Blood on an ax in the snow. A blood-spattered manuscript on the table. From a lonely cabin in the woods, a writer vanishes without a trace. Her latest book is about a true crime case: the cruel death of twelve-year-old Becca, still unsolved after twenty-three years. Does the writer know the killer? Detective Sergeant Calista Gates is haunted by the case. Becca was her best childhood friend. When Becca was found lifeless, gagged and tied to a tree in the searing summer heat of British Columbia’s interior, the girl’s suffering shook the public. And it devastated Calista. Now it is winter and Calista wants to lure the killer back to the crime scene in the snow-covered hills around the city of Kamloops. She’s convinced he’s hiding near where Becca’s body was found. And not far from the missing writer’s cabin. This time, Calista wants to catch him with bait he won’t be able to resist: her. A risky and dangerous experiment that nearly destroys everything she has believed. The author Bernadette Calonego whose books have appeared with Piper, Ullstein, and Edition M and have been translated into English, has lived for more than twenty years in Canada, where she has been inspired by the country’s wilderness and her expeditions to the north. The German version of her mystery novel Stormy Cove became a bestseller, and Oh, wie schön ist Kanada! , a nonfiction book about her experiences as a foreign newspaper correspondent, landed on the renowned bestseller list of the German magazine Der Spiegel . What German readers wrote on Amazon about this mystery thriller: "Bernadette Calonego's best novel yet! Multi-layered and exciting right up to the last page." (Gabriele) "Gripping from beginning to end, with a cleverly interwoven storyline, small and clear chapters - all this makes the book a treat." (Willi Schwarzwaelder) "The exciting, dramatic, captivating, nerve-wracking, multi-layered and twisty hunt of Canadian detective Calista Gates for a cruel murderer and a child abductor." (Joachim Hausen) "Until the end, I had no idea who committed the crimes." (Christiane Raphael) "I love Calista Gates and her story. All four volumes completely fascinated and captivated me until the end." (Volker Zeuner) "I really liked that each chapter is told from the point of view of different protagonists. This gives you a wide variety of perspectives on what is happening." (Sigrid) "Due to the fluent writing style and the fast-paced plot, I just flew through the pages because I really wanted to know how the story ends." (Aglaya)