The air is quivering with heat. An unusual late-summer storm approaches Linköping, and at a mismanaged nursing home 79-year-old Konrad Karlsson is found dead, hung in the cord to his medical alarm button.
The Circumstances suggest suicide, but when Malin Fors and her associates question people who knew him, they all speak of a man who, despite his ailments, had a strong will to live. He was well-liked by the staff and a kind of surrogate grandfather for Malin’s daughter Tove, who has a summer job at the home.
The Suspicions that Konrad did not commit suicide are reinforced by the autopsy. An investigation is started, but nothing seems to fit together. The information is contradictory, the course of events confused. Who has anything to gain from the death of a sick old man, even in a society where financial interests seem to count for more than human dignity?
Inspector Malin Fors is the star of the police force. Stubborn and skillful, intuitive and intelligent. Obsessed. Constantly on the run from herself, constantly absorbed by work.
The spring sunshine is beaming over Linköping and its still winter-pale inhabitants who are enjoying the weather from the pavement cafés by the town square. Swallows are circling the sky, colourful tulips are radiating from the market...
In the first part, The Devil’s Scent, Malin Fors has left Linköping for the swarming metropolis of Bangkok. A city full of scents, colours, sounds and tastes. But also corruption, violence and death.
Malin is on the run....
It is the hottest summer anyone can recall and Linköping is plagued by a sweltering heatwave and raging forest fires.
A teenage girl is found naked and bleeding in a city park, without any recollection of what has happened. A grisly discovery is made...