Ashes to Dust is a competent and interesting murder mystery of the complex who-done-it type I have come to expect from contemporary Nordic authors. Maybe it’s genes or culture or climate or something else, but it seems all the individual characters in this and other “Nordic” books I’ve read range from unhappy and pessimistic at best through clinically depressed to borderline personality and more serious mental problems. It’s hard to read these books without becoming grim and gloomy. The author of Ashes to Dust’s heroine lawyer/detective’s parting words to the reader are: “Maybe she, like Bella, could find herself a handsome sailor and forget everything for a while. It sounded nice, but Thora knew it would never happen.”