The landline rings as Agneta is waving off her grandchildren. Just one word comes out of the receiver: ‘Geiger’.

For decades, Agneta has always known that this moment would come, but she is shaken. She knows what it means.

Retrieving her weapon from its hiding place, she attaches the silencer and creeps up behind her husband before pressing the barrel to his temple.

Then she squeezes the trigger and disappears – leaving behind her wallet and keys.

The extraordinary murder is not Sara Nowak’s case. But she was once close to those affected and, defying regulations, she joins the investigation. What Sara doesn’t know is that the mysterious codeword is just the first piece in the puzzle of an intricate and devastating plot fifty years in the making . . .

My thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to join the Geiger Blog Tour and to the publishers for my review copy.

My introduction to Geiger was a powerful promotional tease.  A woman waves goodbye to her visiting family, takes a phonecall on which a single word is spoken”Geiger”.  She then retrives a hidden pistol and executes her husband.  How could you not want to know what followed that?

When you pick up Geiger that tease happens right at the start of the book.   The story opens with the end of a family holiday where the grandchildren had been staying with Grandma Agneta and Grandpa Stellan.  The grandchildren’s parents have been on holiday but now return to see their parents and recover their children. A happy family gathering where Grandpa Stellan shows off his garden and all his plants and Grandma Agneta tries to keep a degree of calm amongst the brood of grandchildren before they are packed into cars and the holiday ends.  As the families depart and goodbye’s are waved that phone call takes place.  Grandma Agneta answers and shortly after she steps up behind Grandpa Stellan and shoots him in the back of the head.

Agneta goes on the run.  Many years earlier she had a handler, a contact who ensured she had access to an untraceable car, money and another weapon. What prompted this shocking turn of events?  The police will initially be stumped.  Grandpa Stellan is famously known across Sweden as Uncle Stellan.  He was one of Swedish televisions most beloved faces, for years he had been a reliable and safe pair of hands and everyone in Sweden knew and loved Stellan.  His murder will cause shockwaves through the country.  The disappearance of his wife, Agneta, is the most worrying element for the police – was she kidnapped, is she running for her life or has she been killed and her body hidden?  It certainly does not occur to them that Agneta may have been responsible.

Sara Nowak is a Swedish police officer.  She works to prevent prostitution, attacks on working women and to stop the men who are exploiting vulnerable women and working as their pimps. Sara struggles to supress her anger when she sees men abusing the women she is trying to protect.  Men being arrested are fair game to a kick or a punch from Sara and it is causing problems with her colleague.  Sara has just arrested a man for beating a prostitute when the call comes through about Uncle Stellan.   As a child Sara had grown up with Stellan and Agneta and she had played with their daughters – Sara’s mother had been the cleaner for the family. Sara rushes to the crime scene intent on being part of the investigation.

From this point on Sara relentlessly pursues the truth behind the family she grew up with.  She uncovers a hidden life for Uncle Stellan who appears to have been deeply sympathetic to the East German political approach and there are strong links to the Stasi.  His political leanings are just the tip of the iceberg though and Sara will unearth more and more shocking information about the family she clearly did not know as well as she thought.

Dividing her time between official investigations into attacks on the working girls in Sweden and the digging she is doing into Stellan’s disappearance we see Sara stretched and worn down by events.  She enlists help from journalists, other police and even the security services will try to tap her for information – Sara will need some quid-pro-quo on that front.

There’s a lot to take in with Geiger.  It’s a police drama with a lot of espionage and terrorism elements in there too.  I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys a spy thriller, a police drama and everyone that likes a great story – be warned, however, there are some potentially upsetting elements too best described in a non-spoilery way as “exploitation”.

Well worth hunting this one down – powerful drama.

Geiger is published by Zaffre on 29 April 2021 and is available in Hardback, Digital and Audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: