Under the Snow: A Novel
From the author of Blackwater (LJ 1/96) comes another psychological thriller set in a small village in northern Sweden. It is the dead of winter when Police Constable Torsson receives a call from Rakisjokk that artist and teacher Matti Olsson has been killed, forcing Torsson into a 25-mile trek on skis across the frozen lake. When he arrives, however, the inhabitants are strangely reticent, stories do not match one another, unexplainable details appear, and Torsson is unable to blame anything except the fearful cold for Olsson's death. It is only by accident that the case is reopened when Olsson's unsuspecting friend David Malm makes a summer visit and encounters a girl who has hit a reindeer with her car. In the car, Malm discovers a knapsack containing a bloody noose covered with human hair, and he forces Torsson to return to the isolated community, now bathed in perpetual sunlight. Slowly and painfully, the two penetrate the peculiar psychology of people who live half their lives in darkness, cut off from the rest of the world. Ekman's brilliant evocation of a place and culture above the Arctic Circle is as compelling and mysterious as the crime itself. Highly recommended.?Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.