Rebecka Martinsson Series

A grisly torture-murder, a haunting northern Sweden backdrop, and a dark drama of twisted sexuality collide in this masterpiece of suspense from the award-winning author of The Blood Split.

“Åsa Larsson is as deft at writing heart-stopping scenes . . . as she is at getting inside the heads of characters.”—The Washington Post

The dead woman was found on a frozen lake, her body riddled with evidence of torture. Instantly, Inspector Anna-Maria Mella knows she needs help. Because the dead woman—found in workout clothes with lacy underwear beneath them—was a key player in a mining company whose tentacles reach across the globe. Anna-Maria needs a lawyer to help explain some things—and she knows one of the best.

Attorney Rebecka Martinsson is desperate to get back to work, to feel alive again after a case that almost destroyed her. Soon Rebecka is prying into the affairs of the dead woman’s boss, the founder of Kallis Mining, whose relationship with his star employee was both complex and ominous. But what Rebecka and Anna-Maria are about to uncover—a tangled drama of secrets, perversion, and criminality—will lay bare a tale as shocking as it is sad . . . about a man’s obsession, a woman’s lonely death, and a killer’s cold, cold heart.

SWEDEN’S BEST CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR • A disturbing, entrancing, and beautifully crafted mystery set in northern Sweden, from the acclaimed author of Sun Storm

“A virtuoso mood piece that works endless changes on its unforgiving landscape.”—Kirkus Reviews

It’s midsummer in Sweden—when the light lingers through dawn and a long, isolating winter finally comes to an end. In this magical time, a brutal killer has chosen to strike. A female priest—who made enemies and acolytes in equal number—has been found hanging in her church. And a big-city lawyer quite acquainted with death enters the scene as police and parishioners try to pick up the pieces. . . .

Not long ago, attorney Rebecka Martinsson had to kill three men in order to stop an eerily similar murder spree—one that also involved a priest. Now she is back in Kiruna, the region of her birth, while a determined policewoman gnaws on the case and people who loved or loathed the victim mourn or revel in her demise. The further Rebecka is drawn into the mystery—a mystery that will soon take another victim—the more the dead woman’s world clutches her: a world of hurt and healing, sin and sexuality, and, above all, of sacrifice.

WINNER OF SWEDEN’S BEST FIRST CRIME NOVEL AWARD • A hardheaded attorney returns to her hometown to solve a vicious murder in this “richly atmospheric” (Kirkus Reviews) thriller from the acclaimed author of The Blood Spilt

“This impressive debut heralds another striking voice from Scandinavia.”—Booklist

In the land of silence and snow, the killing has begun . . .

Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the town she’d left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark, wrenching, and impossible to guess. . . .