Brilliant, audaciously rogue police officer, Harry Hole from The Snowman and The Thirst, is back and in the throes of a new, unanticipated rage -- once again hunting the murderer who has haunted his entire career. Harry Hole is not in a good place. Rakel -- the only woman he's ever loved -- has ended it with him, permanently. He's been given a chance for a new start with the Oslo Police but it's in the cold case office, when what he really wants is...

The horrifically disfigured corpse of an Oslo police officer is found at the scene of a homicide whose trail went cold years before. The butchered officer was involved in the first investigation. It is the anniversary of the death. Within months, two more officers are killed the same way: at the scenes of the unsolved murders they investigated. The newest slayings are especially brutal. The media reaction is frenzied. The police are beginning to believe...

"In the heat of a sweltering Oslo summer, a young woman is found murdered in her flat--with one of her fingers cut off and a tiny red star-shaped diamond placed under her eyelid. An off-the-rails alcoholic barely holding on to his job, Detective Harry Hole is assigned the case with Tom Waaler, a hated colleague who Harry believes is responsible for the murder of his partner. When another woman is reported missing five days later, and her severed finger...

"In the waning days of the German occupation of Norway, Karin and her husband move from Oslo to a tiny village in the south with their young son, the narrator. There they aim to live out their dream of caring for those who can't look after themselves. They have spent months building a modest house with rooms for patients, and it's soon filled with three adult men who are psychologically unstable--including Karin's uncle Josef, who suffered a head...