Killer’s Island

Jansson knows that to truly engage a reader in a whodunit, the victim must be someone whom the reader has come to know. Her second Maria Wern thriller to be translated into English (after 2013’s Strange Bird) rewards readers’ patience with the chilling murder of a character they’re likely to have grown attached to. And well before that, she offers up a disturbing opening scene, as Wern, a police detective on the Swedish island of Gotland, intervenes when she witnesses a boy being savagely beaten by three men—only to be assaulted herself. As she struggles to return to duty, her colleagues tackle a horrific murder in which the killer dressed the decapitated victim as a bride and placed the head in the corpse’s lap. More deaths follow before the wrenching psychological motive for the crimes is revealed, along with the culprit’s identity. Sophisticated depictions of human frailty, both among the police and civilians, make this a memorable read. (Jan.)