Winter Grave

July 1, 2019

Christmas cheer is scarce in the small Swedish town of Strömstad, where a little girl vanishes shortly before the holiday after having been given a ride home from school by a mentally disabled teenage boy with whom the police just can't seem to communicate effectively. Then another child disappears, a police officer is found dead, and angry parents are about to take matters into their own hands. That means trouble for 28-year-old Detective Inspector Embla Nyström, who has just returned to work after a close brush with a killer and is now reminded of the disappearance of her childhood best friend. From one of Soho Crime's top-selling authors.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 7, 2019
Det. Insp. Embla Nystrom, who’s also a big game hunter and Nordic light welterweight champion, has a lot on her plate in Tursten’s fast-paced sequel to 2018’s Hunting Game. In Strömstad in western Sweden, she takes on a lethal combination of two missing children, arson, and a policeman’s murder. On the personal side, she has a torrid affair with the married lawyer of a suspect and must cope with nightmares about a lost friend. Though badly injured when assaulted by a man during a moose hunt the previous year, Embla relishes the thrill of the hunt, whether stalking wild boar—or killers bent on gory revenge. Embla and her team manage to create satisfying personal relationships and enjoy some great nights out, and the villains get appropriately punished. Embla also crosses paths with Tursten’s other detective heroine, Irene Huss, and their professional chemistry clicks. Readers will be curious to see how Tursten develops her complex lead in future outings. Those looking for Scandinavian crime fiction that’s not entirely bleak will be rewarded.

October 15, 2019
Detective Embla Nyström (Hunting Game, 2019) returns to the Gothenburg region's Violent Crimes Unit just in time to head the search for two missing children. After missing the school bus home, 9-year-old Amelie Holm hitches a ride with Kristoffer Sjöberg, the cousin of her friend Tuva. That's the last that anyone sees of her--unless you count the fact that 17-year-old Kristoffer, who's on the autism spectrum and doesn't talk much under ideal circumstances, eventually says that he dropped her off at her house. In the meantime, his father, wealthy intermittent alcoholic Olof Sjöberg, has lawyered up and warned the police to stay away from his son. And so they do, distracted at first by the fatal stabbing of Norwegian gangster Robert Halvorsen. When a second child, 6-year-old Viggo Andersson, disappears, Embla and her VCU teammates get more interested in the case, especially because the fathers of the two vanished children have been close friends since they were children themselves. A body turns up in a remote ditch, but it's that of Strömstad police officer Viktor Jansson, not one of the missing children. Ugly online rumors outpace the investigation, and while the police are still trying to put the pieces together, someone, evidently convinced that Kristoffer is behind both disappearances, sets fire to Sjöberg's home, killing him and sending Kristoffer to the hospital, where he's attacked yet again by an assailant wielding a knife just like the one that stabbed Robert Halvorsen. "What the hell is going on in Strömstad?" wonder the members of the Regional Crime Center, doubtless echoing the sentiments, and maybe even the tone, of many readers. But don't tell that to Embla, a former boxing champ who may never fight again but has at least made a highly satisfactory sexual connection. Tursten eventually ties all the strands together, but the effect is more sad than logically or dramatically memorable.

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October 15, 2019
When two young children disappear, Detective Inspector Embla Nystr�m and the Violent Crimes Mobile Unit (VCM) are reunited and dispatched to Str�mstad, a village divided by suspicion. Amelie Holm disappeared after leaving school to retrieve a prop for a play rehearsal. Weeks later, five-year-old Viggo Andersson vanished from his garden, and a local police officer was bludgeoned to death. It's an unfathomable crime wave for such a small place, and fear fuels suspicion of young Kristoffer Sj�berg, the last person to see Amelie alive. Kristoffer, the mechanical-prodigy son of a successful businessman, has always been considered a bit different. The tension mounts until Kristoffer is brutally attacked and his father is killed in an arsonist's fire at their workshop. Embla, a sharp-witted detective and titled boxer, inspires confidence that the truth will out, despite the pervasive gloom of Tursten's Swedish winter. This one is a winner for fans of Scandinavian crime fiction and atmospheric British procedurals, like those by Susan Hill, Deborah Crombie, and Reginald Hill.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)