Midwinter Blood
A Thriller
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Meet police superintendent Malin Fors: Talented. Troubled. With a sixth sense for the truth. Join her on a manhunt that takes her to the darkest corners of the human heart in this chilling first novel from Scandinavian crime writer Mons Kallentoft.
WHEN THE ICE MELTS, WHAT REMAINS?
Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenage daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent who has ever worked on the police force in her small, isolated town. And the most talented. In her job, she is constantly moving through the borderland between life and death. Her path in life is violent and hazardous.
Linköping, Sweden, is surrounded by a landscape of plains and forests—a fault line on the edges of society where time seems to have stood still and where some people live entirely according to their own rules. In the early hours of a frigid night, during the coldest February anyone can remember, the bloody body of an obese man, stripped bare and horribly mutilated, is found hanging from a lone oak tree in the middle of a frozen, snow-covered, and windswept plain not far from town.
The young superintendent Malin Fors is assigned to the case. Together with her colleagues from the Investigation Section of Linköping’s Crime Unit, she must track down the identity of the man in the tree and the reason why he ended up there. And at the same time they must follow in the frigid wake of a killer who has just begun his work. It is a manhunt that will take Malin into the darkest corners of the human heart where the sins of the past—hidden away—all too often wreak havoc from one generation to the next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in Sweden in 2007, Kallentoft's psychologically astute, carefully crafted first novel featuring Link ping police inspector Malin Fors, a 33-year-old divorced mother, centers on the death of 330-pound Bengt Andersson, an eccentric loner found beaten, cut, and hanging naked from a solitary oak in the frozen countryside. As part of the investigation, Fors and her partner, Zeke Martinsson, look into Andersson's disjointed family history, the teenage boys who tormented him, and the ritualistic nature of the murder that a local history professor likens to a "midwinter blood" sacrifice of Viking vintage. The case develops with painstaking slowness, allowing for a detailed, nuanced portrait of the relationship of Fors with her 13-year-old daughter as well as with her fellow officers. Meanwhile, the murder victim's spirit floats around, offering its wry observations on the proceedings. Readers will look forward to the next three volumes in the series, already scheduled to appear in successive years.
Customer Reviews
Midwinter Blood
Classic Nordic noir - gripping. Loved it