Sacrifice (Blot)

Håkan Östlundh

 

A medical helicopter is flying over the Baltic Sea carrying policeman Fredrik Broman. Broman has a serious head wound and no one knows whether he is going to make it. Three weeks earlier, two corpses have been found, murdered, on a farm near Levide. One woman, killed by a blow to the head, and one man, cut to pieces so severely that he is unrecognizable. At the time they were found on the living room’s bloody wooden parquet floor, they’d already been dead for two days. The owner of the property, Arvid Traneus, had just returned home from Japan after many years consulting for a large corporation. At first, the police assume that he’s the murdered man, since the woman at the corpse’s side has been identified as Arvid Traneus’ wife.

 

However, the body proves to be that of Arvid’s cousin, and the investigation has to switch gears, while the suspects seem to have disappeared without a trace.

 

Östlundh has created an unusual novel from the classical detective genre, holding the reader in suspense from first page to last.

 

Nominated to Best Swedish Crime Novel 2008 by the Swedish Crime Writer Academy.

 

345 pages

 

English reading material available. Translation by Per Carlsson.

 

Rights sold

Denmark: Forlaget Aronsen

Germany: Piper Verlag

Italy: Fazi Editore

Netherlands: Rode Kamer

Sweden: Ordfront Förlag (hardcover), Ordfront Ljud (audio book)

USA: St. Martin's Press

 

Reviews

"The excitement builds up in a construction of many layers in the short chapters and the authorletsthe makes the ventsbuildtoaclimax./.../Itsounds complicatedand in the beginningit is, buteverything in the story plays arole andhave ameaning.Every turn of the story, every surprising twist and all the new facts leads to a newangle.The ScandinavianstyleI characterized bytightand beautiful pictures.Östlundhis a masteredof this style."

CrimeZone, The Netherlands

 

"… the people in this crime novel is more lively described than what we are used to. They seem in a way more edgy and human than all the one dimensional characters we usually meet."

Politiken

 

"There is no question about the fact that the Swedes have captured the Nordic crime throne and Håkan Östlundh is definitely one of the most interesting authors in the genre. He knows his plot and his persons. His vivid treatment of the language is exceptional. He knows how to create a story in a way that makes it stirring from the start to the very end. The gripping family drama in Blod reminds me of the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. The story is based on intrigue but Östlundh’s sence of details makes the scenes extremely real. Blod is a classic crime story but also depicts relations between people and contemporary society in an eminent way."

Helsingør Dagblad

 

"Sacrifice ... offers a thrilling family drama, is extraordinary well written, shows with emphasis that this author after four books deserves to be acknowledged with respect, deserves to be taken seriously, and deserves much credit and many readers.”

Tidningen VI

 

”Until now, Håkan Östlund has fallen behind in all the commotion around the trend to write crime that takes place on Gotland. But here he is definitely the King among all crime novel Queens.”

Gotlands Allehanda

 

“If Östlund continues like this, we have something to look forward to.”

Sydsvenska Dagbladet

 

“Östlund has let his characters grow. Already in book number two, Broman and the others had become real people for the reader to recognize oneself in. And now in the fourth book they become, like in any really good book, part of the reader’s circle of friends. /…/ Frankly, Håkan Östlund’s Blot (Sacrifice) touches what a contemporary crime novel has to do: present moral issues in a classic murder intrigue.”

Nerikes Allehanda

 

”A classic crime story with elements of our time and the relations between people created by our time. Of all the crime novelists using Gotland as settings for their books, Håkan Östlundh is the sharpest, both when it comes to describing our time age and building an intrigue that stays exciting through out the entire book. Sacrifice (Blot) doesn’t change this comparison, if anything he increases his lead towards the competitors.”

Gotlands Tidningar