The internationally acclaimed author of Blood on Snow and the Harry Hole novels now gives us the tightly wound tale of a man running from retribution, a renegade hitman who goes to ground far above the Arctic circle, where the never-setting sun might slowly drive a man insane.
He calls himself Ulfas good a name as any, he thinksand the only thing hes looking for is a place where he wont be found by Oslos most notorious drug lord: the Fisherman. He was once the Fishermans fixer, but after betraying him, Ulf is now the one his former boss needs fixedwhich may not be a problem for a man whose criminal reach is boundless. When Ulf gets off the bus in Kåsund, on Norways far northeastern border, he sees a flat, monotonous, bleak landscape . . . the perfect hiding place. Hopefully.
The localsnative Sami and followers of a particularly harsh Swedish version of Christianityseem to accept Ulfs explanation that hes come to hunt, even if he has no gun and the season has yet to start. And a bereaved, taciturn woman and her curious, talkative young son supply him with food, the use of a cabin deep in the woods, a weaponand companionship that stirs something in him he thought was long dead.
But the agonizing wait for the inevitable moment when the Fishermans henchmen will showthe midnight sun hanging in the sky like an unblinking, all-revealing eyeforces him to question if redemption is at all possible or if, as hes always believed, hope is a real bastard.