An amazingly detailed and well-crafted police procedural. Each book in the series gets better and better. Irene Huss and her colleagues make an excellent team; working dilligently, professionally, and kindly. They are open minded and attentive when interviewing witnesses, family members of victims, and suspects.

A very satisfying read.

Drei Leichen geben der Polizei Rätsel auf – ein Pfarrer und seine Frau wurden im Schlaf erschossen, der gemeinsame Sohn liegt tot im Sommerhaus. Hat man es mit einer Familientragödie zu tun? Sind die Täter gar in kirchlichen Kreisen zu suchen? Die Recherchen führen Irene Huss bis nach England – zu einem Abgrund aus verwirrter Liebe und falsch verstandener Solidarität.

The fourth case for Irene Huss and her colleagues starts with the killing of a clergyman and his wife and grown-up son in a rural area. There's the suggestion of a link to satanism, but even the police don't see this as anything other than a red herring for very long. More problematic is the difficulty they are having in getting any information from the pastor's daughter in London, and eventually, to everyone's surprise but the reader's, Irene is forced to make a trip to the UK.

I had my suspicions in the last book that Tursten was pulling our legs. This time it seems almost certain that we're being led up the garden path. Irene and her British colleague travel to Scotland to interview a witness called St Clair who lives in his family's ancestral castle at a place called Rosslyn. Hmmm. I thought at first that she might simply be jumping on the Dan Brown bandwagon - that bit of nonsense was at its height just then - but the Chapel hardly figures, and then I remembered that the real-life Earl of Rosslyn, who owns the castle and has the family name St Clair-Erskine, happens to be a former senior officer of the Metropolitan Police. Obviously a private joke there somewhere! (In real life, Rosslyn Castle is much more of a ruin than she makes it in the book - the only habitable part is rented out for holidays by Landmark Trust.)

The main storyline of this one is a bit creaky, and it's pretty obvious from quite early on which way it's headed, but, as in the previous books, the detail of the investigation and the interactions in the police team are what keep us interested. ( )

I'm of two minds about this mystery series. I really like the main detective, Irene Huss. It's one of the few detective series I've found where the lead detective works to maintain a healthy home life and work life balance. It strikes me as much more realistic than when the detectives fall into each case so completely.

But . . . this book took a really gruesome turn at the end that I wasn't really prepared for. I think it sort of soured me on reading any more in the series. ( )

This is the fourth in the Inspector Irene Huss series from Sweden. Three people from a single family, but not in a single location, are found murdered with no apparent motive to link their deaths, and the police must ferret out a reason from people unwilling to provide information.

While the plot was interesting, the various perpetrators and the various crimes were a little to obvious. At one point Inspector Huss travels to London, and the narrative devolves into travelogue. Tursten doesn't skimp on detail, but often it's a kind of decoration rather than being integral to the story. (Writing this, I find myself going back to edit out my own unnecessary words.) Not a bad book, but longer and more fretful than it needs to be, depending too much on information withheld from both the reader and the police.

comment after reread:Three members of a family are found shot dead. The father, a highly regarded pastor, is killed beside his depressive wive; their son is killed at their summer cottage some distance away. Why? No one can find a motive, and the only surviving member of the family, a daughter working in London, is unable to help, as she is herself in a deep and anxiety-ridden depression. But Irene feels she holds the key to this tragedy.

Scandi police novels being what they are, I had an inkling of the solution even though I hadn't remembered reading the book, but it was still a surprising ending. ( )