Closed For Winter

January 13, 2014
Horst makes his U.S. debut with his intricately plotted seventh mystery featuring Chief Insp. William Wisting (after Dregs), which won Norway’s Booksellers’ Prize in 2012. Break-ins at summer cottages in Vestfold County on Norway’s southwest coast are common, but the discovery of a battered body in one of them results in a call to Wisting. The case has some peculiar elements, beginning with the corpse being found in a cottage belonging to celebrity interview host Thomas Rønningen; later, it’s stolen while being transferred to the police morgue by funeral ambulance. Multiple strands emerge linking the robberies to Lithuanian thieves, as well as to known criminal Rudi Muller and possibly to Tommy Kvanter, the Danish lover of Wisting’s journalist daughter. Wisting makes an informative and dangerous trip to Vilnius to interview suspects, worries about his daughter’s safety, and puzzles out a surprising explanation for the confusing crimes.