The Glass Devil (An Irene Huss Investigation) - Softcover

Helene Tursten was a nurse and a dentist before she turned to writing. Other books in the Irene Huss series include Detective Inspector Huss, Night Rounds, The Torso, The Golden Calf, The Fire Dance, The Beige Man, and The Treacherous Net. Her books have been translated into 18 languages. She was born in Göteborg, Sweden, where she now lives with her husband and daughter.

The third Irene Huss mystery to appear in the U.S. is considerably less gritty than either detective Inspector Huss(2003) or The Torso(2006), but it continues Tursten's sensitive exploration of how a female detective manages to balance family life with police work: not only the time pressures but also the jarring psychological disconnects that occur when jumping between dramatically different worlds. This time Huss' case--the execution-style murders of a minister, his wife, and their schoolteacher son--takes the Swedish detective from the scene of the crime, a village outside Goteborg, to London, where the traumatized daughter of the minister lives. Road-trip mysteries inevitably sacrifice the signature landscape that is often key to the series' appeal, but in this case, the fact that Huss is on her own in London gives Tursten the opportunity to probe deeper into her heroine's character. The plot itself is less compelling than the previous two entries in the series--the shocking climax will be guessed early on--but Huss is quickly becoming one of the most satisfying lead characters in the thriving world of Swedish crime fiction. Bill Ott
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