Swedish Noir

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.

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.

Stockholm, 1794: A young nobleman, Eric Three Roses, languishes in a hospital as the rest of the city claims that he belongs in a madhouse. Riddled with guilt, he writes down the memories of his lost love—his beautiful wife who died on their wedding night. The young woman’s mother also mourns her death and, desperate for justice, begs for help from the only person who will listen to her: Jean Mickel Cardell, the one-armed watchman. But she isn’t the only person seeking him out.

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?

Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the town she'd left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend, Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman.

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 weaving cobblestone streets of ...

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 ...

Sweden’s far north is growing colder; even in springtime, the town of Gasskas is buried under a relentless snow. As temperatures drop, tensions rise between a global corporation shamelessly exploiting the area's natural resources and wary locals who have scores to settle. A bomb blasts apart a crucial bridge. Soon after, a young journalist is found murdered. Meanwhile, Lisbeth is at home in Stockholm, looking to fill the void her last lover left behind. When she discovers that fellow hacker Plague has been kidnapped and taken up North, she has no choice but to return to Gasskas.

From the author of the best seller Bangkok 8, a head-spinning new novel that puts us back in the company of the inimitable Royal Thai Police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.

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?

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.

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.

Under a Bangkok bridge, inside a bolted-shut Mercedes: a murder by snake - a charismatic African-American Marine sergeant killed by a methamphetamine-stoked python and a swarm of stoned cobras. Two cops - the only two in the city not on the take - arrive too late. Minutes later, only one is alive: Sonchai Jitpleecheep - a devout Buddhist, equally versed in the sacred and the profane - son of a long-gone Vietnam War G.I. and a Thai bar girl whose subsequent international clientele contributed richly to Sonchai’s sophistication. (Abridged edition.)

When a newspaper delivery boy finds a 68-year-old alcoholic lying dead in his apartment - beaten with a saucepan lid and hammer, and then strangled - everyone expects an open-and-shut murder case, everyone that is but Hawaiian-shirt clad Detective Bäckström who's been assigned to lead the investigation team.

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?

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.

As the spring warmth melts the ice, divers search the wreckage at the bottom of the Ångermanland River - but the murdered man they recover was put there much more recently than the historic artefacts they were seeking. Local Detective Eira Sjödin, newly pregnant and not talking about it, is proud to be put in charge of the investigation - until she discovers the man's identity, and the evidence begins to point towards her own family.

Set in the fictional city of Maardam, each story is linked by themes of secrets coming to light, lies being exposed, and pasts coming back to haunt the people who thought they had fled them – all told in Håkan Nesser’s signature style of dark, cutting prose that displays a true understanding of human nature. The collection is the basis for a trilogy of international films - Dear Agnes, Death of an Author and Samaria - directed by Daniel Alfredson and starring Ben Kingsley and Gemma Chan.

Intrigue, illusions, and insidious motives... Still recovering from testifying against her abuser, Chief Inspector Sara Vallén is called out to investigate a mysterious death in an idyllic allotment on the outskirts of Lund. The victim - a beloved social worker - is found brutally murdered inside one of the potting sheds. But when Sara and the police dig deeper into the case, they begin to unravel a web of dark secrets surrounding the victim's seemingly perfect life.

As the realm struggles to maintain an uneasy peace after years of civil war and tyranny, a 12-year-old orphan called Mosca Mye and her loyal companion, a cantankerous goose, are about to become the unlikely heroes of a radical revolution. Mosca is on the run, heading for the city of Mandelion. There she finds herself living by her wits among cut-throat highwaymen, spies and smugglers. With peril at every turn, Mosca uncovers a dark plot to terrorise the people of Mandelion, and soon merry mayhem leads to murder....