"It's fascinating to watch this Norwegian author adapt our homegrown monster [the serial killer] to a foreign culture.... When things go wrong, Harry goes on a bender, but when he's on his game, no one is better than this obsessive detective. He systematically works his way through the intricacies of a plot that speeds along like a bullet train."—New York Times Book Review

Detective Harry Hole is on the trail of a diabolical serial killer terrorizing Oslo in another electrifying thriller in the Harry Hole series from the author of The Snowman.

In the heat of a sweltering Oslo summer, a young woman is found murdered in her flat—with one of her fingers cut off and a tiny red star-shaped diamond placed under her eyelid. An off-the-rails alcoholic barely holding on to his job, Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with Tom Waaler, a hated colleague whom Harry believes is responsible for the murder of his partner. When another woman is reported missing five days later, and her severed finger turns up adorned with a red star-shaped diamond ring, Harry fears a serial killer is at work.

But Hole's determination to capture a fiend and to expose Waaler's crimes is leading him into shadowy places where both investigations merge in unexpected ways, forcing him to make difficult decisions about a future he may not live to see.