The Glass Devil - Hardcover

Tursten, Helene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569474524 ISBN 13: 9781569474525

Publisher: Soho Crime, 2007

Synopsis

“Know[s] how to craft a truly satisfying police procedural.”—The 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’ 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. Upside-down pentagrams have 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.

About this title

About the Author

Helene Tursten has been compared to P.D. James in her native Sweden. Her Irene Huss mysteries have been highly praised and they have been made into a film and a TV series. Tursten was a nurse and a dentist before she turned to writing. She was born in Göteborg where she now lives with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

Swedish author Tursten's taut third contemporary police procedural (after 2006's The Torso) opens with a compelling setup: after Det. Insp. Irene Huss and her team find Jacob Schyttelius, a divorced teacher, shot to death in his isolated cottage, his computer monitor marked with a bloody Satanic symbol, they visit his parents, Sten and Elsa, only to find them dead as well and with the same markings on their computer. The data on both machines was erased professionally, and the only viable lead, Jacob's London-based sister, Rebecka, is too devastated by the dual tragedy to offer much assistance. Huss focuses her inquiry on Sten, a minister who had been investigating a local Satanist movement, in the belief that he may have been killed in revenge. The solution is both logical and depressing. Tursten does her usual solid job of populating the novel with credible, flawed characters and bringing to life modern Swedish society. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The third Irene Huss mystery to appear in the U.S. is considerably less gritty than either detective Inspector Huss(2003) or The Torso(2006), but it continues Tursten's sensitive exploration of how a female detective manages to balance family life with police work: not only the time pressures but also the jarring psychological disconnects that occur when jumping between dramatically different worlds. This time Huss' case--the execution-style murders of a minister, his wife, and their schoolteacher son--takes the Swedish detective from the scene of the crime, a village outside Goteborg, to London, where the traumatized daughter of the minister lives. Road-trip mysteries inevitably sacrifice the signature landscape that is often key to the series' appeal, but in this case, the fact that Huss is on her own in London gives Tursten the opportunity to probe deeper into her heroine's character. The plot itself is less compelling than the previous two entries in the series--the shocking climax will be guessed early on--but Huss is quickly becoming one of the most satisfying lead characters in the thriving world of Swedish crime fiction. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Soho Crime
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1569474524
• ISBN 13: 9781569474525
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320