Book one in the Asker Series by Anders de la Motte

The Mountain King is the first book in the Asker Series by Anders de la Motte. It opens with Detective Leonore Asker’s disappointment at being pulled off a high-profile kidnapping case in favor of an ex who is clearly out to sink her career.

A page-turning pace. A snowy Swedish landscape. A strange world of urban explorers. And an odd corner of law enforcement make this thriller both rivetting and a trip to unique place.

Asker is booted, rather unceremoniously, to the Department of Lost Souls, where no one seems to do anything specific or have any supervision or contact with the department brass. She is suddenly out of the limelight, picking over cold files, watching her career trajectory get derailed by a man who already messed her life up once. She recovered from him the last time. Will she this time?

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She finds, though, that this position comes with a certain amount of freedom. She also discovers — in the files on her new desk — that the man whose place she has taken (he had a heart attack) was onto something interesting. She digs into his investigation while keeping an eye on the kidnapping from afar. Without the need to account for her time, the lines of inquiry she follows, or anything else, she uncovers a strange world of crime that surrounds a subculture of urban explorers who cave-dive into Sweden’s abandoned factories.

Then things start to get weird. And you won’t be able to put this one down until you know what the Mountain King is up to and where that girl — the one who was kidnapped — ended up.

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