A limbless, headless body washes up on Swedish shores. A dog on the beach discovers a rotting human torso inside a black refuse sack. Detective Inspector Irene Huss and the Göteborg Violent Crimes 
During the visit to Copenhagen, Detective Inspector Huss is also, on the side, trying to locate the daughter of a friend that has gone missing. She finds out about her, but is not able to meet her. After Huss has returned to Gothenburg, the mutilated body of the girl is found in a hotel. And later Huss receives a warning in the mail. Now the case becomes personal for Huss, and she starts to want revenge.
Huss is a fully realized character, whose demanding job often collides with obligations to her chef husband, twin teenage daughters and wandering terrier. Huss’ home life is given a quite a lot of attention in The Torso. Maybe too much for some – who cares about her daughters’ judo dreams when there is a crazy serial killer loose? However, what Tursten brings into high relief by this is the toll police work takes on the psyche and the difficulty of moving between dramatically different worlds on a daily basis.
The Torso is not a gentle read. It will send your gore barometer well into the red zone with its occasionally stomach–turning tale of necrosadism. As it develops, the case becomes more and more repellent. But Helene Tursten’s straightforward writing style, without any hint of sensationalism, creates sufficient distance to make it possible to read the detailed descriptions. The story in The Torso is actually quite absorbing.
After several more deaths, the ensuing, very complex investigation, reaches a somewhat stunning conclusion that, at least to me, seemed very real. Tursten’s second book about Detective Inspector Irene Huss is, as her first book, an outstanding police procedural. The Torso is really an excellent read!
Praise for The Torso:
“A truly satisfying police procedural.”-The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Another winner.”-ALA Booklist
The New York Times – Marilyn Stasio, writes:
“With an artistic tattoo the only means of identifying the torso, the cops head for Copenhagen, where you can still get a really cool tattoo and where Huss makes an ally of the 500-pound retired sumo wrestler who owns the best-stocked gay sex store in the city. But the best interplay here is between the Swedish cops and their Danish counterparts, whose attitudes about the wide-open sex market in “Sin Central” (drawn with a certain relish in Katarina E. Tucker’s translation) say a lot about their national character.”
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