Hell and High Water
PublisherMacLehose Press
Date Published26 May 2022
 
 
ISBN-101529408059
ISBN-13978-1529408058
Formatpaperback
Pages432
Price£ 9.99

Hell and High Water

by Christian Unge (translated by George Goulding and Sarah De Senarclens)

Tekla Berg, an A&E department doctor with a photographic memory and a complicated relationship with her brother, takes charge of the emergency response after a devastating fire. The police are convinced this was a terrorist attack, while the Uzbek mafia in Stockholm want to silence one of the victims.

Review

Tekla Berg, a doctor in the Accident & Emergency department of the Nobel Hospital, is a rising star in her profession. She is extremely clever, hardworking and dedicated, and has a special talent – a photographic memory which is both a blessing and a curse.

She feels a strong sense of responsibly for her brother because of their childhood experiences, and Simon’s difficult personal life, destroyed by violence and drugs. Tekla is an intriguing professional woman trying to manage exhausting daily demands and to silence own demons, assisted by the increasing amounts of amphetamines. Her overactive brain never rests.

Monica Carlsson, CEO of the Nobel Hospital, will go to any lengths to make it more successful than the competing Stockholm hospital, and is fantastically devious and calculating when it comes to getting people to listen to her.

Victor Umarov, patriarch of the Umarov family, officially works as a translator of Russian literature. He is an Uzbek, shaped by the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new Russia. His commercial and criminal roots go very deep into the layers of Stockholm’s illegal unlawful underworld. As an influential figure he relies on his daughter Nina, owner of a thriving estate agency and the acceptable face of the family, and son and right-hand man Sardor, a ruthless enforcer in the drugs trade, responsible for prostitution and arms businesses. The clash between siblings becomes more apparent as the story develops.

Organised crime and the medical world come together when a block near the Nobel Hospital gets engulfed in a major fire. Tekla is responsible for the emergency response and faces real danger when she rescues a victim with massive burns. The man is unrecognisable, yet she has a sense that there is something familiar about him. With a 115 per cent risk of dying, and I don’t know how this prognosis is calculated, he should be dead, as some people want him to be. On the other hand, the police are determined to question him, convinced that the fire was a terrorist attack.

Unge works as a senior physician in a similar place, so his knowledge of various medical procedures creates a fictional yet authentic location. The urgency, mixed messages and the politics add tension to the already stressful demanding scenarios and the unbelievable pressure Tekla is under. Unge masterfully blends clinical information with the characterisation of the main players. It’s not easy to identify with them but it is possible to understand some of their actions, including the harsh codes followed by biker gangs or convoluted reasoning by the police.

Tekla struggles to keep strong and focused amidst drama involving other patients in the A&E department, her mind going overboard, uncertainty about Simon who cannot be located anywhere, and the sudden interest from Monica Carlsson. Unexpected links to the criminal gangs change her life forever.

The translation by George Goulding and Sarah de Senarclens makes the nerve-wracking action come alive, and I do hope that the next book in the Tekla Berg trilogy will be an equally complex, edge-of-the-seat-read.

Reviewed 20 August 2022 by Ewa Sherman

Ewa Sherman lives in Bristol, where she translates poetry from Polish. She loves Nordic/Scandinavian countries.