FALLET SANDEMANN – THE SANDEMANN CASE

By Gabriella Håkansson

Gabriella Håkansson’s second novel, Fallet Sandemann is a freestanding sequel to her debut novel, Operation B. Anabel Shank, the young female agent at the Fifth International Security Department, is called to the dusty London office where she is commissioned to find her missing colleague, Sandemann. Together with an elder companion, the hardboiled K, she travels across the continent. They pass through North Africa, from Fez in the west to Cairo in the east, in the search for Sandemann. Little by little, K abandons his partner. Meanwhile Anabel’s chase is transformed into a feverish obsession. She is driven closer to the core of herself, a place where everything burns and converts: her own dark heart. The Sandemann case is an anti-whodunit, steaming with critical observations in the form of interjected mini-essays about sex, identity, ageing, living cities, false maps, ciphered books and mysteries of thought. It is a marvellous tale, characterized by a great deal of literary audacity and playfulness, a twisted tour among places and identities.