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In Sweden, a 'wolf winter' is a particularly long and brutal season, “the kind of winter that will remind us we are mortal �� mortal and alone...�� Cecelia Ekbäck's atmospheric, tense and brooding debut, Wolf Winter, opens in high summer, but the discovery of a mutilated body augurs the dark season to come.

Multiple characters share point-of-view time, but it is Maija and her elder daughter Frederika whose grip on the story's reins steers the narrative. Maija and her family have only just arrived from Finland to take over a dead relative's homestead when Frederika comes across the body of local man. It's presumed he was slain by a pack of wolves, but the nature of wounds would suggest otherwise.

Ekbäck pairs a murder mystery with finely-crafted historical fiction. Set in Swedish Lapland in 1717, Wolf Winter immerses the reader in an isolated collection of homesteads clinging to Blackäsen Mountain, as well as the politics of a monarchy on the edge of collapse. She shows us the power granted to clergy in holding together communities strung out over vast terrain and the power of legend in feeding suspicion and fear.

Wolf Winter joins other northern latitude noir literary fiction, such as Stef Penny's The Tenderness of Wolves (more wolves!), Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, David Vann's Caribou Island and Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, where frozen landscapes exact a dark tone, a ponderous pace, an otherworldly struggle for survival against elements both natural and abnormal.

The author set herself an enormous challenge for her debut: a blend of genres that relies on tight control of pacing, yet demands a rich tapestry of detail and exposition. There is a certain superfluity to some village scenes, a need to make certain the reader understands the distant political wranglings, but these are mild complaints set against a deliciously shivery tale rendered in gorgeous, pitch-perfect prose. After this impressive debut, I can't wait to see what she does next.