13. Never End by Ake Edwardson

The city of Gothenburg, Sweden is suffering from a sweltering heat wave. A young girl who has just graduated is raped in a park, and shortly after she goes to the police, another girl is found dead in the same park, this time a victim of attempted rape and murder. Both girls had something placed around their necks during the rapes – possibly a dog leash. Detective Erik Winter is called in when the scenes start to look like an unsolved rape and murder that plagued the area five years ago. Could all of these girls have something in common that will help police catch the man?

Ake Edwardson’s Erik Winter novels are best-sellers in Europe and are just starting to be released in the United States. Last year’s Sun and Shadow is also very good, and deals with murders happening around Y2K. Edwardson builds his suspense slowly, like the oppressive summer heat, and his obsession with solving these cases is palpable. This time around Edwardson also develops more of the secondary characters, like Winter’s police colleagues and Winter’s wife and daughter, so readers are drawn into many characters. For readers of Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum.