Little Star

Is the success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo down to the creation of Lisbeth Salander, the punky, amoral hacker around whom the trilogy turns? John Ajvide Lindqvist, the Swedish author of Let The Right One In, clearly thinks so, because he places a similarly unknowable girl at the centre of his first non-supernatural thriller.

Musician Lennart Cederström finds a baby abandoned in the woods and takes her home. “Little Star” does not respond to normal stimulus, but in her cries Lennart recognises perfect pitch and, with his wife, he resolves to hide her from the authorities. The couple are making up for the disappointment of their wastrel son Jerry and attempting to repair their own relationship. As the girl grows, so does her musical ability, until Jerry enters her in a talent contest and sets in motion a murderous tragedy.

Lindqvist’s tale is a bleak, misanthropic attack on celebrity culture, but exerts a powerful grip.

Little Star, by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy, Quercus Books, RRP£12.99, 480 pages