Maria Wern 12: The Eternal Flame of Alchemy

In The Eternal Flame of Alchemy Detective Inspector Maria Wern struggles with a murderer who turns out to follow the principles of alchemy. The hunt of the fanatic perpetrator goes from an old artist community on Gotland to Kosta Art Hotel on the mainland.
The aged glass artist Justus Hartman was one of the last alchemists. What drove him wasn't the thought of gold and wealth, but the mysticism. Tightly bounded, like in a sect, he kept his apprentices. Now someone wants part of the inner secret before Justus dies and an easly morning he is abducted from Visby Hospital in a stolen paratransit mini-van.
His nephew, police commissioner Tomas Hartman, looks for his uncle in Mästerby. Everything seems normal in the Glassworks although forty years have gone by. The memory of Angelika, a lost love, makes him loose grip in his marriage. There are thing he was never able to tell his wife. A guilt that has weighed him down for all these years. The tracks lead to the main land.
A man is found dead in a glass coffin at Kosta Art Hotel. Maria Wern realizes that there is a connection between the murder and Justus' disappearance. But her new chief, Patrik Hedlund, leads the investigation with a firm grip and won't let her follow her intuition. That turns out to be a catastrophic mistake in the hunt of a murderer who fanatically follows the principles of alchemy.