It’s winter and I’m missing the dry cold and bright snow of the mountains so, this week, I’m heading to Sweden and Norway in search of killers who stalk the dark.

One book is by a Swedish author that I’ve heard of but never read and starts a new series. One is the second book of a trilogy that I started back in May and promised myself I’d get back to.

I’m hoping for a strong sense of place, lots of tension and a few surprises.

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‘Hidden In Snow‘ by Viveca Sten (2022)

I had been intending to give Viveca Sten’s Sandhamn Murders series a try because I’d heard good things about them and because I was curious about how many murders could be committed on a small, cute, holiday island with a permanent population of a little over a hundred people. Perhaps Viveca Sten has been asking herself the same question as she’s moved her new series to Åre, a ski resort big enough to have hosted the Winter Olympics.

I am hoping to capture the feeling of being in the mountains when the snow is deep and the days are short, to meet some engaging characters that I’ll want to follow through a series of novels and be entertained by a decent mystery.

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‘The Owl Always Hunts At Night‘ by Samuel Bjork (2017)

I read ‘I’m Travelling Alone’, the first book in this series this year after having let it languish in my TBR pile for years because I’d been put of serial killer books by authors who seemed to glorify the killers and turn the victims into plot devices. I was excited to find that Samuel Bjork doesn’t do that. His focus is on the two main detectives Holger Munch and Mia Krüger: how they think, how they work together and what their work does to them. I admired the way he took his time building the characters and the situations, never lost sight of the humanity of the victims and still delivered a clever plot.

I’m hoping the second book will have the same attributes as the first book and will develop not just Munch and Krüger but the team that they’ve built around them.