The Hypnotist

The Hypnotist is a crime novel by the two Swedish writers who publish together as Lars Kepler, published in 2009. It is the first book about the detective Joona Linna.

A family has been murdered in a suburb of Stockholm, and the killer is still at large. The only witness who survived the attack is the boy whose family was killed in front of him, and he was left so badly injured that he has lapsed into a state of shock and cannot describe what he saw.

Detective Inspector Joona Linna takes charge of the investigation, and the only option he can see is hypnotism. He asks Dr Erik Maria Bark, a specialist in acute trauma who also practises hypnosis, to interview the boy. Bark is suspended from practice, he takes heavy sleeping pills, his marriage is in trouble, and he swore to himself at some point that he would never do this work again.

The session gives the investigation information, and it also makes the doctor and his family the target of somebody who wants the questioning stopped: his son is taken, and the notes left behind make the reason plain. What Bark has to work out from the boy's account, and from his own, is what the boy actually saw that night, and who was behind it.