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Knopf
February 2010
On Sale: February 16, 2010
352 pages ISBN: 0307271862 EAN: 9780307271860 Hardcover
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Fiction
The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries, writing at the height of his powers, now gives us an electrifying stand-alone global thriller. January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of HesjΓΆvallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the AndrΓ©ns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an AndrΓ©n family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an AndrΓ©n ancestorβa gang master on the American transcontinental railwayβthat describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the HesjΓΆvallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth. The investigation leads to the highest echelons of power in present-day Beijing, and to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years into the depths of the slave trade between China and the United Statesβa history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the HesjΓΆvallen murders.
 Media BuzzMorning Edition - February 18, 2010
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