WINNER OF SWEDEN’S BEST FIRST CRIME NOVEL AWARD • A hardheaded attorney returns to her hometown to solve a vicious murder in this “richly atmospheric” ( Kirkus Reviews ) thriller from the acclaimed author of The Blood Spilt “This impressive debut heralds another striking voice from Scandinavia.”— Booklist In the land of silence and snow, the killing has begun . . . Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the town she’d left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark, wrenching, and impossible to guess. . . . “Richly atmospheric.” — Kirkus Reviews “Larsson builds suspense gradually but inexorably, and she is equally good at creating mood. . . .This impressive debut heralds another striking voice from Scandinavia.” — Booklist    “For those who eschew exotic travel in favor of the familiar hammock, there’s nothing better than a well-written and well-translated story from some place you’ll probably never visit. is that story and more!” — Rocky Mountain News   Åsa Larsson was born in Kiruna, Sweden, in 1966. She studied in Uppsala and lived for some years in Stockholm but now prefers the rural life with her husband, two children, and several chickens. A former tax lawyer, she now writes full-time and is the author of Sun Storm , winner of Sweden’s Best First Crime Novel Award, and The Black Path , which Delacorte will publish in 2007. And evening came and morning came, the first day When Viktor Strandgård dies it is not, in fact, for the first time. He lies on his back in the church called The Source of All Our Strength and looks up through the enormous windows in its roof. It’s as if there is nothing between him and the dark winter sky up above. You can’t get any closer than this, he thinks. When you come to the church on the mountain at the end of the world, the sky will be so close that you can reach out and touch it. The Aurora Borealis twists and turns like a dragon in the night sky. Stars and planets are compelled to give way to her, this great miracle of shimmering light, as she makes her unhurried way across the vault of heaven. Viktor Strandgård follows her progress with his eyes. I wonder if she sings? he thinks. Like a lonely whale beneath the sea? And as if his thoughts have touched her, she stops for a second. Breaks her endless journey. Contemplates Viktor Strandgård with her cold winter eyes. Because he is as beautiful as an icon lying there, to tell the truth, with the dark blood like a halo round his long, fair, St. Lucia hair. He can’t feel his legs anymore. He is getting drowsy. There is no pain. Curiously enough it is his previous death he is thinking of as he lies there looking into the eye of the dragon. That time in the late winter when he came cycling down the long bank toward the crossroads at Adolf Hedinsvägen and Hjalmar Lundbohmsvägen. Happy and redeemed, his guitar on his back. He remembers how the wheels of his bicycle skidded helplessly on the ice as he tried desperately to brake. How he saw the woman in the red Fiat Uno coming from the right. How they stared at each other, the realization in the other’s eyes; now it’s happening, the icy slide toward death. With that picture in his mind’s eye Viktor Strandgård dies for the second time in his life. Footsteps approach, but he doesn’t hear them. His eyes do not have to see the gleam of the knife once again. His body lies like an empty shell on the floor of the church; it is stabbed over and over again. And the dragon resumes her journey across the heavens, unmoved. Monday, February 17 Rebecka Martinsson was woken by her own sharp intake of breath as fear stabbed through her body. She opened her eyes to darkness. Just between the dream and the waking, she had the strong feeling that there was someone in the flat. She lay still and listened, but all she could hear was the sound of her own heart thumping in her chest like a frightened hare. Her fingers fumbled for the alarm clock on the bedside table and found the little button to light up the face. Quarter to four. She had gone to bed four hours ago and this was the second time she had woken up. It’s the job, she thought. I work too hard. That’s why my thoughts go round and round at night, like a hamster on a squeaking wheel. Her head and the back of her neck were aching. She must have been grinding her teeth in her sleep. Might as well get up. She wound the d