The Treacherous Net

In Tursten’s assured eighth novel featuring Det. Insp. Irene Huss (after The Beige Man), two teenage girls without any history of trouble go missing and later turn up as mutilated corpses. As gruesome as the murders are, what rattles Huss and her Gothenburg police colleagues is the realization that the girls are wearing two parts of the same bikini set. If these crimes are linked, could there be a serial killer stalking other girls? Meanwhile, workers discover a mummified corpse in the wall of a building being demolished. Huss’s new boss, Supt. Efva Thylqvist, unloads the old corpse case onto Huss’s previous boss, Supt. Sven Andersson, but she’s determined to ignore Huss. It takes all of Huss’s hard-earned skills to maneuver Thylqvist into allowing her to mount an aggressive operation to catch the killer. Andersson’s lower-stakes pursuit of the mummy mystery provides a welcome change of pace from Huss’s investigation as it builds to a nail-biting climax. (Dec.)