Your Time Will Come

Carl-Johan Vallgren

Winner of the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Award for Best Swedish Crime Novel of 2024.

The literary comeback by one of Sweden’s paramount novelists and depictors of inhumane evil and the beautiful prevalence of life.

Falkenberg, 1993. It all begins when a mental patient finds the dead body of a young woman in a river. The cause of death seems to be strangulation, but there are also signs of severe starvation.

Local police investigator Björling is put on the case, but the evidence is scarce as the forest is hiding every trace of the killer, and no one has reported the victim missing. Björling receives backup from a rising star at the National Police Department, the young and talented investigator Johanna. She is originally also from Falkenberg but has done
everything to forget her past.

Björling and Johanna take on the investigation with a distanced, mutual respect. They both have things they are eager to hide. In Björling’s case, it is the fact that after recently becoming a widower, he suspects he might be losing his mind because he keeps seeing the spirit of his wife when he least expects it.

Björling’s seventeen-year-old daughter Malin is also battling sorrow since her mother’s passing. When her new boyfriend invites her to go camping at a secluded location deep in the forest, she lies to Björling about where she is going.

When the night falls in the dense forest, and Mattias weird brother John unexpectedly has joined them, Malin is starting to feel more and more uneasy. Before the night is over, Malin will have tried in vain to escape a predator who knows the forest like the back of his hand.

By masterfully using the elements of a great thriller and with great pathos drilling deep into the human soul through his full-bodied characters, Carl-Johan Vallgren raises a series of existential questions about man and nature, life and death, darkness and light.

Your Time Will Come is the long-awaited literary comeback by one of Sweden’s most praised and respected authors.