I Will Find the Key

At thirty-three, private detective Julia Stark carries the scars of a tragic past. Her trauma is a double-edged sword. She struggles to connect physically, but she also has a heightened awareness that makes her great at her job. There's only one person that Julia can implicitly trust—Sidney—her ex-husband and current cop. Now that her agency is such a success, she's desperate to get him on board as her partner.

For now, he's at least willing to help her investigate her current case. Timber tycoon Per Günter Mott has found a disturbing photo of a dead man on his phone. Prone to alcoholic blackouts, he's unable to cope with the thought that he might be a killer and has turned to Julia for help.

With Sidney at her side, Julia must navigate the moods and quirks of an affluent, insular family. Amid cocktail hours, lavish dinners, and old rituals, the secrets of the Motts come to light, revealing desperation, jealousy, and greed. Especially when the victim turns out to be PG's reclusive older brother, killed before he could attend a shareholders' meeting and vote to sell the family business.

With a killer in their midst, Julia has to fight her own destructive impulses to get to the truth, tearing through the ties of silence and deception that bind the family in a web of deadly dysfunction . . .

Alex Ahndoril is a new pseudonym for the writers behind Lars Kepler, bestselling author of the Joona Linna series, "a natural successor to the Stieg Larsson series" ( Parade ).