Swedish Noir

From the introduction by James Thompson: Finland, the myths and truths. Internationally, it has a reputation as perhaps the best place in the world to live. A great economy. A low crime rate. Good and nearly cost-free health care. The needy are provided for by the state and live in reasonable comfort. Finns: peaceful and quiet people, living in the perfect example of a social democracy functioning as it should. A tourist, or even a person who has lived here for a length of time, might well view Finland as such.

She was racing towards the gorge. The place the locals knew as ‘Dead Girl's Drop'. DI Meg Dalton is thrown headlong into her latest case when she finds a 10-year-old girl running barefoot through the woods in a blood-soaked nightdress. In the house nearby, the girl's father has been brutally stabbed to death. At first Meg suspects a robbery gone tragically wrong, but something doesn’t add up. Why does the girl have no memory of what happened to her? And why has her behaviour changed so dramatically since her recent heart transplant?

The International Sensation It begins in a Stockholm city park where the abused body of a young boy is discovered. Detective Superintendent Jeanette Kihlberg heads the investigation, battling an apathetic prosecutor and a bureaucratic police force unwilling to devote resources to solving the...

The author of the “thrilling, unnerving, clever, and beautiful” (Fredrik Backman) Wolf and the Watchman series presents a new historical series that takes us to medieval Sweden to unravel one of the country’s most infamous murder mysteries. 1434: The unified kingdoms of northern Europe are...

Set in the gritty streets and shadowy corners of 18th-century Stockholm, The Wolf and the Watchman is a dark, masterful historical thriller where a chilling murder investigation peels back the twisted layers of a city rife with secrets, corruption, and intrigue. “The Alienist set in...

A #1 international bestseller, this atmospheric and breathtaking sequel to the “cerebral, immersive page-turner” (The Washington Post) The Wolf and the Watchman explores the darkness hidden beneath the splendor of 18th-century Stockholm. Stockholm, 1794: A young nobleman, Eric Three Roses...

A murder mystery set in the heart of Sweden by the author of the Gemini and Flowers novels, The King’s House and Who Dun It? Noah Hunter, a Scottish architect and single father, moves to the small Swedish town of Rättvik with his son, Toby. He has come to work for Hanson Hus, an old-established company that builds timber houses. As they settle into their new lives in Sweden, the town is shocked by the disappearance of a little boy. Has he drowned in the lake or has he been abducted? Then the boy’s body is found in the forest, brutally murdered. A murder enquiry starts but then another ...

The #1 international-bestselling thriller that tells the electrifying story of a police inspector and a former criminal informant in a race against time as they attempt to unravel past and present secrets. He thought she was safe. Then the past came knocking. Seventeen years ago, Criminal...

Eleanor lives with prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize a familiar person's face. It causes stress. Acute anxiety. It can make you question what you think you know. When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, the horror of having come so close to a murderer—and not knowing if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.

Journalist Juliet Brown is a ScandiGeek, a person who is enamored of all things Scandinavian. An unexpected opportunity sends Juliet to Sweden to interview an American jazz singer, and she is quickly drawn into the vibrant Stockholm music scene. When one of Juliet's new friends is murdered, she finds herself embroiled in a real-life Swedish mystery. Journalist Magnus Lindblom offers to help Juliet despite his own struggles, which include hiding the truth about Stieg Larsson's missing fourth book. Set in the depths of the cold and dark Swedish winter, amid the winding cobblestone streets of ...

Two unlikely allies work to end the reign of a powerful cabal of depraved hedonists in 18th-century Stockholm in this spellbinding finale to the #1 internationally bestselling historical trilogy that is filled with “plenty of twists to satisfy thrill-starved readers” (The Washington Post)...

One family. One mistake. No way back. Tom thought Sweden would be a refuge, long days, quiet forests, and the summer house where his family could slow down and reconnect. But in the stillness of the countryside, his children see something they were never meant to see. What follows shatters Tom’s world. Left alone with grief, rage, and unanswered questions, Tom must decide who he becomes when everything he loved has been taken from him. Justice feels distant. Closure feels impossible. Only revenge offers a shape to the darkness. As he descends into Sweden’s shadowy criminal underworld, ...

The final chapter in the electrifying Stockholm Noir Trilogy, which has been translated into more than thirty languages worldwide: here is the no-holds-barred, rapid-fire tale of a supreme struggle for the legacy of the Swedish underworld, as the power, honor, and respect commanded by...

Christina’s idyllic existence with her husband Patrik comes to an abrupt end when Patrik suddenly vanishes from their suburban home in Stockholm. Christina is precipitated into a hellishly desperate and anguished search for Patrik – which after six weeks turns up nary a trace of him. At her wits end, she contacts local sleuths Lars and Elin, who, after a brief investigation, reach the conclusion that Patrik simply decided to abandon his cushy existence to embark on a new life –without Christina. Lars and Elin ultimately trace Patrik’s movements to the wooded wilds of northern Sweden...

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?

The first of two new action-packed thrillers by the internationally bestselling author of the Game trilogy takes you deep inside the world of police intelligence—where secrecy, betrayal, and deadly competition reign supreme. David Sarac is a handler at the Intelligence Unit of the Stockholm...

Art expert Emma Lindhal is anxious when she's asked to appraise the antiques in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found. As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants. When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate.

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.

A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . . Woman with Birthmark by Håkan Nesser is the fourth title in his atmospheric Van Veeteren series. A young woman shivers in the December cold as her mother's body is laid to rest in a cemetery. The only...

A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . . The Mind's Eye by Håkan Nesser is the first novel in the stunning Van Veeteren series. Janek Mitter stumbles into his bathroom one morning after a night of heavy drinking, to find his beautiful young...