Friday, December 5, 2008

12 Best of 2008 - The Black Path, by Asa Larsson (trade, $12)

[This is one of Carolyn's three picks for the year. Here is her review.]

This remarkable book, easily winning my gold star, is third in a projected series of six, the first of which was Sun Storm, all featuring Swedish police Inspector Anna-Maria Mella and Attorney Rebecka Martinsson. Mella is a well-adjusted family woman, while Martinsson is rather alone in the world and is recovering from an attack on her life.

The story picks up with the discovery of a dead woman, eventually found to be a key employee in a mining company with interests world wide, on a frozen lake in northern Sweden. Who would want her dead? Her boss, set to expand operations in Africa? Her brother, always needing her affection and his employer�s money? And why has a brilliant artist packed away her oils to live in her magnate step-brother�s attic? As the book heads to a stunning conclusion, Larsson�s genius emerges while the reader grasps � of course! of course! � the implications of all that is by now known. Still not content, Larsson goes on, in a brief epilogue, to satisfy all those who both long for respite after such suspense and all those who hunger for a taste of the future.

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