to keep a tight rein on the criminal investigation as further clues and insights lead them towards some other disturbing finds in the bog. It's rather unfortunate then that the major revelations rely on two rather important gaps suddenly being rather conveniently filled. One is that Johannes is in a coma and it's only when he comes around that he is able to point to his potential killer. The other is Nathalie's revelation into the truth about a dark incident when she was a child, where she is apparently already aware of what really happened but has allowed herself to block it out, only coming back to total recall of the incident when she starts to confide to the comatose Johannes.

The closing revelations then are somewhat anti-climactic, the answers already known but just temporarily out of reach. That doesn't mean that the investigation - mostly undertaken by Maya - doesn't reveal some interesting facts and there is some ambiguity that remains around the nature of the bog, but it does all feel rather 'sedate', with no raging maniac behaviour, shoot-outs or bloody finales. Whether that's the Swedish nature of the work coming through I don't know, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; it's refreshingly real and in character and some might even consider that to be a distinct quality in this genre.

The Forbidden Place by Susanne Jansson is published by Mulholland on 20 September 2018