Review: The Running Girl by Sara Blaedel

Title: The Running Girl

Author: Sara Blaedel

Series: Louise Rick, #5 / The Camilla Trilogy, #2

Published: January 2018, Grand Central Publishing

Format: ARC Paperback, 448 pages

Source: Publisher

Summary: 

#1 internationally
bestselling author Sara Blaedel is back with a powerful and twist-filled
new suspense novel featuring detective Louise Rick.

THE RUNNING GIRL

Louise
gets a call from her son, Jonas. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: A
school party has ended in terrifying chaos after a group of violent
teenagers forced their way into the building in search of alcohol and
valuables. Dashing to the scene, Louise discovers one of the students
gravely injured-struck by a car while attempting to run for help. Now
the girl’s distraught mother, pushed to her emotional breaking point,
will do anything to make those who hurt her daughter pay. 

So when
someone targets the gang members with a vicious attack, the girl’s
mother is the obvious suspect. But Louise can’t shake the feeling that
the case might not be as cut-and-dried as it first appears. Someone is
lying-but who? 

Masterfully plumbing the darkest depths of human
emotion in this propulsive new novel, Sara Blaedel again delivers an
intense ride filled with unexpected turns that will have you on the edge
of your seat…

My thoughts: I am so pleased to be reviewing the latest of Sara Blaedel’s books that have been re-released here in the states. If you saw my review yesterday for The Night Woman, you saw the whole big explanation about what is going on with this series…and if you didn’t – you can read about it here. All three books – The Night Woman, The Running Girl, and The Stolen Angel, which are part of The Camilla Trilogy, were published yesterday, January 2 and if you like crime fiction I highly recommend this series…even if you’ve never read her books before – now’s a great time to jump in. 

One thing I will say before diving into the review of The Running Girl…these three books work off each other. Yes, they involve separate cases and crimes, but the character development that each book follows builds on the previous book, so, if you are reading the book for that, I highly suggest reading them in order if you can. There is some pretty substantial developments that happen in each of these books that is picked up and carried on in the subsequent books. But, of course, this is just my opinion.

Once again, I found myself completely captivated by this book. The story itself is complex and there are multiple threads running through it. Are the cases that Louise and her team are called out to related or do they have a slew of different suspects at work? On top of this, Camilla and her son have taken off to the U.S for some much-needed R&R – but are staying in touch with Louise via email.

I love that while there is so much going on, we still see so much character development happening – that is one of my favorite parts of this series and why I was so excited to have these earlier books finally translated into English. For Louise, we see both professional and personal growth. She is juggling a lot right now and how she balances it all at times is an issue, but she is learning to manage. For Camilla, she thinks she has taken the easy road by running away for the time being, but she is never out of touch and has stumbled onto something even she can’t stay away from.

There are quite a few twists and turns here and it really does keep you on your toes as you race to the conclusion of this book. I found myself completely engaged and loved that the writing is so vivid and descriptive – it was like I was right there in Copenhagen myself!

A Note on this series:

***This series was first published in Denmark. Grand Central Publishing has started publishing some of the later books here in the US, which have been grouped in 2 trilogies ‘The Missing Persons Trilogy’ and ‘The Camilla Trilogy.’

The Missing Persons Trilogy (Available in US now): 

1. The Forgotten Girls
2. The Killing Forest 
3. The Lost Woman

The Camilla Trilogy (Available in the US now – as of 1.2.18): 

1. The Night Women
2. The Running Girl
3. The Stolen Angel
   

Louise Rick Series (as Sara Blaedel published it):

1. Green Dust (???)
2. Call Me Princess/ Blue Blood
3. Only One Life
4. The Night Women (formerly published as Farewell to Freedom)
5. The Running Girl
6. The Stolen Angel
7. The Forgotten Girls
8. The Killing Forest 
9. The Lost Woman    

*** For the title with ???, I used a translator website to translate Danish title. Not sure if this is the actual English title but at least it’s a place-holder for now.  And you’ll notice book 2 has two titles – I actually have both books, both in English!