Everyone has a secret

 The beginning of The Elements epic opens amidst the dark forests of Sweden, where no one really is, who they say they are.

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Something strange has been going on at for a very, very long time…

Ten years in the making, the prologue to the epic Elements series involves a notorious wilderness with a macabre past; a reconstructed Viking church by the shore of a Swedish lake. And a painting, a lost masterpiece framed in runic inscriptions without an owner – all connected with a crime that was never meant to be solved and a shadowy figure from the past – archaeologist Karl Oskar Eklund

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 When Hasse Almquist, a detective with a tarnished reputation is brought in to investigate a murder at an ancient site of pagan worship, Troll Church Hill, little can he know nothing is at it seems. The site of a macabre crime where Danish art gallery owner Thomas Denisen has been discovered dead, his eyes removed and nails hammered through his feet, the hallowed pagan ground in the middle of the Swedish Tiveden National Park draws troublesome connections to a remote and disturbing past.

 The detective begins his investigation by linking the apparently ritual killing to four unsolved serial murders from the 1970’s. His enquiries take him to the remote Gotfrid’s Homestead, temporary home to the remaining members of the group visiting from Copenhagen the deceased victim had been a part of. Each of them guard a hidden secret involving the painting found in the back of the victim’s car – and the reasons for their involvement. This complicates his investigation and weakens his chances of solving the crime and how it is related to the unsolved murders of the past.

 Attempting to piece together a complex and fragmented picture linking motives to murders involving pagan practices, Almquist takes the decision to isolate the suspects from the outside world. Thus is the stage set for a journey into the past, catalyzing a sequence of events with consequences for revealing the identity of the killer and the crimes of the past. The detective will accept too late, that he has himself been a contributing factor to the murder, opening Pandora’s Box and all that lies within. With deadly forces already in motion, the investigators and suspects alike will both become a part of each others fate, unwilling participants in a greater and much darker universe than the one they thought they inhabited.