Perfect Attachment
About
The Adhesive Killer fuses victims together. Detective Maja Norberg has 36 hours before the federal police take over the case.. The key: a research club that turned human attachment into a weapon. Dark. Brilliant. Relentless. - Booklife
PERFECT ATTACHMENT
Some bonds are meant to be broken.
Detective Maja Norberg has seen her share of Stockholm's darkest crimes, but nothing has prepared her for this: couples found murdered, their bodies grotesquely fused together in death. A
In this haunting psychological thriller, the line between justice and obsession blurs with every revelation. When the case finally closes, Maja must confront the hardest question of all: in her relentless pursuit of a monster, how much of herself has she sacrificed?
Perfect Attachment s is a gripping exploration of psychological manipulation, the abuse of power, and the devastating price of pursuing truth at all costs.
Praise for this book
Gripping from the very start! I can already see it as a Netflix Nordic crime drama. Hopefully there are more books to come!
St. James’s first offering in his Inspector Maja series pierces the limits of humanity, as Detective Maja Norberg and her partner, Sven Svensson, are entangled in a string of gruesome murders unfolding in Stockholm, Sweden. When a middle-of-the-night call brings Maja to a horrifying crime scene—two bodies fused together with a chemical compound, brutally murdered, and arranged to be discovered—she realizes this is a case like none other, the kind that will “follow her home… [and] sit at her kitchen table during her solitary dinners, [whispering] to her in the small hours when sleep refuse[s] to come.” As more bodies are found—and the media dubs the culprit “The Adhesive Killer”—Maja and Sven have just 36 hours to solve the case before the feds take over.
Dark and imaginative, St. James weaves together an intricate story that juxtaposes mortality with scientific research, built around a truly chilling villain whose intelligence—and cruelty—knows no bounds. As Maja and Sven quickly piece together clues, their path points to academic advisor Gustaf Nielsen and his student, Erik Thoressen, former members of the Nexus Club—a now-disbanded research club seeking scientific breakthroughs at the cost of ethical constraint. That research—brutal methods testing human attachment—is the key to solving the serial murders rocking Stockholm, and St. James does an excellent job of crafting a murder mystery with the highest of stakes—and a lead detective determined to seek justice, even when that means risking her own life.
Maja’s intense empathy for victims—and the connection she has with Sven—centers the novel, softening the grisly edges with moments of understanding and tenderness, just as her steely resolve to do whatever it takes so this vicious killer will "face the consequence of turning knowledge into torture” propels the story into a shocking denouement. Fans of psychological horror combined with sharp crime procedurals will be immersed.
Perfect Attachment is a dark, intelligent thriller that pulls you deep into a disturbing world of twisted academic obsession. Detective Maja Norberg is a gripping lead, and the Stockholm setting adds a haunting atmosphere. The story is intense, the concept original, and while the ending is emotionally brutal, it stays with you long after the final page. A must-read for fans of psychological suspense who aren’t afraid to be unsettled.
A compelling read from the start, this psychological thriller introduces a whole new concept of criminal investigation. Investigating academics who have taken research too far, the detectives on the case get pulled into their own, disturbing dramas. A gripping, thought-provoking read that I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys intelligent thrillers with a twist.