Last week I finished the novel Sacrifice by S. J. Bolton and I really liked it. Bolton sure can tell a good story. I loved her first page. If you'd like to read it - in fact, you could read the whole first chapter - click here.The story takes place on the Shetland Islands. The main character, Tora Hamilton, is an obstetrician who recently moved to the islands with her husband. They bought a big old house to move into, the house being complete with ancient runes carved around the fireplace in their basement.
The mystery begins when, after only a matter of months, Tora unearths a body on their land. And what a gruesome sight it was too.
The body was that of a female adult, probably in her twenties or early thirties. she had runes carved into her back. Her chest had been opened up and the heart removed, while she was alive. Oh, and that's not all. The woman had recently given birth.
Most of the islanders seemed resigned to write it off as a bog body, but when medical evidence (and some obvious flags Tora noticed) proved otherwise, Tora couldn't leave it alone. She had to know who the woman was, what had happened to her, what had happened to the baby she'd given birth to, who could have done such a thing, and - most importantly - why.
As nearly everyone tries to play it down and Tora feels more and more alone, she finds one true ally on the islands - Detective Sergeant Dana Tulloch. She and Dana work together to find out the truth as the case gets stranger and the people involved get less cooperative. They work together, that is, until Dana's apparent suicide. With Dana dead, Tora has one person left that she thinks she can really trust. Dana's partner - Helen, who happens to be a Detective Inspector.
But even with Helen's help, Tora finds it necessary to take things into her own hands if she is ever going to get to the bottom of the strange case which mixes ancient legends with medicine and crime.
Sacrifice is a great read for any fan of mysteries/crime novels.
Elizabeth
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