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A pastor, his wife and son are executed gangland style.





SOHO CRIME
Mystery/Fiction
April 2007
$24.00 Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-56947-452-5

“Taut … compelling.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for the Detective Inspector Irene Huss series:
“The scenes in which Huss tracks her killer through the underbelly of Copenhagen are as good as Louise Welsh’s similarly creepy tour of Glasgow in The Cutting Room.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Another winner.”
—Booklist
“[Tursten] is a master at setting the scene, detailing a foreign milieu until it feels familiar. She juggles a large cast of characters with aplomb.”
—Time Out Chicago
“[O]ne of the better examples of the Swedish crime fiction invasion.”
—Baltimore Sun
“[O]utstanding.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An absorbing, intelligent mystery that holds its own alongside the best feminine hardboiled novels currently being written by Englishwomen Val McDermid and Liza Cody and our own Sara Paretsky.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR, “Fresh Air” and Washington Post Book World
“Know[s] how to craft a truly satisfying police procedural.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer




The principal of a high school telephones his friend, Inspector Andersson of the Göteborg Crime Police; one of his teachers failed to show up for work. To Inspector Irene Huss’s surprise, on the basis of this vague complaint her boss drives out with her to a remote cottage in snowbound southern Sweden to investigate. There they find a body, its head blasted by a rifle. Teacher Jacob Schyttelius has been murdered. When they go to break the news to his elderly parents, Pastor Sten Schyttelius and his wife, they find the couple dead in their beds, each shot between the eyes. An upside down pentagram has been drawn in blood on their computer screens. The only surviving member of the family is a daughter, now residing in London, but she is too distressed to be interviewed. Is the killer a member of a satanic cult? Is it the parish treasurer, rumored to have been embezzling church funds? Or one of the assistant pastors, tired of waiting for a promotion? Perhaps the attractive blonde who sings in church and practices witchcraft? Irene Huss has a hunch that the answer lies in England, and she travels there twice to discover the reason for this triple homicide.





HELENE TURSTEN is the author of Detective Inspector Huss and The Torso. The latter is now a German film and her series is being filmed for Swedish television. She lives with her husband in Göteborg, Sweden.

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