About this book

The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, writing at the height of his powers, now gives us an electrifying stand-alone global thriller.January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjovallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andrens, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andren family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andren ancestor--a gang master on the American transcontinental railway--that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjovallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth.The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years into the depths of the slave trade between China and the United States--a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjovallen murders.From the Hardcover edition.

Subjects

  • commerce
  • enquêtes criminelles
  • esclaves
  • femmes juges
  • fiction
  • fiction, suspense
  • fiction, thrillers, suspense
  • histoire
  • history
  • immigrants
  • investigation
  • kriminalroman
  • large type books
  • literature
  • massacres
  • mass murder
  • mass murder investigation
  • meurtre multiple
  • murder
  • mystery
  • new york times bestseller
  • nyt:hardcover-fiction=2010-03-07
  • revenge
  • roman policier suédois
  • romans, nouvelles
  • schwedisch
  • serial murder investigation
  • serial murders, fiction
  • slave trade
  • sweden, fiction
  • swedish fiction
  • thriller
  • translations into english
  • women judges
  • women judges, fiction