Convicted of brutally murdering his girlfriend, seventeen-year-old John Meyer Frey marks time in an Ohio maximum security prison, awaiting execution. For nearly a decade, the victim's father has hungered for Frey's death, while a prison guard is torn by compassion for the young man. When Frey unexpectedly dies of heart disease before he either receives his just punishment or achieves redemption, the wheels of justice grind to a halt. Six years later, on a ferry between Finland and Sweden, a singer named John Schwarz viciously attacks a drunken lout, leaving the man in a coma. The Stockholm police arrest Schwarz and assign Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens to the seemingly straightforward assault case. But when Grens learns that the assailant has been living in Sweden under a false identity, he begins to suspect that something darker and more complex underlies the incident. Following his intuition, Grens launches an investigation that stretches from Sweden to the United States and reveals a shocking connection between the Frey and Schwarz cases. Featuring a multilayered plot with a killer twist, Cell 8 takes you on a page-turning journey that explores the devastating repercussions of the death penalty as well as the fallout from the conflicting desires for public justice and private retribution.
Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and then trapped in a Stockholm brothel. Suddenly they are given an unexpected chance at freedom and with it the opportunity to take revenge on their enslavers and reclaim the lives and dignity they once had. What will happen now that the tables are turned and the victims fight back? Box 21 is a mind-blowing psychological thriller of the highest order. "Superb...Roslund and Hellstrom play out the tale in taut, short scenes, meting out revelations and shocks in sure, knowing fashion, ending with the shock that all but undoes the rest....Box 21 is profound." -The Philadelphia Inquirer "This dark, explicit novel is another impressive crime thriller from Scandinavia....A good read." -Arizona Republic "Gripping...the story takes a number of surprising twists and turns." -The washington post book world "This excellent crime thriller is bound to please fans of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series." -Library Journal
In this dark and gripping novel from #1 best-selling Swedish writing duo Roslund & Hellstrom, Piet Hoffman is the Swedish police's most valuable secret operative. His cover is that of a lieutenant inside the ruthless Polish mafia trying to take over amphetamine distribution within Sweden's prison system. With this, his most dangerous assignment, success will mean a new identity and the freedom to start a new life with his wife and young sons. When a botched drug deal involving Hoffman results in the cold-blooded killing of a police informant, the investigation, assigned to the brilliant but haunted Detective Inspector Ewert Grens, leads to a string of unsolved cases in which key evidence has been withheld under mysterious circumstances. As Grens's investigation takes him closer to the truth, government lies are exposed and Hoffman is trapped in prison, wanted dead by both the police and the mafia. He has only one chance to make it out alive and start a new life. One chance and Three Seconds. An audiobook with extraordinary insights and totally unexpected plots twists, Three Seconds is an intensely suspenseful thriller in which people in all positions of society are put to the test. Three Seconds was a #1 best-seller in Sweden and the winner of the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers' 2009 award for Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year.
