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Midwinter Blood: A Thriller
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Meet police superintendent Malin Fors: Talented. Troubled. With a sixth sense for the truth. Join her on a manhunt that takes her to the darkest corners of the human heart in this chilling first novel from Scandinavian crime writer Mons Kallentoft.
WHEN THE ICE MELTS, WHAT REMAINS?
Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenage daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent who has ever worked on the police force in her small, isolated town. And the most talented. In her job, she is constantly moving through the borderland between life and death. Her path in life is violent and hazardous.
Linköping, Sweden, is surrounded by a landscape of plains and forests—a fault line on the edges of society where time seems to have stood still and where some people live entirely according to their own rules. In the early hours of a frigid night, during the coldest February anyone can remember, the bloody body of an obese man, stripped bare and horribly mutilated, is found hanging from a lone oak tree in the middle of a frozen, snow-covered, and windswept plain not far from town.
The young superintendent Malin Fors is assigned to the case. Together with her colleagues from the Investigation Section of Linköping’s Crime Unit, she must track down the identity of the man in the tree and the reason why he ended up there. And at the same time they must follow in the frigid wake of a killer who has just begun his work. It is a manhunt that will take Malin into the darkest corners of the human heart where the sins of the past—hidden away—all too often wreak havoc from one generation to the next.
WHEN THE ICE MELTS, WHAT REMAINS?
Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenage daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent who has ever worked on the police force in her small, isolated town. And the most talented. In her job, she is constantly moving through the borderland between life and death. Her path in life is violent and hazardous.
Linköping, Sweden, is surrounded by a landscape of plains and forests—a fault line on the edges of society where time seems to have stood still and where some people live entirely according to their own rules. In the early hours of a frigid night, during the coldest February anyone can remember, the bloody body of an obese man, stripped bare and horribly mutilated, is found hanging from a lone oak tree in the middle of a frozen, snow-covered, and windswept plain not far from town.
The young superintendent Malin Fors is assigned to the case. Together with her colleagues from the Investigation Section of Linköping’s Crime Unit, she must track down the identity of the man in the tree and the reason why he ended up there. And at the same time they must follow in the frigid wake of a killer who has just begun his work. It is a manhunt that will take Malin into the darkest corners of the human heart where the sins of the past—hidden away—all too often wreak havoc from one generation to the next.
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereInformazioni sul libro
Midwinter Blood: A Thriller
Descrizione
Meet police superintendent Malin Fors: Talented. Troubled. With a sixth sense for the truth. Join her on a manhunt that takes her to the darkest corners of the human heart in this chilling first novel from Scandinavian crime writer Mons Kallentoft.
WHEN THE ICE MELTS, WHAT REMAINS?
Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenage daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent who has ever worked on the police force in her small, isolated town. And the most talented. In her job, she is constantly moving through the borderland between life and death. Her path in life is violent and hazardous.
Linköping, Sweden, is surrounded by a landscape of plains and forests—a fault line on the edges of society where time seems to have stood still and where some people live entirely according to their own rules. In the early hours of a frigid night, during the coldest February anyone can remember, the bloody body of an obese man, stripped bare and horribly mutilated, is found hanging from a lone oak tree in the middle of a frozen, snow-covered, and windswept plain not far from town.
The young superintendent Malin Fors is assigned to the case. Together with her colleagues from the Investigation Section of Linköping’s Crime Unit, she must track down the identity of the man in the tree and the reason why he ended up there. And at the same time they must follow in the frigid wake of a killer who has just begun his work. It is a manhunt that will take Malin into the darkest corners of the human heart where the sins of the past—hidden away—all too often wreak havoc from one generation to the next.
WHEN THE ICE MELTS, WHAT REMAINS?
Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenage daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent who has ever worked on the police force in her small, isolated town. And the most talented. In her job, she is constantly moving through the borderland between life and death. Her path in life is violent and hazardous.
Linköping, Sweden, is surrounded by a landscape of plains and forests—a fault line on the edges of society where time seems to have stood still and where some people live entirely according to their own rules. In the early hours of a frigid night, during the coldest February anyone can remember, the bloody body of an obese man, stripped bare and horribly mutilated, is found hanging from a lone oak tree in the middle of a frozen, snow-covered, and windswept plain not far from town.
The young superintendent Malin Fors is assigned to the case. Together with her colleagues from the Investigation Section of Linköping’s Crime Unit, she must track down the identity of the man in the tree and the reason why he ended up there. And at the same time they must follow in the frigid wake of a killer who has just begun his work. It is a manhunt that will take Malin into the darkest corners of the human heart where the sins of the past—hidden away—all too often wreak havoc from one generation to the next.
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For once the lead character in a Scandinavian crime novel is female, and one who, I think will grow on us as more books are translated. In sub-genre terms this is a police procedural. The writing, as translated, flows well, despite the occasional jarring when the narrative voice changes. I thought at first I would be irritated by the ongoing voice of the victim, but I grew used to it.
The plot is a little laboured and requires an intervention to resolve it; I know one thread is left unresolved but this isn't critical.
I will be looking out for "Summertime Death"
Rating: 3The plot is a little laboured and requires an intervention to resolve it; I know one thread is left unresolved but this isn't critical.
I will be looking out for "Summertime Death"
"The cold stinks." "Maybe. But it still doesn't seem to have any smell, does it?" I have been on quite a Nordic crime fiction kick lately (along with everyone else), so the publication of Kallentoft's MIDWINTER BLOOD in English (as the first of four novels following Superintendent Malin Fors of the Linkoping police) was exciting for me. While all Nordic crime fiction speaks of cold and isolation, MIDWINTER BLOOD adds another dimension that sets it apart: insight into nearly every character's thoughts, even the dead ones.It is cold. Bitterly cold. The cold rises from the pages to make the hottest summer afternoon seem chilly. February in Linkoping is always cold, but this winter is extraordinary. Malin Fors is melancholy, musing on her lost relationship, struggling with her daughter's teenage years, dealing with increasingly difficult aging parents. And now with a mutilated corpse hanging from a tree. A professor at the university contacts the police when the scene reminds him of a midwinter pagan sacrifice, which means the killer may not be finished. The escalating mystery is very well-done, with unexpected twists and challenges. The dead man was an obese man who lived on the fringes of Linkoping, but not as an accepted part of it. Was the motive personal, or was he chosen at random, or because of his marginalization, for a ritual?The dead man thinks, "In a way, it's nice hanging up here." This is not a typical sentence for a thriller, and this is not a typical thriller. The gorgeous language not only describes the cold and unravels the threads of the mystery: it also gives us insight into the character's inner lives. At first, I was not sure the constant interruption of action to share character thoughts (especially of minor or dead characters) was going to work at all for me, but I soon settled into the style and found it illuminating. Fors delves into small-town rumors and innuendo, the torment of the dead man at the hands of cruel teenagers, a strangely isolated family that clings together, and the reader sees their actions and hears their words, but also witnesses their thoughts and feelings. The result is like no other crime novel.Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this novel courtesy of the publisher.
Rating: 5A dark and twisty murder tale. Good character development unexpected plot developments.
Rating: 5I have found another great author and looking forward to reading more of Malin and Zeke!
Rating: 4I give up. Eight chapters in and nothing much going on. A lot of deep thinking and speculation about love and such. It has a dramatic, poetic feel to it that some might enjoy, but I like my thrillers to be pretty straightforward.
Rating: 1I'm tired of hanging around like this, of this game you're playing with me down there in the snow below me. It's fun watching how your steps in the snow become tracks, tracks I can amuse myself by following, round, round, like restless memories hidden in inaccessible synapses.A Swedish police procedural that begins when the body of a naked man is found hanging in a lone tree on a desolate plain. I enjoyed it even though it was all rather depressing, full of adults damaged by abusive childhoods and teenagers getting into mischief (or worse) because their parents don't have time for them.I like the way the dead man butts in every now and then to comment on events without giving anything away about who killed him and why, and I intend to read the rest of this series.
Rating: 4Too grim for me. I got to the end but was glad it was over.I didn't like the over long individual thoughts bits either and largely skipped them. Confusing and rather pointless. I won't read anymore.
Rating: 2MIDWINTER SACRIFICE is essentially a Swedish police procedural set in area of Linköping where the author grew up. The discovery of a frozen body hanging in a tree is the start of an investigation which grinds to a baffling halt about mid-book, despite the early identification of the victim.The investigation does reveal that the victim was a suspect in a rape case from about three years earlier when a social worker was viciously assaulted. What it cannot tell Malin Fors and her partner Zeke Martinsson is what is behind this particular killing. Is it "just" murder or are there some links to mid-winter rituals?There are a number of background stories as one would expect in the first novel in a series where the author is establishing the main characters but I have to agree with other reviewers who have said this book is far too long.There is also a paranormal element that I really didn't think achieved much except as a sort of overview of what happened to the murder victim and a predictor of events to come. It does give us clues about who is responsible for the crime.The author chooses to leave one crime unsolved although both the reader and Malin Fors would think they have enough evidence to know who the perpetrator is.The series continues in a "seasonal" fashion, rather along the lines of Ann Cleeves' Shetland Quartet, which also began with a winter murder.
Rating: 4A chilling tale of murder set in the deep freeze of a Swedish winter. A naked body is discovered hanging from an oak tree in the bleak, wind chilled, snow covered countryside. The trail is as cold as the victim's frozen blood. The badly beaten and tortured body yields few clues. The team of investigators, led by Detective Inspector Malin Fors, has to reach out to the public in hopes a photo, based on the victim's reconstructed face, will turn something up. There will be no rest for Detective Fors or the victim's spirit as the long investigation leads to a possible connection with another old case. This one involved the brutal rape and torture of a young woman who was found naked and traumatized on the edge of some dense woods a few years ago. Will this trail run cold also or will things finally heat up? An enjoyable mystery with some interesting characters. The author leads us through the plot without giving too much away, until the right moment. I didn't care for the use of the spirit voice of the victim throughout the book. This book provided for review by Atria Books.
Rating: 3“Winters here are the devil’s work.”The body of an obese man is found hanging in a large oak tree, like a grotesque art piece. He is stripped bare and horribly disfigured. It is mid-February and brutally cold. Malin Fors is the police detective in charge. She is in her early 30s, an over-worked single mother, living in a rural town in Sweden. The murder investigation takes her down a long convoluted trail, filled with a frigid nastiness.This is the 1st of a series and for me, it was flawed. The author jammed to many Scand-crime tropes into the narrative and there were multiple view points, including the “voice” from the victim, which I just didn’t “get”. A much tighter story would have helped immensely. According to the other reviews, some readers really enjoyed the book, so maybe it just didn’t work for me, but at least it’s a series I do not have to continue which is a small triumph.
Rating: 3"The cold stinks." "Maybe. But it still doesn't seem to have any smell, does it?" I have been on quite a Nordic crime fiction kick lately (along with everyone else), so the publication of Kallentoft's MIDWINTER BLOOD in English (as the first of four novels following Superintendent Malin Fors of the Linkoping police) was exciting for me. While all Nordic crime fiction speaks of cold and isolation, MIDWINTER BLOOD adds another dimension that sets it apart: insight into nearly every character's thoughts, even the dead ones.It is cold. Bitterly cold. The cold rises from the pages to make the hottest summer afternoon seem chilly. February in Linkoping is always cold, but this winter is extraordinary. Malin Fors is melancholy, musing on her lost relationship, struggling with her daughter's teenage years, dealing with increasingly difficult aging parents. And now with a mutilated corpse hanging from a tree. A professor at the university contacts the police when the scene reminds him of a midwinter pagan sacrifice, which means the killer may not be finished. The escalating mystery is very well-done, with unexpected twists and challenges. The dead man was an obese man who lived on the fringes of Linkoping, but not as an accepted part of it. Was the motive personal, or was he chosen at random, or because of his marginalization, for a ritual?The dead man thinks, "In a way, it's nice hanging up here." This is not a typical sentence for a thriller, and this is not a typical thriller. The gorgeous language not only describes the cold and unravels the threads of the mystery: it also gives us insight into the character's inner lives. At first, I was not sure the constant interruption of action to share character thoughts (especially of minor or dead characters) was going to work at all for me, but I soon settled into the style and found it illuminating. Fors delves into small-town rumors and innuendo, the torment of the dead man at the hands of cruel teenagers, a strangely isolated family that clings together, and the reader sees their actions and hears their words, but also witnesses their thoughts and feelings. The result is like no other crime novel.Source disclosure: I received an e-galley of this novel courtesy of the publisher.
Rating: 5My first encounter with Kallentoft, and a thumbs up. This I believe is his first crime novel, though not his first book. He tells a good story and I like his style. Set in Linköping, Sweden, it is a murder investigation that, though slow moving, kept my interest throughout. I liked the insight into the various characters, would have welcomed more of it in fact, if only because the author does it well, and his character's do stir your interest. None more so than the members of the suspect and rather unpleasant family. The voice of the dead man being heard at various junctures worked for me in the end even if at first I was unsure. Eager to read his next up, Summertime Death.
Rating: 4I have to admit I slogged my way through three quarters of this book and considered abandoning it several times. I didn’t for several reasons, one being that this was a Netgalley request, the second because two reviewers I respect gave it a 4 star rating and thirdly because I admired several elements of the novel.Midwinter Blood is a part crime/part police procedural in the style of what has been labeled ‘Scandinavian Crime’, not only for the author’s origin and the setting but also distinguished by the cold weather, gruesome murder and reserved literary tone(think Stieg Larsson, Camilla Läckberg, Jo Nesbø). It begins in the depths of winter in a small Swedish town where an obese man is found hanging from a tree in the middle of a paddock, badly beaten, cut and half frozen. Inspector Malin Fors and her colleagues of the Violent Crime Squad at Linköping Police Department are tasked with discovering the man’s identity, and the identity of the killer. The crime scene suggests that the man could have been a sacrifice in the reenactment of an ancient Viking rite but as the victim’s life is unraveled the detectives discover a shocking family secret.“An investigation consists of a mass of voices, the sort you can hear, and the sort you can’t.”It may be that the translation is partly at fault but it was the abrupt shifting between voices, sometimes within a paragraph, that I found the most distracting. The author uses multiple viewpoints to narrate Midwinter Blood, the dead victim speaks of observing the police clustering at his swinging feet, a third person narrative provides glimpses into the lives of Malin’s colleagues but it is primarily Malin’s first person voice that tells the story.Inspector Malin Fors is a single mother of a teenage daughter who has a complicated relationship with her ex-husband, her parents, and a tendency to drink too much. She is a dogged investigator, not afraid to push the boundaries and determined to find the answers she needs to solve the crimes she is assigned. The characters of Midwinter Blood, from Malin to the truly disturbing Murvall family are fascinating and I admired the way in which Kallentoft crafted such complex persona’s. Even the victim is well developed, and though I disliked the corpses philosophical musings, I appreciated that the author honoured the man with a depth of characterisation rarely afforded to the victim.The investigation itself was interesting as the detectives followed up leads, evidence and hunches but he pace of the story was a source of frustration for me. I imagine a real police investigation would have a similar rate of progress but the glacially slow beginning simply made me impatient and it barely improved for me until the last few chapters. How much the fact that Midwinter Blood is written in the present tense had to do with that, I’m not sure.Judging by other reviews of this title if you have a fondness for Scandinavian crime then my review of Midwinter Blood you should not let my review put you off. However for me, while there were individual elements of Midwinter Blood I admired, the novel failed to coalesce into a satisfying read.
Rating: 2Malin Fors is a 34 year old superintendent in the Linkoping, Sweeden police department. She's alerted to attend the scene of an obese man who had been tortured and murdered. His body was hanging from a tree.t he victim, Bnegt Andersson was a man who was ignored by most people due to his overweight size and shyness. He lived in an area Malin described as including "...scared kids, teased kids, never-go-to-school kids. Alcoholics kids."His father was cruel and ended up in jail. When he got out of jail, he seemed to resent Bengt and was abusive to him and to Bengt's mother.The police procedural follows the search for the possible killer and the motive. It is even suggested that it might be a ritual killing in Midwinter's Blue where a person is killed, their blood drained from their body as a sacrifice to the gods.The sadness of Bengt's life leaps from the pages. Unloved, a cruel father and living in and out of mental homes, it wasn't much of a life.The psychological novel is well written and will have the reader glued to the pages. Malin is the kind of protagonist who is interesting and someone the reader wants to succeed.
Rating: 5This is a very unusual Nordic mystery in that it almost reads like a stream of consciousness novel. Took some getting used to because the prose is anything but direct. Switches from third to first person consistently and the dead body has thoughts of its own. Yet I liked it quite a bit, the detective is an interesting character, her daughter has problems and she is still mourning the loss of her marriage. The storyline is brilliant, actually quite sad and the novel has many twists and turns. This is the first of four in a planned series and I am avidly awaiting the next installment. Unusual and different but very good.
Rating: 4"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."The quote at the start of the blurb of MIDWINTER SACRIFICE intrigued. The opening of the book with the naked, mutilated body of a man hanging from a tree in a frozen, snow covered location was startling. A new detective character, Malin Fors, single mother of a teenage daughter engaging. But ultimately it was the concept of the "voices" of an investigation that weave their way through this book, that delivered an unusual, compelling perspective.Slow moving, immersion reading in the very best tradition of Scandinavian styled mysteries, this book has an additional aspect in that it's narrated by voices, including the victim himself, whose voice pleads, cajoles and guides Malin (not that she can hear him!). But the point is well made. The victim in a case has a voice. Obviously, an investigator rarely hears the victim of a murder, but their life, as well as their death, can "speak" to the investigating team if they are prepared to listen.Alongside the use of the voices, there's a solid police procedural moving through this book - from the difficulties of identifying the victim, to the explanation of why they would become a victim of such a violent crime. To the past that informs the present. But we are talking dark, intricate, reserved, thoughtful and sinister. We're talking cold and atmospheric - partially because of the weather, partially because of the characters who inhabit the story. We're also talking a good central character - investigator Malin Fors has a complicated personal life, a strange history with her ex-husband, and a realistic relationship with her teenage daughter. There's enough of the personal elements (good and bad) of her life built into the story to give a sense of the balancing act that a major investigation has to become. Perhaps some of her work colleagues are less strongly drawn - although to be honest I didn't think that was an obvious problem or even inexplicable.Undoubtedly MIDWINTER SACRIFICE is one of those books that you have to sink into, allow it to spin out the story, go with the voices and deal with the reserve. Fans of that particularly thoughtful, considered, reserved, Scandinavian style will definitely find something in this book. Personally I found the idea of the voices within an investigation fascinating and the book particularly difficult to put down. There's real balance and believability about Fors, her family, her private and professional struggle, but at the same time, there's a sense of the victim here that gives the book a different dimension - a connection with the normally voiceless.It's very pleasing to read that his "first book" in the Malin Fors series went straight into the bestseller charts. Sounds like there are more around to look forward to.
Rating: 4Midwinter Sacrifice is the first in another Swedish crime series to be translated, and very welcome it is too. Malin Fors is a talented, ambitious police detective. On a cold winter morning she and some of her colleagues are called to the scene of a grisly murder, with a corpse left hanging from a tree. I liked this a lot. It is very long and rather waffly in places, but I liked Kallentoft's portrayal of painstaking and persistent investigators, and the way that we meet many of her colleagues and learn something about the way they think and approach their work, and their lives. I thought the police and the characterisations were more interesting than the murder investigations.Despite the front cover bulurb mentioning Stief Larsson, Kallentoft has more in common with other writers of Swedish police detective fiction, like Henning Mankell and Camilla Lackberg.
Rating: 4