The Ritual

Summary

Evil is at large . . .

A member of the parliament is stabbed to death in Reykjavik, the small and usually peaceful capital of Iceland. Police officer Grímsson thinks he saw the perpetrator earlier that night, in a pub in the city's east end. The young man turns himself in. He has no previous record and does not remember anything about the night of the murder, but his fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Grímsson feels that the young man is somehow innocent, a victim rather than a wrongdoer.

The day before the murder, Grímsson was called to a storage unit after a human skull was found there. The man who rented the unit, a known drug user and an anarchist, previously committed suicide. In the unit, Grímsson found books on black magic and hypnotism, a black mirror, black candles, and a makeshift altar. The leader of the anarchist gang is Aron Beck, a dangerous sociopath serving time in prison. When another brutal murder takes place, and another unlikely perpetrator is captured, Grímsson begins to wonder if Aron Beck is somehow behind all this madness. But how?

The clock is ticking and yet another murder is brewing in the black cauldron of an evil mind . . .

Contains mature themes.