Until Thy Wrath Be Past

At the start of Swedish author Larsson's stunning fourth crime novel (after The Black Path), the ghost of 17-year-old Wilma Persson describes how she was murdered during a dive beneath the ice of far-north Lake Vittangij%C3%A4rvi while looking for a downed Nazi airplane. Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson, psychologically fragile from previously killing three men in self-defense, and Insp. Anna-Maria Mella, badly shaken when her impulsive actions nearly killed herself and her detective partner, inexorably uncover old passions and vicious crimes in their search for Wilma's killer, but the real allure of Larsson's meticulously crafted narrative lies in her unflinching dissection of human needs and desires. As doom-filled as Larsson's leitmotif of ravens (in old Scandinavia the messengers of Odin, god of poetry and berserker fury), this remarkable tale of twisted love and vengeance and redemptive nonjudgmental devotion resounds, like its epigraph from the Book of Job, with all the pain of human existence. (Aug.)