Crystal Nights – one great step.

Finally! Less than an hour ago, I finished fiddling with the manuscript of Crystal Nights and sent it off to the proof-reader.

The novel is a historical mystery, a standalone like Anna Märklin’s Family Chronicles, and if you like remote Danish villages and creeping anxiety, this one may appeal to you.

A quotation from chapter four:

Sonja kept insisting Lars-Ole was with his father, but now Mikkelsen and Lyngby felt an urgent need to get back to the station to organize a search for the boy. Mikkelsen had stopped joking about little tramps when it dawned on him that none of the parents had seen Lars-Ole for more than forty-eight hours. Mrs Nielsen downstairs believed she had heard the boy leave the flat Wednesday morning. She had not seen him, but she was sure she had heard the main door open some time in the morning.

“I didn’t hear him on the stairs, but he is a quiet little boy so most days I don’t,” she explained.

Sonja had given them the names and phone numbers of her boyfriend and Lars-Ole’s closest friends from school. Afterwards, she had gone with them outside to point out the corner of the road where Kaj Bager was supposed to have picked her son up.

“It’s right up there. See? A few hundred metres away.” She wrapped her sweater around her as if it were cold, and though she held her chin high, her voice was brittle by now.

“All he had to do was walk up there to meet his father.”