Block 46

French author Gustawsson’s overly ambitious first novel, a series launch, is not for the fainthearted. In 2014, ice-in-the-veins Canadian profiler Emily Roy and anxiety-ridden French true crime author Alexis Castells investigate the murder of London-based jewelry designer Linnéa Blix, whose mutilated body was discovered beneath a small upside-down boat in a snow-covered marina in Falkenberg, Sweden. In London, a boy’s body is found with similar wounds on Hampstead Heath. Flashbacks to 1944 describe in grisly detail the experiences of Erich Ebner, a German university student who’s been sent to Buchenwald, where his job is to transport the dead to the crematorium. Overwrought glimpses into a psychotic serial killer’s mind add to the horror. Are the present-day murders connected, and what’s their link to Erich’s ordeal? Past and present converge in an unconvincing denouement as Gustawsson tries too hard to convince readers how closely evil can underlie the veneer of civilization. (Oct.)