Where Monsters Dwell, Odd Singsaker

Gruesome murders in America and Norway are intwined with the legacy of a sixteenth-century serial killer in the acclaimed Norwegian crime thriller debut.

The curator of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, is found flayed and beheaded in his office. The case is oddly similar to one in Trondheim, Norway, where the corpse of a library archivist is found locked inside a rare book vault. Now Richmond homicide detective Felicia Stone and Trondheim police inspector Odd Singsaker find themselves investigating parallel murders half a world apart.

But the similarities take an unsettling turn when they discover that both murders are somehow connected to a sixteenth century palimpsest book—The Book of John—which appears to be the journal of a serial killer from 1529 Norway. Most disturbing of all, the book is bound in human skin.

“Addictive . . . suspenseful . . . I loved this book!” —Raymond Khoury