Devil’s Ring

It’s almost like the mire is the resting place of an ancient evil. That the ground itself, where the historical battle between Danes and Swedes took place in 1676, is tainted. That the blood of the fallen soldiers stained the ground, marked it forever. One could say that the evil has awoken again, and blood is once more trickling down the back of a skull and seeping into the earth.

During an early morning at the end of summer, a young man is found lying lifeless on the dried grass in the Nöbbelöv Mire, just outside of Lund. His hair is dark and sticky from the blood that has seeped out of the multiple fractures at the back of his skull. Police officers Fredrika Storm and Henry Calment are called to the unnerving scene, where they quickly realize that it is a clear-cut case: the man has been brutally murdered.

Soon, Fredrika and Henry learn that the deceased is a Mattias Lindqvist, and at first glance, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious suspect in his murder. Mattias was a lonely man who led an isolated life and spent most of his time online. However, when Fredrika and Henry begin combing through old records, they come across a harrowing event from Mattias’s childhood. Fifteen years prior, Mattias’s mother Lena also met an untimely death when she was assaulted in their home with a hammer. Back then, the killer was never caught. What initially appears to be a tragic coincidence takes a dark turn when Mattias’s cause of death is determined to be the very same.

Fredrika and Henry realize that they need to revisit the old case, in hopes of finding a link to Mattias’s killer. An unsettling possibility looms: they might be dealing with the same perpetrator. At the time, the police immediately suspected Lena’s partner, a petty criminal named Janne, but he vanished shortly after the murder, leaving the case unsolved. Was Janne indeed guilty of the murder? Or has the real killer been hiding in the dark all this time, having now returned to kill Mattias as well? And if so, why?

Determined not to get stuck on a single lead, Fredrika and Henry begin scrutinizing Mattias’s life. It seems Mattias had more secrets than first met their eyes, secrets he had gone to great lengths to keep hidden. In the time leading up to his death, he had called his sister and left a cryptic message, he had been seen with a mysterious woman, and he had installed a surveillance camera outside of his very own home, leaving Fredrika and Henry with the conclusion that he was getting paranoid about something. What had Mattias gotten entangled in? As the investigation unfolds, Henry and Fredrika are pulled into a twisted web spun from love and fear, wrought with passionate feelings and contorted truths.

In Devil’s Ring, the fourth installment of the bestselling Fredrika Storm series, our protagonists are thrust into yet another complex murder case, rooted in the flaws of humanity and the force that ultimately propels us forward – love. Set against a backdrop steeped in blood and history, the winds of the past add a haunting weight to this story, making the resolution even more startling.