Winter is chilling. Summer is brutal. But every season is perfect for murder. When it comes to solving crimes so gruesome that they make the darkest of nightmares look like cosy fairy tales, Detective Inspector Malin Fors is the one you want assigned to the case. But he brilliant but flawed star of the Linköping police force, is on the verge. She is on the verge of being addicted to Tequila, of becoming a workaholic, and she is always liable to lether strong emotions and repressed memories dictate her life. 'One of the best realised female heroines I've read.' Guardian

A married couple is found dead in their jacuzzi. Their adopted five-year-old daughter has vanished. Inspector Malin Fors, the troubled but brilliant star of the Linkoping police force, is put in charge of the case. But this is a haunting mystery where the borders have been blurred: those between the living and the dead, between good and evil. Malin is only too aware of her own tendencies towards obsession and addiction. As the investigation takes a darker turn, forcing Malin to confront her own demons, will she hold out long enough to find the killer - and the missing girl - before it's too late?

'An investigation consists of a mass of voices, the sort you can hear, and the sort you can't. You have to listen to the soundless voices, Malin. That's where the truth is hidden.' Early one morning in the coldest winter in Swedish memory, police detective Malin Fors is called away from the warm flat she shares with her teenage daughter. The naked body of a man has been found hanging from a tree on the deserted, frozen plain outside the town of Linköping. From the outset Malin is confronted with a host of unanswered questions: Who is the dead man? How did he end up in a tree? And where did the strange wounds on his body come from? Malin and her team must search for the truth in a community that seems determined to keep its secrets, and follow in the frigid wake of a killer to the darkest corners of the human heart.