The Sanatorium
Sarah Pearse's The Sanatorium, published in 2021, is a chilling locked-room thriller set in a converted alpine hotel high in the Swiss Alps. Le Sommet was once an isolated tuberculosis sanatorium, all glass walls and cold steel corridors, and even after its sleek modern renovation it has lost none of its unease. Detective Elin Warner is on leave from the Devon and Cornwall police force, recovering from a case that nearly broke her, when her estranged brother Isaac invites her to his engagement party at the hotel. Almost as soon as Elin arrives, his fiancee Laure disappears, and a freak snowstorm cuts the hotel off from the rest of the world. As bodies turn up and old family secrets surface, Elin is the only person at the resort with the training to investigate, and the only person whose own buried trauma might explain why Isaac is so eager to keep certain things hidden. Pearse builds atmosphere with surgical precision, drawing on the building's grim medical history and the suffocating beauty of the surrounding peaks. The result is a propulsive, atmospheric mystery that earned a place on Reese Witherspoon's Book Club list and announced Pearse as a major new voice in psychological suspense.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Sanatorium
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On leave from the British police, Detective Elin Warner travels with her boyfriend Will to a remote Swiss Alps hotel converted from an old tuberculosis sanatorium for her brother's engagement weekend. A blizzard cuts the cable car, the bride-to-be vanishes, and Elin is the only officer there.
The Sanatorium was written by Sarah Pearse and published in 2021. It was Pearse's debut novel and a Reese's Book Club pick. Pearse has continued the series with The Retreat and The Wilds.
Yes. Sarah Pearse's Detective Elin Warner series has three books so far: The Sanatorium, The Retreat, and The Wilds. Each follows the same Swiss-set detective.
The Sanatorium is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.