Ice Moon - Tapa dura

Only a week after losing his wife, a distraught Detective Kimmo Joentaa returns to work to join a murder inquiry. It is the case of a woman smothered in her sleep?a curiously tranquil death, it seems, and one with no motive?and Kimmo becomes obsessed. The only clues are a half-empty bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a missing painting, a blurred landscape of no value. When a young man is found murdered in bed the next day in a hostel room with seven people asleep around him, Kimmo realizes a serial killer must be at work.

As he struggles with the memory of his wife's early death, Kimmo investigates the murders and tries to understand the mind of the perpetrator, who appears to be quiet, self-effacing, and affable?why then the urge to destroy? Set in Finland during the unnervingly long days of late summer near the top of the world, Ice Moon is an unsettling, poignant mystery.

JAN COSTIN WAGNER is a journalist and freelance writer. He divides his time between Germany and Finland, which is his wife's home country.