Room No. 10

A woman is discovered hanged in a hotel room in Gothenburg. She was murdered, not a suicide. She left behind a note that she wrote apparently just before her death. Her parents are bereft and unable to explain the puzzling contents of the note. But Chief Inspector Erik Winter wonders whether the family is holding back some secret that might help identify the murderer.

Meanwhile, Winter recalls that one of his first cases as a young detective concerned a young woman who disappeared, and oddly the same room in the same hotel figured in that case, too. As Winter reviews the files for the earlier case he discovers some connections to the recent murder.

As Winter pursues the clues from the old missing-person case that connect to the recent murder, he becomes convinced that the missing woman was also murdered -- possibly by the same person who committed the recent murder. This discovery leads Winter to the murderer, but nearly costs Winter his life.

Room No. 10 is a first-rate police procedural, infused with the gray seaside atmosphere of Gothenburg, Sweden, a city that is as much a character in the book as any human character.