Maria Wern

It's reassuring when teenagers keep themselves busy at home on their computers. At least then you know where they are. Don't you? A 14-year old girl disappears on her way home from a film night at school. Her lifeless body is found in the forest the next day. Detective Inspector Maria Wern is assigned the unpleasant task of informing the father. When another girl disappears, panic begins to spread, media blames the police's inefficiency and parents turn vigilante. Can Maria Wern solve the murder before the crisis escalates out of control?

When a woman is found murdered at a rest area in Kronviken, Detective Inspector Maria Wern becomes involved in the investigation. The woman's body is severely burned, her clothes are in shreds and the blue synthetic cap has melted over her face. Who is she? And is there a connection with the pyromaniac's deed? Anna Jansson's mysteries often ask pressing questions about the present day and the world we live in. Can a child's make-believe world become such an important place of refuge that it can't be escaped as an adult? Does society have a plan for dealing with the children who are forced to live with parents who are drug addicts or mentally ill?

In The Eternal Flame of Alchemy Detective Inspector Maria Wern struggles with a murderer who turns out to follow the principles of alchemy. The hunt of the fanatic perpetrator goes from an old artist community on Gotland to Kosta Art Hotel on the mainland. The aged glass artist Justus Hartman was one of the last alchemists. What drove him wasn't the thought of gold and wealth, but the mysticism. Tightly bounded, like in a sect, he kept his apprentices. Now someone wants part of the inner secret before Justus dies and an easly morning he is abducted from Visby Hospital in a stolen paratransit mini-van. His nephew, police commissioner Tomas Hartman, looks for his uncle in Mästerby. Everything seems normal in the Glassworks although forty years have gone by. The memory of Angelika, a lost love, makes him loose grip in his marriage. There are thing he was never able to tell his wife. A guilt that has weighed him down for all these years. The tracks lead to the main land. A man is found dead in a glass coffin at Kosta Art Hotel. Maria Wern realizes that there is a connection between the murder and Justus' disappearance. But her new chief, Patrik Hedlund, leads the investigation with a firm grip and won't let her follow her intuition. That turns out to be a catastrophic mistake in the hunt of a murderer who fanatically follows the principles of alchemy.

The annual Medieval Festival is going on in Visby. A secret theater company has taken the St. Clement Church Ruins as their private stage at night. In its center, there is a double tomb from the 12th century where a young woman and an elderly man were buried. They were brutally murdered, butchered in their sleep. History repeats itself in the theater. As an initiation rite, sixteen-year-old Malva must spend a night in the grave and then get out by her own efforts. Maria Wern is approached by Mikael, Malva's father, who is worried. He tells Maria that his wife, Blenda, has been lying in a coma in a nursing home ever since she was hit by a drunk driver a year ago. Malva has not been seen since Wednesday, when she was visiting her mother at Katarinagården. Attending an office party, Maria Wern meets a firefighter and falls head over heels in love. He is a member of the theater company where he plays the part of Gregory, a friar dedicated to a life in chastity and poverty. Does he know what happened to Malva? In the thirteenth book in Anna Jansson's cherished series about Maria Wern, the detective must set her life at stake in order to find out what really happened in When Beauty Came to Town.

The 90-year-old Heinz Meyer is found shot in Ronehamn. Who would want to murder a 90-year-old? And why? Heinz Meyer was one of the German soldiers who came to Gotland after World War II, wounded in battles near the Baltics. At the same time, 500 concentration camp prisoners arrived on the island to receive care at the Lärbro military hospital. It was a ghost brigade of emaciated, severely mentally and physically traumatized prisoners who were placed in the same hospital as the German soldiers. The nurses were given strict orders not to speak to the concentration camp patients and had no idea what they had been through. It becomes Maria Wern's task to investigate the murder of Heinz Meyer, while wedding preparations are also underway. But what is happening at her children's summer camp also demands her attention. There is a girl, Mirela, who seems to be in distress. What has she been through?

An aging school photographer is brutally assaulted in his home on northern Gotland. Someone has tried to set fire to his archive. He is found dead four days later. Tomas Hartman's mother is beaten and left in the woods to die. She vaguely remembers that someone was filming her. When Maria Wern takes over the investigation, the killer threatens to expose Maria's private life to the public. 'Maybe that's the only weapon needed in the future,' speculates Per Arvidsson, 'public shame.' In her new crime novel, Anna Jansson addresses highly topical themes. With a single click on a computer, an image can reach thousands of followers in a network. What happens when we carelessly post pictures from our lives on Facebook? Who gets access to them? In the wrong hands, our most private images can be made public. And what are we prepared to do to escape the shame?