Last Rituals - Hardcover

Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340920602 ISBN 13: 9780340920602

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

At a university in Reykjavik, the body of a young German student is discovered, his eyes cut out and strange symbols carved into his chest. Police waste no time in making an arrest, but the victim's family isn't convinced that the right man is in custody. They ask Thora Gudmundsdottir, an attorney and single mother of two, to investigate. It isn't long before Thora and her associate, Matthew Reich, uncover the deceased student's obsession with Iceland's grisly history of torture, execution, and witch hunts. But there are very contemporary horrors hidden in the long, cold shadow of dark traditions. And for two suddenly endangered investigators, nothing is quite what it seems . . . and no one can be trusted.

About this title

About the Author:

Yrsa Sigurdardottir is an Icelandic writer of crime fiction, including the Thora Gudmundsdottir series. Yrsa has also written for children, and won the 2003 Icelandic Children's Book Prize with Biobrn.

From Publishers Weekly:

Similar in plot to Swedish author Helene Tursten's The Glass Devil, this first in a new series from Icelandic author Sigurdardottir offers little readers have not seen before. As with Tursten's novel, the spectre of demon-worship is at the heart of the mystery, after the strangled corpse of Harald Guntlieb is discovered with his eyes gouged out. Guntlieb, a German student, was attending graduate school in Iceland, examining the latter country's history of witch-hunting, an academic pursuit that may have taken on more personal overtones. His grieving parents, who had already suffered the loss of a child, enlist attorney and single mother Thóra Gudmundsdôttir to objectively assess the police case against a drug addict arrested for the murder. Aided by an attractive ex-German police officer, Gudmundsdôttir diligently tracks down the dead man's friends and colleagues, before arriving at the truth. The author gives less of a sense of her native land than other contemporary Scandinavian crime writers like Karin Fossum, and the identity of the killer will surprise few.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0340920602
• ISBN 13: 9780340920602
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432