Plague Island

Gothenburg, 1925. From the murky waters of the river Seveon, the body of a well-dressed man is hauled up. A thin but deep bloody wound gaping beneath a silk scarf around his neck leaves no doubt: the man was strangled. He was strangled in a very cruel and exotic way—garrote, a Spanish instrument of execution that crushes the neck with a thin iron cord…

Several years ago, in Sweden, a whole series of murders like this had already taken place. Then the perpetrator was caught, found insane, and now he is the only prisoner on a remote island nicknamed the Plague Island. By the way, it’s the very island where the strangled man was born and raised… And recently a famous Swedish writer described—down to details—exactly the same murder in his novel. And he too is mentally ill and under round-the-clock supervision… on the Plague Island. Is the jailed criminal and the fashionable writer the same person? Senior constable Nils Gunnersson sails to the island—and finds the mad lodger exactly where he’s supposed to be: in an isolated cell behind seven locks…