The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blaedel

by:  Sara Blaedel
published by:  Grand Central Publishing
publish date:  February 3, 2015

In a forest in Denmark, a ranger discovers the fresh corpse of an unidentified woman. A large scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. After four days, Louise Rick—the new commander of the Missing Persons Department—is still without answers. But when she releases a photo to the media, an older woman phones to say that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. Lisemette, like the other children in the institution, was abandoned by her family and branded a "forgotten girl." But Louise soon discovers something more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates over 30 years ago. As the investigation brings Louise closer to her childhood home, she uncovers more crimes that were committed—and hidden—in the forest, and finds a terrible link to her own past that has been carefully concealed.

This is the 7th book in the Louise Rick series.  I haven't read the other books, but I found that it didn't really matter.  I was able to pick up the basic background fairly easily.  

In The Forgotten Girls Louise is fighting for a case that no one believes is there.  When the body of a woman is found in woods, a retired nurse is able to link it to a pair of dead twins.  The woman had been declared dead as a child many years ago while she was in the care of an institute for mentally handicapped children.  Louise wants to find out where this woman has been all these years.  Also, if she's been alive, what about her twin sister?

Despite having never read any of the Louise Rick books, I found that I really liked this book.  It was easy to fall right into the story and the back story of the characters.  It was very well written and full of twists and turns to make it very interesting.