Few times a writer becomes a full-blown celebrity, but that’s the case with Camilla Läckberg. The Swede has spent two decades as Europe’s most-read crime novelist and is convinced that, under certain circumstances, anyone is capable of killing.
“In my case, if someone threatened my children, I could kill him,” she said at a Madrid press conference where she presented The Crying of the Dead (Planeta), the twelfth novel in her most popular series, The Fjällbacka Murders, which in 2027 will mark two decades since its arrival in Spain.
Economist by training, a specialized crime-writing course gave a turn to her life; her first novel, The Ice Princess (2003), set in her hometown and starring Erica Falck and Patrik Hedström, a mystery writer and a police officer who solve crimes together, was a resounding success. Today she is a multifaceted entrepreneur, as well as a celebrity. She has sold more than 40 million copies of her books in more than 60 countries but she is also a screenwriter for series, has written children’s books and cookbooks, designs jewelry, runs her own wine brand and even has her own reality show on Swedish television, where she has also appeared on programs such as MasterChef or Dancing with the Stars.
“I haven’t taken a vacation, but I am happy,” said the writer, who summers in Altea (Alicante), where she has a home and spent the summer finishing the next novel in this same series, writing “between 8 and 10 hours a day.” Läckberg says she has been fascinated by crimes since she was four years old and that in her spare time she reads true crime and watches trials on television. Lately she has been engrossed in two cases, the case of Lindsay Clansey, the Massachusetts nurse accused of murdering her three children, and that of Shanna Gardner, a woman accused of hiring a hitman to execute her ex-husband.
No es que vaya a escribir sobre ellos, “it’s my hobby”, dice, though at times she may borrow elements from here and there that serve her. The Clansey case particularly interests her because it has sparked a debate in the United States about postpartum depression, something she suffered and that she translated into the Erica character in her third novel. “If there is anything positive in this horrible case it is that everyone is talking about postpartum depression; I have been there and I know how hard it is; it’s a great issue and in this case Lindsay had been asking for help that she did not receive.”
Conscious that in most cases, both real and in her novels, the victims are women, Läckberg says she prioritizes when writing to get to know the victim well, her point of view and the impact that the crime has on her surroundings. She asserts that nine out of ten murders are committed from within the victim’s circle and that is why her novels focus on family dynamics. “We all have some dysfunction in the heart of the family, it comes with life.”
Regarding the political situation in Sweden, where conservatives govern with the support of the far right, Läckberg describes it as “dramatic, horrifying.” “I never thought we would get here again. I thought we would have learned something from history. It hasn’t happened, and we see it also in the United States, the disaster.” Then she grabs the microphone again to add: “Trump is an absolute jerk.”
So far published by Maeva, The Crying of the Dead is the first novel in this series to be released in Spain with Planeta, which will begin progressively relaunching the previous installments in paperback. After all these years, Erica Falck and Patrik Hedström are a couple and the parents of three children, and many things have changed in them, but they continue to work together. One of the novelties in this edition, which tackles topics such as imperfect motherhood, mental health or structural violence, is the introduction of the figure of the wailing woman, linked to magical folklore and capable of communicating with the souls of the dead.