The call came in late in the day on her first day in the new job. Inspector Agnes Luthi is ready to go home, yet despite the winter storm outside, she is more than willing to take it. Leaving the police station in Lausanne in her CitroΓ«n C1, she soon encounters the full brutal face of the blizzard. How stupid of them to all be out on the ice and the freezing wind for some society woman who wandered outdoors and died. Frozen like a statute, the young woman had died wearing an expensive ballgown and a worn old coat. What was she doing outside? Then, Inspector Luthi notices a slit in her back. Now, it is not just death but murder. Who could have done this? Why?
Inspired by the 2005 ice storm in Geneva, SWISS VENDETTA is written by the talented debut novelist Tracee de Hahn. Hopefully, it will be the start of a new mystery series featuring Inspector Agnes Luthi, a widowed Swiss American member of the Violent Crimes Unit based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Agnes is very professional, intelligent and compassionate. Despite her own personal concerns, she strives to cope as well as she can with what she has to deal with in trying to hold a proper police investigation when none can leave and potentially there is a murderer amongst them. Dare she trust any of them?
While SWISS VENDETTA sets the stage to be part of an ongoing series, the novel can easily be read as a stand-alone story as it is complete from its exciting start to its surprising conclusion. SWISS VENDETTA has a number of aristocratic and eccentric characters that come across very authentically as their mannerisms and speech ring true to who they are. While the storyline starts dramatically, it builds slowly as the ice storm has confined them all to the ChΓ’teau Vallotton and a nearby mansion near the frozen shoreline of Lac LΓ©man. Given that, SWISS VENDETTA remains intriguing, especially with the interlacing of the backcasting stories of the characters' past and especially around the death of Agnes' husband.
If you like classic "Who done it" mysteries or police procedurals like the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, you are sure to relish SWISS VENDETTA. It has all the great ingredients: a realistic plot, a chilling atmosphere, an old family chateau full of art and antique things and a cast of potential murderers. See if you can figure out who the murderer is!
Swiss Vendetta, Tracee de Hahn's mesmerizing
debut, is an emotionally complex, brilliantly plotted
mystery set against the beautiful but harsh backdrop of a
Swiss winter.
Inspector Agnes LΓΌthi, a Swiss-American police officer in
Lausanne, Switzerland, has just transferred to the Violent
Crimes unit from Financial Crimes to try to shed all
reminders of her old life following her husband's death.
Now, on the eve of the worst blizzard Lausanne has seen in
centuries, Agnes has been called to investigate her very
first homicide case. On the lawn of the grand ChΓ’teau
Vallotton, at the edge of Lac LΓ©man, a young woman has been
found stabbed to death. The woman, an appraiser for a London
auction house, had been taking inventory at the chΓ’teau, a
medieval fortress dripping in priceless works of art and
historical treasures.
Agnes finds it difficult to draw answers out of anyoneβthe
tight-lipped Swiss family living in the chΓ’teau, the
servants who have been loyal to the family for generations,
the aging WWII survivor who lives in the neighboring
mansion, even the American history student studying at the
Vallotton chΓ’teau's library. As the storm rages on, roads
become impassible, the power goes out around Lausanne, and
Agnes finds herself trapped in the candlelit halls of the
chΓ’teau with all the players of the mystery, out of her
depth in her first murder case and still struggling to stay
afloat after the death of her husband.
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