When a mutilated body rises from the icy waters off the jetty in Kjerringøy, it shocks the quiet coastal village – and stirs something darker beneath. Not long after, a young woman is found dead in a drab apartment. Suicide, perhaps. Or something far more sinister. Detective Jakob Weber and former national investigator Noora Yun Sande are drawn into both cases.
Then a hiker has a terrifying encounter in the nearby wilderness: a solitary cabin … and a man without a face. As the investigation deepens, the clues grow more disturbing – and the wild, wintry landscape closes in. Kjerringøy’s beautiful wilderness conceals a heart of darkness, and Jakob is certain of only one thing: if they don’t find the killer soon, he’ll strike again.…
Ørjan Karlsson (b. 1970) grew up in Bodø, in the far north of Norway. A sociologist by education, he received officer training in the army and has taken part in many missions overseas. He has worked at the Ministry of Defence and is now head of department in the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection. He has written a wide range of thrillers, sci-fi novels and crime fiction, and been shortlisted for or won numerous awards, with a number of his books currently in production for the screen. He lives in Nordland, where the Jakob Weber crime series is set.
My thoughts: This starts with two shocking deaths – a body dumped in a bay, its eyes missing, and a young woman, whose apparent suicide seems suspicious to the crime scene tech processing it. Was it the scumbag boyfriend or someone else?
The body turns out to be an artist, missing for a while, whose girlfriend thought he’d just left her. The connection with a mysterious rehab unit nearby makes the detectives suspicious, the place only has three clients and the owner’s methods are suspect too. How is it keeping afloat and why does it seem to have no staff?
As the investigation intensifies, and a witness is also killed, the focus on the rehab centre grows, there’s not much else around and there appears to be a connection between it and the supposed suicide too.
Twists, turns, and sinister things on the mountain, this is dark and powerful, it kept me up all night.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 