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.
