January 1, 2025
Dahl launches a new series featuring Stockholm DI Eva Nyman, of Sweden's National Operations Department, and her Nova group, which battles impossible deadlines to identify an ecoterrorist bomber. The first victim, the division head of a steel manufacturer, and the second, a public relations officer, are killed in mercifully limited explosions. But the apocalyptically ranting letters an unidentified source addresses to Eva personally make her fear that worse times are coming. So, she appoints her colleagues Annika Stolt, Shabir Sarwani, Anton Lindberg, and Sonja Ryd to the Nova and tasks them with rooting out the writer who's taken defending the environment to a whole new level. Unfortunately, the hits keep on coming, claiming more and more casualties by means of a series of meticulously planned and constructed explosive devices that aim to inflict maximum pain. Even more shocking is the news that forensic evidence points directly to former Chief Inspector Lukas Frisell, Eva's old mentor, who's not easy to find because he returned to university and then went off the grid years ago. At length the Nova group manages to track down Frisell, arrest him, and lock him up, all to no apparent avail. The persistence of terrorist attacks even while Frisell's under lock and key leads Eva's boss to make him a remarkable offer: He'll be released with an ankle monitor if he'll agree to help with the investigation. And he does help, right up to the moment when he escapes custody and vanishes again, leaving Eva and company to bring the terrorist to justice before he can carry out his threat to bomb Arlanda Airport. An exhaustive and exhausting high-stakes procedural that never lets you forget how tough police work is.
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December 16, 2024
Swedish novelist Dahl (the Detective Sam Berger series) impresses in this taut procedural about a frantic search for a bomber who selects victims based on their complicity in global warming. Insp. Eva Nyman of Stockholm’s National Operations Department is assigned to probe the potential connection between two recent deaths: the first victim, steel executive Alf Stiernström, died in a car explosion that was initially deemed an accident; the second, ad executive Jesper Sahlgren, was killed by a package bomb sent to his office, where he was drawing up ads for an oil company. Early in her investigation, Nyman receives an anonymous letter that alludes to the two crimes (“It has begun. The clock no longer ticks of its own volition; it has to be wound with violence”) and threatens a third. Her team scrambles to identify the potential target, and Nyman becomes increasingly suspicious that the perpetrator may be her former mentor on the force, whose idiosyncratic vocabulary matches the killer’s manifestos. Dahl’s crackerjack plotting is enhanced by nuanced characterizations of Nyman and her colleagues, whose inner lives are given equal weight with the story’s procedural elements. This deserves a sequel. Agent: Tor Jonasson, Salomonsson Agency.
February 1, 2025
After a steel company executive and an oil industry PR star are assassinated in similar bombings, chief inspector Eva Nystrom of Sweden's National Operations Department receives a letter from an environmental activist claiming credit. As the bomber rages against the "ruins of destruction," Eva realizes why she's his contact: that was a favorite term of her former boss and mentor, Lukas Frissel. Frissel was a staunch environmentalist who retreated off the grid after his stubborn refusal to utilize cell phone technology resulted in a kidnapping victim's death. Could he have become this remorseless killer? As the bulk of her team works to identify the letter's veiled targets, Eva tasks Sonja Ryd with investigating Lukas Frissel. Ryd challenges Frissel to use the bombings' evidence to prove his innocence, counting on him making a useful mistake. But, with the clock ticking toward the next bombing, Ryd discovers a motive none of them are prepared for. This series starter's screen-ready story and masterfully developed cast promise big payoffs for fans of espionage and team-centered procedural thrillers.
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