Three men on the beach are digging a hole, covertly watched by a young boy. His intrigue turns to horror as he makes out the fourth figure of the woman for whom the hole is intended. Buried up to her neck in the sand, the high tide is rapidly approaching. Still screaming in terror, the victim takes her last breath as water fills her nose and mouth—in her stomach, she feels her baby kick. And her waters break. The abhorrent crime remains unsolved 24 years later; but gruesome violence is still prevalent. A gang has been killing homeless people in parks, filming their attacks, and broadcasting them on the internet. The police have their work cut out trying to keep abreast of the crime wave. Olivia Rönning hopes to follow in her father's footsteps and join their ranks in the next few months as she completes her training; she has only one last hurdle to overcome over the summer break, a challenge from her professor to pick a cold case and solve it. Should be simple, she thinks. Little does she know the world she is getting involved in, the danger she faces, and the ugly truths she risks uncovering.

    Barry Forshaw, the UK's principal crime fiction expert, presents a celebration and analysis ofthe Scandinavian crime genre; from Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Martin Beck series, through Henning Mankell's Wallander, to Stieg Larsson's demolition of the Swedish Social Democratic ideal in the publishing phenomenon The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

    Plagued by guilt, a series of complicated love affairs, and his terrifying, kaleidoscope imagination, Michael sets out on a journey of discovery to find out not only who murdered his uncle, a Benedictine monk, and a beautiful young postulate in a monastery in the Alps, but to fathom who he really is, and where he fits into the world with the blue magic woman. In his attempt to solve these psychological mysteries, his travels take him to an Alpine monastery, an arctic asylum, and Sahara sand dunes where a series of surreal events and bizarre characters cause Michael's fragile mind to fragment into different personalities who enact a story of madness, and push him to limits to where what is real blurs into confusion with what is not, as the blue magic woman creates a world of the interior to which none have access except Michael.