Hardback blurb: On the floor of a church in northern Sweden, the body of a man lies ritually mutilated and defiled - and in the night sky, the aurora borealis dances as the snow begins to fall.
Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the remote town she'd left in disgrace years before.
A Stockholm tax lawyer, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the church of the cult he helped create.
Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and to confront the rumours circulating in a closed and frightened community.
But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark and impossible to guess.
About the author: Åsa Larsson was born in Kiruna, Sweden, in 1966 and now lives in Mariefred. A former tax lawyer, her debut The Savage Altar won Sweden's Best First Crime Novel Award in 2003 and on its publication in the UK in 2007 was shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, awarded by The Crime Writers' Association for crime novels in translation. The 2007 Swedish film Solstorm was based on this book.
Åsa Larsson's second novel, The Blood Split won the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award in 2004. Her other works are The Black Path (2008) and Until Thy Wrath Be Past (2011).
The Savage Altar is known as The Sun Storm (pictured above) in the USA.
The Savage Altar is translated from the Swedish into the English by Marlaine Delargy.
My take: Expanding on my Swedish crime thriller reads with an author whom I have just discovered. This one is as expected in terms of characters, plot and writing or in other words, not too different from other Nordic crime thrillers. Packed with plenty of scares and chills - I am not talking about the Scandinavian weather - it shows a lot of promise for a debut. Rebecka Martinsson and the pregnant policewoman Anna-Maria Mella are great characters, likeable and relatable. Writing is clear-cut and to the point. Amidst the gloom and doom, there is much wit and wry humour in the well-constructed dialogue. Great description of a rural setting and all that it entails in the isolated northernmost part of Sweden. Great description of the awful weather. Other than that, all is pure fiction from a very promising author.
If you like dark and challenging crimes, then I guarantee you this is the start of a truly engrossing series.
More information can be found on Åsa Larsson's official website in German.
Rating: 4/5
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