Rather disappointing - Rated 
I had high hopes for this book. I thought that with its island setting it couldn't fail to be atmospheric.
Unfortunately, i was wrong: the book is bland, cliched and poorly plotted. The killer seems to be plucked up out of the air at the end of the book - at which point Jungstedt tries frantically to backfill his characterisation and motivation. And the island setting is almost entirely wasted. This story could be set just about anywhere. There's no real sense of place at all.
The main problem however is her attempt to develop both the detective and the journalist as lead characters. Both end up weak and poorly delineated.
The policeman is just a cipher. It's as though she knows she needs an "inspector" character and is producing one to order.
The journalist on the other hand, a character she does seem to connect with, is over-idealised. It feels at times as if the author is trying to redeem journalists and journalism through him. Every time she portrays him (or indeed any other journalist) acting ruthlessly she accompanies it by something that implies that beneath their ruthlessness journalists are good and noble. The romantic sideplot seems to serve the same end and bogs down the story rather than adding to it.
It's also clear that she is far more confident in her ability to describe this side of the divide accurately, but the very fact that she is so detailed when focusing on the world of journalism only seems to emphasise the lack of vividness elsewhere.
Very disappointing.
Bought on a whim - but really enjoyable! - Rated 
I was looking for something differnt to read and came across Unseen. It was quite an interesting story, and I did not quite work out who the "perp" was!
I will be buying more of her work I suspect.
A great Swedish thriller - Rated 
Just when you thought that Scandinavian take-over of the crime novel had weaned slightly, there is Mari Jungstedt to take it onto the next level. Her sensitive, atmospheric take on life in Sweden, i.e. really giving you a flavour of everyday life and ordinary people (not just jaded policemen, but women, families and young people), the description of customs, weather and landscape in the province of Gotland, all this gives an atmospheric backdrop to the gruesome murders of women in the novel. I loved the book and I think many people will enjoy it.
unsatisfaying - Rated 
I agree with what the previous reviewers said :'Unseen' has many weaknesses, a dull and dour detective, a plot with some unconsistencies, and a very very bad, hasty, totally uneffective ending. Yet for all that , I still enjoyed reading it, even if it it feels like a sub-Mankell. What is good is the sense of place and most of the story really, except the last quarter, when the author has some explaining to do about the killer, his motives etc...then, no, it does not work.
May be next time ?
Lacking a leader... - Rated
As soon as you set a police procedural in Sweden, You Will be Compared to Henning Mankell. It's the law. Far be it for me to break the law. This is nowhere near as good as Henning Mankell.
Judged on its' own merits, this is a fair-to-middling effort, with no huge flaws, but no huge thrills, either. An island is a natural to create a claustrophobic atmosphere, where everyone's lives impinge on everyone else's, with dire consequences. Yet this kind of tension is missing here. The police procedural aspects are downplayed, and there is little chemistry between the main players, whose personality is rarely drawn with any depth or nuance. The plot itself is poor, too easy to guess, and lacking any twist or turn to occupy the reader.
Had this been set in Barnsley, I wonder whether it would have been published. I've heard of publishers begging authors setting their books in northern England, to re-set them in Shepherd's Bush. Mankell has given carte-blanche for other authors to reach the mainstream with Scandinavian fiction, but it needs to be better than this. Above all, most police procedurals are carried by the strength of the main character. Mankell succeeds in making Kurt Wallander a metaphor for Sweden itself. Nesbo and Hurley likewise have a strong main character who runs the book. Jungstedt needs to find such a leader, along with a keener sense of place, and a decent plotline.
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