‘Night Rounds’ By Helene Tursten

Translated by Laura A. Wideburg
Published by Soho Crime,
February, 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-61695-006-4

It’s taken a long time for this 1999 novel to cross the ocean, but the wait has been worthwhile.  It is part of a series in which the protagonist is Inspector Irene Huss, a former Jiu-Jitsu champion, and is a Swedish police procedural.  The action takes place in a private hospital specializing in surgery in Goteborg.

One night around midnight an elderly nurse sees what she believes is the ghost of a nurse who had committed suicide in the hospital’s attic 50 years before.  It is up to Huss and her colleagues to sift through the situation after the discovery of one nurse who has been murdered nurse and another who is missing.  Complicating their efforts, of course, is the elimination of additional witnesses, presumably at the hands of the “ghost” murderer.

Huss is an interesting protagonist, married to a gourmet chef and the mother of twin teenage daughters.  Insights into her character and family situation throughout the novel add significantly to humanizing her.  In an excellent translation, the story flows smoothly, incrementally adding to the reader’s knowledge until it all coalesces in the final pages.
Recommended.
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Reviewer: Ted Feit

Other books in the Inspector Huss series are, Detective Inspector Huss (2003), The Torso (2006) The Glass Devil (2007). Coming 2013 The Golden Calf.

Helen Tursten has been compared to P D James  in her native Sweden. She was born in Goteborg in 1954 where she now lives.

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.