Ice Moon [Paperback]

Loss and the infinite ways we attempt to come to terms with it permeate this absorbing psychological mystery, Wagner's third novel and the first available in English translation, set in the Finnish town of Turku. A week after his wife dies of Hodgkin's disease, Det. Kimmo Joentaa feels compelled to return to work to investigate the murder of a young woman smothered in her own bed while her husband was away. Only a valueless painting appears to have been stolen. A second murder, just as puzzling, occurs in a youth hostel where a young man is killed while others slept all around him. Joentaa is sure the murders are connected and even feels inexplicably close to the killer. Though Wagner sometimes shifts awkwardly to the troubled killer's point of view, the despairing Kimmo Joentaa and the large cast of supporting characters are well drawn. This skillful mystery will have readers hoping Wagner's previous novels will soon be available in English. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

During the coldest summer in memory, Finnish police detective Kimmo Joentaa is shattered by the death of his wife. To avoid being consumed by his grief, he returns to work and is assigned to investigate the murder of a woman who was smothered while she slept. Two more murders follow, and Kimmo wonders if the serial killer, who specializes in seemingly "peaceful" deaths, isn't the only thing keeping him from total despair. Told largely through the thoughts of the policeman and the killer, Ice Moon is another superior crime novel from Scandinavia. But it's bleak, perhaps bleaker than any of Henning Mankell's emotionally harrowing Kurt Wallander novels. And, because much of the narrative mines the thoughts of two tormented men, it lacks the strong sense of place found in Mankell's tales. That's too bad, because the locale of Turku, Finland, is little known to vast numbers of crime fans. Here's hoping Costin Wagner brings Kimmo back and offers a more detailed look at Finnish life. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Loss and the infinite ways we attempt to come to terms with it permeate this absorbing psychological mystery, Wagner's third novel and the first available in English translation, set in the Finnish town of Turku. A week after his wife dies of Hodgkin's disease, Det. Kimmo Joentaa feels compelled to return to work to investigate the murder of a young woman smothered in her own bed while her husband was away. Only a valueless painting appears to have been stolen. A second murder, just as puzzling, occurs in a youth hostel where a young man is killed while others slept all around him. Joentaa is sure the murders are connected and even feels inexplicably close to the killer. Though Wagner sometimes shifts awkwardly to the troubled killer's point of view, the despairing Kimmo Joentaa and the large cast of supporting characters are well drawn. This skillful mystery will have readers hoping Wagner's previous novels will soon be available in English. (May) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information (Publishers Weekly )

During the coldest summer in memory, Finnish police detective Kimmo Joentaa is shattered by the death of his wife. To avoid being consumed by his grief, he returns to work and is assigned to investigate the murder of a woman who was smothered while she slept. Two more murders follow, and Kimmo wonders if the serial killer, who specializes in seemingly "peaceful" deaths, isn't the only thing keeping him from total despair. Told largely through the thoughts of the policeman and the killer, Ice Moon is another superior crime novel from Scandinavia. But it's bleak, perhaps bleaker than any of Henning Mankell's emotionally harrowing Kurt Wallander novels. And, because much of the narrative mines the thoughts of two tormented men, it lacks the strong sense of place found in Mankell's tales. That's too bad, because the locale of Turku, Finland, is little known to vast numbers of crime fans. Here's hoping Costin Wagner brings Kimmo back and offers a more detailed look at Finnish life. Thomas Gaughan Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved (Booklist ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Two parallel narratives: a young policeman whose wife dies in her sleep; and a serial killer who dispatches his victims in a peaceful, bloodless way. We spend time with both young men, sharing their anxieties. Their respective plights result in a story that is both haunting and unsettling.

JAN COSTIN WAGNER was born in 1972 in Langen/Hesse near Frankfurt. After studying German language, literature and history at Frankfurt University, he went on to work as a journalist and freelance writer. He divides his time between Germany and Finland (the home country of his wife). Ice Moon is his second novel, and the first to be translated into English.

1 Kimmo Joentaa was alone with her when she went to sleep. He sat beside her bed in the darkened room, held her hand, and tried to feel her pulse. When he lost itwhen he also ceased to hear her breathing softly in and outhe held his own breath and bent over her without moving, so as to regain contact. He relaxed, slumping a little in his chair, when his fingers once more detected the faint throbbing beneath her skin. He kept looking at the clock because he thought it was over. Without wondering why, he had resolved to note the time of her death. The idea had occurred to him some days ago, while he was sitting on the bench outside her room, staring at the snow-white door beyond which she lay. Rintanen, the physician in charge, had taken him aside before going in to see her, armed with some powerful medication and an encouraging smile, and told him it could be over very soon. Any time now. He no longer left her. He took his meals beside her bed and spent the nights in a restless doze from which he awoke with a start every minute, afraid of not being with her during the final seconds of her life. His sleep was an entanglement of gray dreams. In the days preceding her death she began to tell stories he didnt understand. She told him about images she could see, about a red horse she was riding, and about her travels in the realms of her imagination. Speaking more to herself than to him, she gazed through his eyes into nothingness. Once she asked who he was and what she should call him. Kimmo, he said, and her lips mouthed the name. He stroked her hand, listened to her, smiled whenever she smiled, and forbade himself to weep in her presence. Once or twice she asked if he could see her riding the red horse, and he nodded. In response to his inquiry, Rintanen had explained that these hallucinations were side effects of the medication. She was in no pain, he said. Her death occurred at night, three days after Rintanen told him her condition had worsened. The room was dark. He could feel her hand and sense rather than see her eyes and lips. On the point of dozing off, he was jolted awake by a sudden fear that the interval between her breaths would never end. He did what he had often done: held his own breath, bent over her, and remained quite still. He waited for her faint, shallow breathing, for the throb of her feeble pulse against his fingers, but this time there was nothing. He began to stroke her arm, bending down still further until his cheek brushed her lips. Slowly, he caressed her chill face and rested his head on her lap. Then he sat up and looked at the clock. It was fourteen minutes past three, and she had gone to sleep. The thought of the moment of her death and of the minutes thereafter had often exercised his mind and haunted him, and he had striven to shake it off. Half consciously, he had believed, hoped, that her final breath would bring his own life to a standstill. He had sometimes envisioned that he would weep a --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.