Descripción editorial
“These days Scandinavian crime writers are thick on the ground. It’s nice to see that the women can be just as bloodthirsty as the men.” —The New York Times Book Review
He watches the women from the shadows. He has an understanding with them: As long as they follow his rules, they are safe. But when they sin, he sentences them to death.
A woman is found dead in a cemetery, strangled and covered in plastic. Just a few days before her death, the victim had received a flower, an unintelligible note, and a photograph of herself. Detective Inspector Irene Huss and her colleagues on the Violent Crimes Unit in Göteborg, Sweden, have neither clue nor motive to pursue, and when similar murders follow, their search for the killer becomes increasingly desperate. Meanwhile, strange things have been going on at home for Irene: first the rose bush in her garden is mangled, then she receives a threatening package with no return address. Is Irene being paranoid, or is she next on the killer’s list?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of serial killer novels will welcome Tursten's solid ninth mystery featuring Det. Insp. Irene Huss (after 2015's The Treacherous Net). A journal entry at the start "I am the one who watcheth in the darkness. I am the Guardian" clues the reader that a serial killer is about to strike. In a powerful, deftly rendered scene, a dog walker discovers the body of the first victim, Ingela Svensson, who was divorced and lived alone. Huss and her Gothenburg police team learn that Svensson was stalked by someone in the days before her murder. A similar story unfolds with the second victim, Elisabeth Lindberg, likewise divorced and living alone. Punctuating the classic procedural plot are the writings of the Guardian and humanizing details of the personal lives of Huss, her family, and her colleagues. The stakes rise after the killer starts to target women on the force, including Huss's boss, Supt. Efva Thylqvist, and Huss herself, who decides she is "going to become the hunter." The action builds to a genuinely shocking denouement.
