This book was recommended to me by my mother, which is the only reason I finished it. I am so over Scandi fiction. Women seem to always be Madonna/Whore, and all the power dynamics (particularly in the workplace and police force) are expressed via sexual domination, harassment, or outright assault.
This book was written to have the bullied character be killing all his tormentors, then someone – maybe an editor – suggested that this had all been done before, or was too obvious. So they injected someone else to be the killer.
Seriously.
There’s so much detail around the bullying and the bullied character changing his name, following it into adulthood, on and on – even the parallels between (spoiler – but honestly, please don’t read this) the Bullied and the detective’s son all point to the Bullied being the killer. Then… he’s not.
It’s a guy nobody’s ever mentioned before, someone they don’t remember being in their class at all. Oh! So hard to be invisible that you’re going to murder the guy who was beaten and bullied and ended up hospitalised… because he got attention that you didn’t?
What an awful fucking nonsensical waste of time this book was.