KARMA COMA (KARMAKOMA)
Johannes Pinter
Other books by Johannes Pinter
Who would you kill if your moral barriers were released?
A man with a demolished head. Three mutilated schoolboys. An old man suffocated with a pestle.
The equally odd and terrible murders are reported to the Södertälje police at an alarming pace. Police investigator Valter K is puzzled by the outbreak of brutal aggression, and by the fact that the perpetrators immediately turn themselves in – they are all ordinary middle-class without a criminal history.
Valter K soon understands that the killers have two common denominators: their victims have done them wrong in the past, and they have all been in direct physical contact with a man in a coma at Södertälje Hospital during the past 24 hours. Who is that man? And what is it that makes everyone who touches him completely let go of their moral barriers?
Karma Coma is a crime story about motive, guilt, and fate: there is no such thing as a time limitations period in real life, there is always a punishment waiting at the end of a perpetrator’s path. It is also a horror story exploring the human psyche: could anyone be a murderer if the moral compass was put out of play.
242 pages
Rights
Russia: Ripol
Sweden: Vertigo