Series Review
You Can Go Home Again
These taut, atmospheric, psychological mysteries dig deep into human motivation and unearth a bottomless swamp of mud, muck, and evil things that will murder you in the night.
Workaholic lawyer Rebecka Martinsson is so wrapped up in her job that she's forgotten how to live, when she's called back to her home-town, which she had left in disgrace years before, to help an old friend. The shattering violence of her first two investigations pushes her to the breaking point and beyond. The charms of the far North seep ever so slowly into her soul giving her the strength to face down both murderers and her own inner demons.
Set north of the Arctic Circle in Kiruna, Sweden
Atmospheric psychological crime novels plumb the mysteries of human motivation. Great writing
Mesmerizing! Larsson's characters (human and animal) are so real, her depiction of country life and landscape so vivid and her evocation of mood and psychic distress so tangible that I want each of these mystery novels to go on forever.
Series Guide
Read these mysteries in sequence to get the most effect from heroine Rebecka Martinssons's amazing backstory.
Book Summaries
Below, a list of the crime novels in this series, in chronological order:
Sun Storm (2006, Rebecka Martinsson Mystery Books # 1, APA: The Savage Altar)
When Sanna finds a murdered and mutilated body on the altar of the biggest church in town, she calls a childhood friend for help. Yuppie lawyer Rebecka Martinsson responds to the call, leaving the big city and returning to her hometown in the icy forests of Northern Sweden.
Martinsson, barely on her feet after the traumatic events of Sun Storm (#1), is drawn into another murder case in the far north, this time of a feminist priest who had raised passions in her community to a fever pitch.
Recovering from the traumas she experienced in the first two books, Martinsson moves to Kiruna and takes a job as a prosecutor. Her first murder investigation in her new position unravels an immense and immensely violent global conspiracy and leaves bodies littered over the pristine landscape of the sparkling North.
A murder and missing person investigation turns up unwelcome information about Swedish people who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.