Night Rounds (Inspector Irene Huss Series #4)

Publishers Weekly

A self-effacing but effective lead plus a complex whodunit plot add up to a superior Scandinavian crime novel, Tursten’s fourth featuring Det. Insp. Irene Huss (after 2007’s The Glass Devil). When a nurse, Marianne Svärd, is found strangled at a small hospital in Göteborg after a blackout that also claimed the life of a patient who was on a respirator, the night nurse on duty, Siv Persson, tells the police an incredible story. While the power was out, Persson claims she saw the ghost of a nurse who committed suicide in the hospital 50 years earlier after having an affair with a surgeon. While Huss and her team instantly dismiss a supernatural explanation, she becomes convinced that the motive for Svärd’s slaying stems from the hospital’s past. Tursten does an outstanding job of offering multiple plausible murderers, making this the rare procedural that actually requires the reader to evaluate alibis, motives, and means to solve the case. Agent: Anneli Hoier. (Feb.)

Library Journal

At a tiny, private Swedish hospital one fateful night, someone cuts the power, disengages the backup generator, and murders a nurse. Eerily, the other nurse on duty is convinced she saw the hospital's resident ghost that evening. Back in the late 1940s, a nurse died there, hanged in the attic; many feel she continues to haunt the facility. A few days after the power failure, another nurse who has gone missing is found hanged in the same place. Insp. Irene Huss realizes that the killer is intimately familiar with the hospital's history. And that means she and her team will have to immerse themselves in both the current evidence and with the building's genealogy. Diagnosis: Revenge. VERDICT I couldn't put down this finely crafted, Swedish procedural with its complex story line and heart-stopping climax. In her fourth outing (after The Glass Devil), Huss works intuitively, and her family interactions add extra depth to the novel. This series will appeal to those who like Michael Genelin and Quentin Bates. [See Prepub Alert, 11/11/11; for more Scandinavian crime fiction, see "Nordic Crime Fiction" on p. 58.—Ed.]