After She'd Gone - Alex Dahl

One isn't necessarily better than the other, and it's not always the case, but there is often something more urgent and frightening about a thriller that has some basis in real world events that involve human suffering. I'm thinking of something like Will Dean's The Last Thing to Burn, which had a case of people trafficking at the centre of it*, and there's a similar kind of crime and human exploitation in Alex Dahl's After She'd Gone. Human trafficking can take many forms however and not all are obvious, even to the victim until it is too late. For some, they appear to have landed in a fairy-tale only for it to descend into a living hell with no escape.

That kind of crime may even be more frightening and contemporary in its concerns because it's dealing with young women being exploited and abused - and in some cases murdered - by members of a rich and exclusive set. Here we read about young beautiful women from Eastern countries who are being offered modelling careers, walking catwalks for designer brands, being jetted off to exotic locations for photo shoots and invited to exclusive parties. Few of them know what they are letting themselves in for, too dazzled by the extraordinary change of fortune of being dragged out of poverty in remote villages.

Selma - who was introduced by Dahl in her previous book Play Date - is a Norwegian journalist working on just such a story only to find it blocked from publication by the owners of the paper. There are clearly influential people who don't want something like this being reported, or perhaps there are concerns about litigation. Either way, the story is quashed and Selma is asked to cover an inquiry closer to home. It's a seemingly more mundane case of the disappearance of a deaf woman Liv and her nine-year-old autistic son Adrian, but there are strange elements to the disappearance, which seems more like an abduction. Selma might not have felt the need to dig too deeply into this but for the fact that she notices connections to the big fashion industry story she has been working on.

There are a few strands to After She'd Gone, all of which evidently converge, and do so quite dramatically and thrillingly. We get the insider perspective of the glamour and the horror of young women caught up in the modelling business from Anastasia, a young woman from central Russia who has been plucked from poverty and engaged to an Italian Prince. Evidently, there is going to be no fairy-tale ending, but there is growing surprise and horror at just how her story plays out. No less terrifying is the journey that Liv and Adrian undergo, and as far as Selma's investigation goes, time is clearly of the essence. Just how important and just how those stories intersect may not surprise everyone, but there are definitely some shocks along the way.

And, as I suggested, those shocks really hit home when you consider that they reflect the true lived experiences of many vulnerable young women. Alex Dahl - the author born in Oslo, half-American and half-Norwegian - succeeds not only in keeping the different international stands of After She'd Gone moving forward, each compelling in their own way, but the story manages to tap into the real human cost of exploitation, without falling into the trap of being exploitative itself. The author doesn't shy away from the true nature of the abuse that these women are subjected to, the traps they face and the often tragic outcome in what is a no less horrific form of human trafficking. This definitely gives the novel an edge of realism, which as it moves into more conventional thriller territory only intensifies what it at stake here.

Reading notes: After She'd Done by Alex Dahl is published by Head of Zeus on the 18th August 2022. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance proof.

* I note that Will Dean suitably provides a recommendation on the front cover.