The Sanatorium (Detective Elin Warner, #1)

by Sarah Pearse

Her body is reacting to something here; something living, breathing, woven into the DNA of the building, as much a part of it as its walls and floors.

“I know that, but you can’t let it destroy you. The Hayler case, your mum, Sam, whatever this thing is with Isaac, you’ve let it all build up into something so huge it’s swallowing the rest of your life. Your world, it’s getting smaller and smaller.”

At first glance, it’s magnificent, yet the more she looks, the more she realizes how sinister the mountains appear: raw, jagged spikes. The highest is hooked, like a claw.

The more he looks, the more the mountains above seem to be moving toward him. With a thicker covering of snow than in decades, the towering cornices and ridges of the mountains no longer look familiar, but something sinister, alien.

As much as I like my job, sometimes this place . . . it just feels wrong.”

She’s forgotten how easy it is to lose track of someone; the sum of their parts.

He was unpredictable. I think part of it was because he was extraordinarily clever. He liked to toy with people, with situations, understand why they reacted like they did.”

Sometimes he didn’t seem to have the same response to things that other people had. As though a part of him had worked out that emotions didn’t get you anywhere in the long run, so he put himself above them.”

Grief is like a series of bombs exploding, one after another. Every hour, a new detonation. Shock after shock after shock.