Scandinavian Noir English

An in-depth and personal exploration of Scandinavian crime fiction as a way into Scandinavian culture at large.

From the author of The Find series comes PAINTER, the first book in the gripping new nordic noir series, The Stockholm Killings. In the frozen heart of a Stockholm winter, a new terror stalks the night. Families are being slaughtered, their bodies arranged in grotesque parodies of classical art—horrific masterpieces staged for Inspector Stefan Eklund to find. Haunted by his own past traumas, Eklund is thrust into leading a new elite unit, partnered with the sharp, ambitious Delara Holm and the unsettlingly brilliant forensic psychologist, Dr. Torre Nylander. Their only lead is a man found...

The Paintings of Rauma takes the reader to Finland on a thrilling crime adventure. The story is based in the beautiful coastal city of Rauma and takes Jussi, a local Police Officer, on a journey to investigate connected crimes across Finland, Sweden and Singapore. This Nordic Noir mystery begins with a minor incident that sets in motion a chain of events involving theft, murder, passion and hidden treasure. Jussi Alonen is a local Police Officer whose life is turned upside down when someone from the past comes back into his life. A gang of criminals make their way around Finland, wreaking ...

When a frozen corpse is discovered amid a Helsinki winter, Detective Superintendent Topias Torikka is brought in to investigate. The dead man is the husband of a beautiful and beguiling young woman, whom Topias suspects knows more than she reveals. However, before long, she also finds herself in peril, and as the case progresses, so too does the body count. Intriguing connections arise, and motives appear, including the usual suspects: love, betrayal and money. Can Topias identify and bring a criminal conspiracy to justice before someone else dies?

Six weeks. Just forty-two short days. That’s all it takes to rip the heart out of a city and change the lives of those who live there. Forever. One such life belongs to Ryan Jarrod. In the early hours of a wet winter’s morning on Tyneside, Ryan Jarrod approaches the end of his second shift as a Special Constable when he stumbles across the body of a savagely beaten Teddy McGuffie, a down-at-heel taxi driver. On the same night, an explosion rips through the heart of Newcastle upon Tyne’s student community. Casualties are high; the city brought to a standstill. And the University blast ...

In a Stockholm city park, police discover the hideously abused body of a young boy. Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg heads the investigation, battling an apathetic prosecutor and a bureaucratic police force unwilling to devote resources to solving the murder of a nameless immigrant child. But with the discovery of two more mutilated children's corpses, it becomes clear that a serial killer is at large.

On Easter weekend, a guest at a luxury ski lodge in Åre is stabbed to death in her plush suite. She’s Charlotte Wretlind, a property developer who planned to restore a nearby mountain hotel to its long-gone glory days. It was not a random attack. It was an act of pure aggression leveled against a woman with plenty of enemies. As the murder spreads panic among tourists and Åre residents alike, Detective Inspectors Hanna Ahlander and Daniel Lindskog face a shady staff, a dogged press, and multiple suspects.

On the day Stockholm police officer Hanna Ahlander’s personal and professional lives crash, she takes refuge at her sister’s lodge in the Swedish ski resort paradise of Åre. But it’s a brief comfort. The entire village is shaken by the sudden vanishing of a local teenage girl. Hanna can’t help but investigate, and while searching for the missing person, she lands a job with the local police department. There she joins forces with Detective Inspector Daniel Lindskog, who has been tasked with finding the girl. Their only lead: a scarf in the snow.

Detective Leonore Asker seems to have the leading position at Malmö’s Major Crime Division within reach. But things go awry when, in the middle of a high profile kidnapping case, management relegates her to the so-called Department of Lost Souls—the unit for odd, cold cases banished to the basement of the police station.

Local girls' soccer coach Sven-Gunnar Erlandsson is practically a saint in the community, known for his good works and volunteering. So when his body is found in Stockholm's beautiful Herräng forest, shot at close range in the back of the neck while walking home from a late-night poker game, the police struggle to find a motive. Nothing has been taken from his pockets except his cell phone, and the only other clues left behind are a cryptic handwritten note and a handful of playing cards.

Seventeen years ago, Criminal Inspector Ewert Grens was called to the scene of a brutal crime. A family had been murdered, and the only survivor - and witness - was the five-year-old daughter. The girl was placed in the witness protection program, and the case went cold, but years later, Grens is still haunted by the seemingly random slaying and the little girl who was spared. So when he learns that the apartment where the crime occurred is now the scene of a mysterious break-in, Grens immediately fears that someone is intent on silencing the only witness.

Freelance private detective Thomas "Ravn" Ravnsholdt is attempting to move on with his life following the murder of his girlfriend. But when wealthy business mogul Ferdinand Mesmer enlists his help finding his son, Ravn reluctantly takes on what he thinks will be a straightforward missing person case. A decade ago, Jacob Mesmer founded the mysterious and scandal-scarred religious sect "God's Chosen." Now he's vanished without a trace. As Ravn digs deeper, he discovers the previous private eye assigned to the case has also disappeared.

A nurse, wife and mother of two, Nina can’t say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in a Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

From Ragnar Jónasson, the award-winning author of the international bestselling Ari Thór series, The Girl Who Died is a standalone thriller about a young woman seeking a new start in a secluded village where a small community is desperate to protect its secrets. Teacher Wanted At the Edge of...

William’s father is a beloved opera singer in Stockholm, charismatic and unpredictable. Raised in the shadow of his father’s addictions—women, drink, and cruelty—he knows the man’s dark side. William believes he’s found the light when he falls in love with a fellow university student, a young woman named Ebba. But his father’s hold on his life is not so easily broken. Even in death.

"A brilliantly disturbing thriller that turns academic precision into pure terror. Impossible to putdown." When two bodies are discovered in Stockholm's Djurgården Park, their limbs grotesquely fused together by an unknown adhesive compound, Detective Maja Norberg recognizes the hallmarks of something far more sinister than a crime of passion. The victims were forced to die in each other's arms—literally inseparable, conscious until the end. As more couples fall victim to this methodical killer, Maja's investigation leads her into the shadowy world of Stockholm's academic elite, where ...

When a boy leaps to his death from a bridge in the northern town of Umeå, Sweden, police discover drugs scattered in the snow near his body. The town has seen a dramatic increase in narcotic use among its youth, but nobody knows where the pills are coming from.

The Bucket List starts when undercover FBI Agent John Adderley wakes up in a hospital bed in Baltimore with extensive gunshot wounds. He knows he’s lucky to be alive. And just a few beds away is the man who 24 hours ago pointed a gun to his head. Soon, a high-profile cold-case file is sent to Agent Adderley, now living in Sweden (where he’s not lived since he was a boy) in witness protection, hiding until he can testify against the drug cartel he infiltrated back in the States. Adderley is determined to solve the case, even with a price on his head....

Bill Olsson, recently widowed, is desperate to provide for his daughter, Sally. Struggling to pay rent, he welcomes a lodger into their home: Karla, a law student and aspiring judge, who works as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Her clients are the Rytters, an incredibly wealthy couple who hide behind closed doors. The wife is ill and hasn’t left the house in months. The husband is controlling and obsessive. Is he just a worried husband, concerned for his wife’s health? Or is there something more sinister at play?

Dead women should not show up in photos fourteen years beyond the grave . . . But if anyone is likely to recognize Claire Lidman, it's her husband, Samuel. He brings the photo to Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas. Their initial skepticism gives way to cautious belief—but where will this case lead them?