Blood Song - Roy & Castells (Paperback)

Longlisted for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2020

The action swings from London to Sweden, and then back into the past, to Franco's Spain, as Roy & Castells hunt a monstrous killer ...

Spain, 1938: The country is wracked by civil war, and as Valencia falls to Franco's brutal dictatorship, Republican Therese witnesses the murders of her family. Captured and sent to the notorious Las Ventas women's prison, Therese gives birth to a daughter who is forcibly taken from her.

Falkenberg, Sweden, 2016: A wealthy family is found savagely murdered in their luxurious home. Discovering that her parents have been slaughtered, Alienor Lindbergh, a new recruit to the UK's Scotland Yard, rushes back to Sweden and finds her hometown rocked by the massacre.

Profiler Emily Roy joins forces with Alienor and soon finds herself on the trail of a monstrous and prolific killer. Little does she realise that this killer is about to change the life of her colleague, true-crime writer Alexis Castells.

Roy and Castells' investigation takes them from the Swedish fertility clinics of the present day back to the terror of Franco's rule, and the horrifying events that took place in Spanish orphanages under its rule. Terrifying, vivid and recounted at breakneck speed, Blood Song is not only a riveting thriller and an examination of corruption in the fertility industry, but a shocking reminder of the atrocities of Spain's dictatorship, in the latest, stunning instalment in the award-winning Roy & Castells series.