On the peaceful summer residential allotments in Simrishamn, a dog is killed. A few weeks later, so is one of the plot holders. She is a woman who had access to many secrets that certain locals wouldn't want to come to light. As Anita Sundstrom's team is brought in to investigate, the chief inspector also has to deal with the disappearance of a British archaeology student who has gone missing in Sweden while searching for an ex-colleague, who has also vanished.

The case, brought to her by her long-time, long-distance partner, Detective Kevin Ash, who has run into a dead end in the UK, seems to be linked to two separate archaeological digs - one in Skane and the other in the famous Viking centre of Birka. So, what has this all to do with a Scanian Viking who once fought in the Varangian Guard for a Byzantine emperor? Anita Sundstrom needs to find out before another life is lost.

'Anita Sundstroem deserves a place alongside the best Nordic detectives.' Quentin Bates

Torquil MacLeod was an advertising copywriter for 36 years. Born in Edinburgh, he now lives in Lancashire, with his wife, Susan. He came up with the idea for his Malmo detective, Inspector Anita Sundstrom, after the elder of his two sons moved to southern Sweden in 2000, and the author befriended two police detectives (both of whom worked out of the Ystad police station, the town in which author Henning Mankell's set his Kurt Wallander crime series.