THE RAVENS by Vidar Sundstol (translated by Tiina Nunnally) is the closing instalment in the Minnesota trilogy featuring unlikely hero Lance Hansen, plodding US Forestry service cop. This sequence of books is set amongst the small lakeside towns of the Norwegian-American diaspora. First book in the series is THE LAND OF DREAMS, in which Lance had a tangential role in a murder investigation, after he found the body of Georg Loftus, a Swedish tourist who had been brutally killed at Baraga's Cross. The second book in the trilogy, ONLY THE DEAD was very different in feel. Instead of focussing on Lance's interactions amongst the small-town Norwegian-American and Ojibwe communities, the main action of ONLY THE DEAD revolved around a grim wintry hunting expedition by Lance and his brother. This book was tense and claustrophobic, as it was unclear who was the prey. THE RAVENS proves to be different yet again from the preceding books. 

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