Mons Kallentoft’s Detective Inspector Malin Fors of the Linkoping Violent Crime Unit first appeared in Midwinter Sacrifice in 2007 (translated 2011), in what was then a projected quartet of crime thrillers, each set in a different season. Kallentoft finished the quartet with Savage Spring in 2010 (translated 2013) but, unable to let his female detective go, continues the series with The Fifth Season.

Fors is “ smart, intuitive ... obsessive” and now has her personal life under control, no longer dependent on alcohol and in a relationship with Peter Hamse, scion of a wealthy family in Malmo.

Although Fors is considered by her colleagues as “the best of them all”, the solution to one case has eluded her. Seven years earlier, Maria Murvall was found brutally raped and mutilated on a forest road. Since then she has lived mute and motionless in a psychiatric clinic. “The passage of time has no meaning for Maria Murvall. She lives in a season of her own ... a season of inverted emotions. Dead emotions ... the fifth season”.

When a girl’s body is found in the woods outside Linkoping, her extensive injuries are disturbingly similar to those of Maria. A psychiatrist from Lund mentions another girl who was found five years ago on a road near woods, “naked, raped. Mute. As if she’d been terrified out of her life, but without actually dying”. Malin Fors wonders how many other women have suffered a similar fate at the hands of a serial sadist.

The intensive police investigation leads from forest hunting lodges to university secret societies and, eventually, to a group of powerful, rich men who hunt together – but is it only game they hunt?

Kallentoft’s experiments with language have created a challenging, unique style. The victims' thoughts, hopes and memories are a constant reminder of their fate, while short, often repetitive phrases increase the tension in a graphically, often sickeningly, violent exploration of “shameful, terrible, vile crimes” against women. The Fifth Season is atmospheric, disturbing and memorable.