Jesper Humlin is a poet of middling acclaim who is saddled by his underwhelming book sales, an exasperated girlfriend, a demanding mother, and a rapidly fading tan. His boy-wonder stockbroker has squandered Humlin's investments, and his editor, who says he must write a crime novel to survive, begins to pitch and promote the nonexistent book despite Humlin's emphatic refusals. Then, when he travels to Gothenburg to give a reading, he finds himself...

"Grandpa and Noah are sitting on a bench in a square that keeps getting smaller every day. The square is strange but also familiar, full of the odds and ends that have made up their lives: Grandpa's work desk, the stuffed dragon that Grandpa once gave to Noah, the sweet-smelling hyacinths that Grandma loved to grow in her garden. As they wait together on the bench, they tell jokes and discuss their shared love of mathematics. Grandpa recalls what...

In a small town on the west coast of Sweden, Nella defends her brother Robert from bullies and, when she reaches out for help from her friend Tommy, learns the secret behind his brothers' mysterious behavior.

For Waldemar Leverkuhn, a retiree living with his wife in a small unit in an unassuming block of apartments, the day couldn't begin more auspiciously. He, along with three friends, have won the lottery. It's a modest but healthy sum of money and the old men toast to their good luck with a celebratory dinner at their usual haunt. The day ends, however, with Leverkuhn drunk, stumbling, belligerent, and eventually dead in his bed, stabbed twenty-eight...

A Swedish teenager is assaulted and killed, but returns as a ghost to find his killer.

"Goteborg, Sweden: A high-speed chase of a stolen BMW takes a chilling turn when the two police officers involved witness a gruesome hit-and-run. When they finally recover the abandoned vehicle, search dogs are unable to trace the thieves, but they do uncover an entirely different horror: the half-naked corpse of a young girl in a nearby root cellar. As Detective Inspector Irene Huss and her colleagues struggle to put the pieces together, they discover...

The island of Gotland is in the middle of a busy tourist season and getting ready for Midsummer, the Fourth of July of Swedish holidays, when a young woman and her dog are found brutally murdered. The dog has been beheaded and is missing a paw: the woman is naked, covered in gruesome axe wounds, and her panties have been stuffed in her mouth.

In 1975, six young people stormed the West German embassy in Stockholm, taking the entire staff hostage. They demanded the immediate release of members of the Baader-Meinhof group being held as prisoners in West Germany; but twelve hours into the siege, the embassy was blown up, two hostages were dead, and many others were injured, including the captors. The story then shifts to 1989, as the seemingly unrelated stabbing death of a civil servant is...

In 1939 Sweden, two Jewish sisters wait in separate foster homes for their parents to join them in fleeing the Nazis in Austria, but while eight-year-old Nellie settles in quickly, twelve-year-old Stephie feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who is as cold and unforgiving as the island on which they live.

The incredible fourth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series finds Beck heading a major manhunt in pursuit of a mass murderer.