I had intended to write a complete review of this novel, but now that I have read it I feel that it will be difficult.

Is there no story? Yes, but it is difficult to identify it.

Is there no problem solver? Sure there is. An attorney named Póra Gudmundsdóttir, and her sidekick, her German admirer Matthew.

Are they not solving the crime? Wait a minute, that you will have to find out for yourself.

Imagine Harry Hole, Colombo and Tom Barnaby as snipers using pistols, in comparison Póra is the type who would use a machinegun. I get confused trying to follow the story. I cannot stand that the main character follows wild leads without even the slightest well-hidden common thread. Her meetings and conversations with suspects do not move the story forward.

The environmental descriptions are not done properly. I have been to the Iceland and visited some of the places where the novel take place and I do not even get a sense of presence.

The characters are so stereotypical, that I wonder if they could be caricatures, and if so, was that done on purpose?

Luckily we all have different taste in books, and to get a different view of Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, please read Veronica’s review of The Day is Dark.

And above all, read the novel and form your own opinion. But if I were you I would borrow it from the library…

The Danish author duo Kaaberbøl & Friis have done it again!

Invisible Murders is the sequel to their first novel The Boy in the Suitcase, and it is just as terrifying and impossible to put down.

The main character and problem solver is once again the nurse Nina Borg, a strong character with an enormous social interest.

Nina is contacted by a friend, who is hiding illegal immigrants in an old car shop. Most of them are roms and many of them are very sick. Even though Nina as a nurse is doing everything she can to help the sick, she is met with anger and suspicion. What is going on? It must be something worse than illegal immigrants. Is it something that cannot see the light of day?

Nina assumes that the bad living conditions are the cause. She does not understand that something else is behind it until she becomes sick as well.

Could it have something to do with the teenage boy that is hidden beneath the floor?

Just like in their first novel, the authors have created wonderful characters. My imagination gets free reign. The environmental descriptions are vivid and masterfully created, which spices up an already awful story.

If I were to make a wish, it would be that the authors gave some more thought to the ending. It was remarkably thin and had a different tone and tempo than the rest of the novel. It was even lame. You can do better girls!

Original title in Danish: Et stille umærkeligt drab

Jack Caffery is the Bristol based detective in this Mo Hayder crime novel. This time he is chasing a somewhat odd carjacker, who only steals cars with children in the back. Sometimes he returns the children, sometimes he does not. What does he do with the ones not returned? Will Caffery find them in time, before they die?

Jack is not alone in his hunt for the villain. He gets unwanted help from Flea Marley. A lady who, just like Jack, has her own idea what “by the book” means. They do not work together but follow their own clues, and eventually Flea gets herself into real trouble.

There is a third important person taking part in the solving of the carjacker case, the walking man, who is a former businessman and now a tramp. He once lost his daughter to a pedophile. He helps Jack in his own way, and makes him turn stones he never thought would hide anything.

Brilliant Plot

The story is rather uncomplicated; we get to follow Jacks team step by step and Mo has hidden the identity of the carjacker really well. The plot is brilliant and the clues are sophisticatedly placed in order for the reader to follow the hunt side by side with Jack.

I was somewhat disappointed in the last two novels about Caffery, “Ritual” and “Skin,” but with “Gone” Mo Hayder is truly and fully back!

This book looks interesting and fun, but unfortunately it ends there.

The story is simple, the characters are superficial and the fun disappears along with the books. Or possibly in the translation, but I find that less believable.

The books are found in the end, but the fun is still missing.

The only rewarding part was geographical, since our family has good sailing friends that live close by where the story takes place, i.e. in Northern Ireland around Coleraine, Ballymoney and Giant’s Causeway. But that is all.

If you only have time to read one book you should not choose pick this one.

Anders Roslund & Börge Hellström, a Swedish crime writing duo, consisting of a journalist and a criminal justice debater, released their first crime novel “The Beast” in 2004, for which they received the prestigious award the Glass Key.

Welcome to TheCrimeHouse boys!

Anders, you have a background in television and Börge, you are an active supporter of KRIS (an organization supporting criminals’ return to society) – where did the desire to write come from?

Anders: We usually have common answers to most questions we get, since many of them concern morals and values and we agree on those issues, but this is a very personal question. Personally I have written something every day since I was 14-15 years old. I had a literary dream that flourished until I was 26 years old and got my job in television and then I became focused on working with sound and picture. That was sufficient as a creative outlet until I had done most things over and over again. My desire to write was rekindled again when Börge and I met. It all came back to life again; the circle was complete. I became a late so called debutant. I got the chance to realize my dream and it feels so great to experience that I could do what I really wished for when I was younger!

Börge: I have never had any real desire to write. It is only now that I have become interested. I think it is a lot of fun to write, even though I did not have the dream to be a writer like Anders did, but that is how it turned out anyway.

How in the world did you get the idea to write crime novels as a team?

Anders: The idea was born after our meeting, and it started with our work on the movie about KRIS. We both have a lot of experience, e.g. being probation officers, and the result of all of our long talks turned into crime novels. The frustration of writing and doing a lot of work with interviews, texts and having conversations with people that would be reduced to 6-7 minutes at best was not enough to express what we wanted to say. We did not have any commercial motives, but we love the genre, have experiences that fit well, and it just seemed like a perfect fit.

Börge: We simply dug where we stood.

How does it work practically to write together?

Börge: Our writing process is maybe a little different. It takes about 24 months of fulltime writing to finish a book. It is a lot of writing.

Anders: Unlike other authors we write the story twice, and merge the texts together until it feels right.

Börge: We also discuss what we have written. I may point out that something that Anders wrote is not right, since “Ewert would never do that.”

Anders: There are some writers who brag about the fact that they write quickly, and produce so many pages per day. We can never do that, quite the opposite, because we write so slowly! We write by hand, and rewrite several times. We put layer on layer to the story.

Börge: We have to do a lot of work twice, just because there are two of us.

Anders: When Ewert is supposed to react to something, e.g. be happy, offended, curious, well, then we need to sit down and discuss how we want his reaction to be!

Börge: Maybe we avoid repetition by writing in this way too.

Anders: Unfortunately I think that many good authors get stuck in their thinking and write the same story over and over again because it’s familiar. There is less risk for us to fall in the same trap since we have to talk about everything. Another thing that is different is that many colleagues supposedly start with a blank piece of paper without knowing who will be killed on page 152. We cannot work like that since there are two of us. The benefit is that we see what threads are loose and why.

So the synopsis is extra important?

Anders: It is crucial otherwise our process would not work at all. We write in the same way as when you write a movie script, we write, 4 pages become 40 pages, become 140 pages, become 400 pages.

Börge: It is very time consuming, but when you have the final manuscript in your hand it is all worth it.

How about the plots, how do they develop?

Börge: If we take it from the beginning; when Anders and I met he was making a movie about KRIS where I was one of the main supporters. We met quite often, and talked about making a TV show about different forms of crimes. We came up with a number of themes, topics we wanted to discuss. Then when we started to write we just used the topics we already had identified. You can say that it turned into novels instead of TV shows.

Are there any left?

Börge: Yes, we have several themes left to work with. But how we turn them into novels is not something I can answer. We weave it together until it becomes something we can work with.

Anders: If you work at a newspaper like I have done, you brainstorm in a group what the piece is going to be about. Now we’re only two, and we bat it back and forth in pretty much the same way until we have a decent story with good plots.

Börge: The benefit of working in a team – brainstorming.

Anders: We finish the skeleton pretty early, the beginning, middle and end, and then we brainstorm the rest. It’s simply classic story building.

Why is Ewert Grens blogging? Is that an addition to the debate?

Börge: He actually doesn’t blog anymore. He doesn’t have the time.

Anders: Of course he did it to add to the debate, a fictional person who blogs didn’t exist before. It was a challenge not to write as Anders or Börge, but to write as Ewert. There are many things we think, but that Ewert reasonably wouldn’t think.

Börge: Then we needed Ewert’s help to solve a few problems in our fifth book, and then he had to stop blogging. He simply didn’t have the time. But it was so much fun, because several influential people in the police force commented on his blog posts. It became really exciting.

Anders: And I must say that it was a classy thing to do, to comment using your own name in a fictional characters blog. It shows how serious the topics we write about are. Another fun thing about feedback, reviews in this case, was that a Swedish newspaper that let a Detective Superintendent read a bunch of crime novels and then pick the one that was most believable, and he picked Ewert! We thought that was really fun.

Ewert is not the classic Swedish problem solver, opera loving drinker with a bunch of personal problems. Why not?

Börge: Oh no! We decided on that right away.

Anders: What is our view of the opposite of opera?

Börge: Sivan! Siv Malmkwist. And the opposite to a drinker?

Anders: Yes, someone who never drinks. Even though I love Mankell and his Wallander, but everything that happens go through Wallander, is solved by Wallander where he wrestles someone and wins in the end.

Börge: Ewert has never wrestled with anyone, and other people than Ewert are allowed to come up with solutions too.

How was the character Ewert created?

Börge: He is a mix between my and Anders’s experiences of what a Detective Superindendent is. I have a picture of several different types that have questioned me in different context during the years, and Anders, well he has different pictures of police than I do.

Anders: Ewert is actually part my own father, who rocked out to old tunes in his underwear in the living room.

Börge: I know almost all of her songs, I used to play in a band (that play that kind of music), and she was my mother’s idol too.

Anders: We were a bit worried about what Siv would say but it turned out that she had commented on it in Piteå’s newspaper: “you know what, I’m mentioned in a crime novel, and there is a policeman who likes me.”

Börge: Yes, she had apparently read all of the novels!

To use crime fiction to shine light on the moral debate, which the crime fiction genre really is about, was that a planned strategy or was it an automatic consequence of the writing?

Anders: I guess it’s our silly desire to tell a good story to convey knowledge about what is happening around us today. It’s the niche we have chosen, and that we feel set us apart from other crime writers. Otherwise there would not have been room for us in the genre, because there are already so many good writers.

Börge: You have to stand out to get a spot, which I think we do. We use the specific knowledge we have, and that’s what makes things happen. Reality is sad, black and sad. It is serious dark topics we bring up, and I think you have to make it lighter in form of a novel for people to be able to absorb the message.

Anders: A weird thing is that we have been invited to debates, to discuss the sex crime law with politicians after “The Beast” was published. We were invited to travel with Anna Lind’s Memorial Fund to discuss societal problems, and we were there as knowledge providers, not authors of fiction.

Are you afraid that your descriptions may be too detailed, so that you inspire young “entrepreneurs” to commit crimes?

Börge: We have actually discussed that, but we never describe all the details, I think we have a good balance and avoid describing certain things.

Anders: A good example comes from our fourth book where the character Leo made a living of knowing where all the hospital’s keys were kept. When we did research for that scene we found out exactly how you find out all the entry codes as well. We wrote about that and soon realized that we could not include that section, and deleted it. Plus, the information was completely irrelevant for the story.

Börge: We also have detailed information about bank security, which we never would write about.

Anders: It is actually the opposite in book five, where we tell how you actually smuggle drugs into the prisons, both funny and not so funny ways. The Department of Corrections does not have a clue about this, but they will after reading the novel. Then they will stop it, which is good! We can, and will, never name the people who gave us the information. They are currently in prison and would get into big trouble.

Börge: We prevent crimes! And the Department of Corrections will never admit that they did not know…

Anders: That’s on us.

Your novels have been translated to several other languages, and are very successful internationally.

Anders: Yes, that is fun. The novels have been translated to 17 different languages.

Börge: I have a package with the first Russian manuscript in my car! It is written on old yellowish paper, and has paper string around it and a note with Cyrillic letters.

Anders: It is very flattering. And it is interesting that people around the world are so interested in how we view sex crimes in Sweden. They have the same problem, and maybe the same way of solving them. Who knows? It is a global problem.

In the U.S. we have a contract with a publisher who does not publish crime fiction, just “fiction”. That feels good. You do not have to put labels on everything.

SVT (Swedish National Television) has bought the movie rights to your first four books – when will the first movie be released?

Anders: With the risk of sounding cocky; it didn’t take long before we were offered a bunch of attractive movie contracts that we kept turning down. We felt that they hadn’t understood what we wanted with our books. And it wasn’t important for us to “become a movie” and especially not when it was the “big company” who wanted to make ten movies quickly. But when Daniel Alfredsson called and said “NOW I have understood what you write, and it’s not police novels.” That was after three books. Then we felt that this was fun, we were prepared to throw him in the air and kiss both of his cheeks. He had understood! We accepted immediately. The manuscript writing for the first two movies are in progress. We’ll see how it turns out. We chose not to be involved in the manuscript writing. Reduce 15 hours to 90 minutes…

Mi: But Ewert! What if they cast the wrong person…

Börge: Aha, but we have a veto!

Mi: Not Persbrandt, can you promise that?!

Anders: No no, we promise!

Börge: What do you think about Peter Haber?

Anders: No, not Haber, he has no experience playing a police. Morgan Freeman, maybe?

Mi: Perfect!

(Translator’s note: Since the interview was made, Peter Dalle has been cast as Ewert in the first movie “The Beast” and the movie will be shown in late 2011. In addition, 20th Century Fox has bought the movie rights to the fifth novel “Three Seconds”)

What do you think about the crime novel’s status in Sweden today?

Anders: I have to answer this one! I have written a lot about this and the crime novel is superior to other genres in my opinion. Today, for some reason, the “other novel” has left all descriptions of societal problems to the crime novel. All societal reflections are left to, and taken care of by, the crime novels.

The Swedish crime novel is very much alive. There is not a crime fiction wave, which is sometimes said, but there is a crime fiction segment. A wave has peaks and valleys, crime novels are evenly demanded. I think the establishment will have to live with that. The crime novel is a part of the Swedish narrative tradition, together with the classic novel about today’s society.

What makes a really good crime novel?

Anders: The first rule, which many unfortunately forget, is to find out if this has been written before.

Börge: And the second question you have to ask, which not everyone remember either, is if I have written this before…

Who do you want TheCrimeHouse to interview next?

Börge: Arne Dahl.

Anders: Yes, we actually agree on this. Or Jan Arnald which is his real name.

What question should I ask this person?

Anders: He produces a lot; ask him how he has the time. He writes excellent crime fiction as Arne Dahl, and he writes equally brilliant literature as Jan Arnald, then he writes reviews in respected magazines, and he writes travel pieces with his wife, and…like I said I want to know how he does it!

Thank you for the latte and our nice chat at a lively café! TheCrimeHouse and our readers are grateful that you took the time to answer our questions.

It was my birthday recently. I have noticed that my friends and family have understood that a present that is not a book will not be particularly popular, even though I am too tactful to admit it.

This year on my birthday, a brick-like present, wrapped in pink paper, appeared on the bedside table. I unwrapped it with great enthusiasm, and there was no way that we could save and reuse that paper, although that is normally what we do in our family.

Inside I found Buthler and Öhrlund’s latest novel, nice! That is the perfect present! I encourage all of you who still think that plants will survive in our household to please remember that…

Dear Dennis,

We are pleased to welcome you to the leading Scandinavian crime novel website!

To many of your Scandinavian readers, you appeared on the novel scene first with Mystic River which is really your 6th novel. What are your thoughts about that?

In terms of my own work, MYSTIC RIVER is one novel that doesn’t make me cringe when I think about it. So if that’s the first novel of mine most Scandinavians became familiar with, then that’s okay.

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Does this success that Mystic River has proven to be, mean that you will kill off my best friend “ Bubba” ?

No. I just brought him back in my ninth novel, MOONLIGHT MILE

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I first got to know Genaro and Kenzie in July 1999 on my flight between Copenhagen and Amman, when I found a copy of the book in the seat pocket in front of me. I have been following their adventures from that day onwards. Would you tell us little about how they were born?

I’d always loved reading private eye novels and one summer when I was twenty-five I found myself too poor to go out for entertainment. So I decided to entertain myself by writing a private investigator novel. And that’s where Patrick and Angie came from—poverty and a need to amuse myself.

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Your characters in all novels are very much alive and I would say I find them much more important to me and to the story than the “story” itself. Since many of our readers are “amateur crime authors” as well, would you tell us a little about how you go about creating the characters?

Well, first, I care very much about “story,” but not terribly much about “plot.” Story is the journey; plot is the vehicle you use to get there; characters are the people who drive the vehicle and learn from the journey. And I care a lot about the journey and the people on it, but not terribly much about which vehicle they use to get there. As long as it’s serviceable, I’m, fine with it. In terms of how I create characters, I like to start with a flaw. Usually we envision characters with heroic qualities or else we probably wouldn’t write novels. So I take the heroic qualities as a given and then I go looking for the un-heroic qualities, which, for me, are what make characters interesting. James Bond, for example, was the most boring main character in the history of film (I never read the books) until CASINO ROYALE with Daniel Craig, where they looked at the darker, less attractive things that made him tick. That’s what I’m interested in—the things people would rather not admit about themselves; and that’s where I find my characters.

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Are you one of those extremely structured persons who has a whiteboard and lots of post-its all over the place?

Not even close. I don’t even know what a whiteboard looks like. I just make stuff up, write it down, and hope twenty percent of it is useable.

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My 85 year old mum tells me over and over that a “lady” does not read and enjoy crime novels, and would I please read a nice book for a change? In your mind – is there a generation to which the genre crime is “no-good” literature, and for men only?

That’s a theory beyond my pay grade. I just write. I let others decide where it fits in terms of propriety or what have you.

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Some of your book has been made into great films, how much of the stories transferring from book into film did you have influence /veto in? Did you get to have an opinion on the casting for the films?

I control the sale of my books to film right up until the point I actually sell them to filmmakers. At which point, I step the hell out of the way. I’m a very hard sell early on. I have to respect you as an artist or as a producer before I’ll let you have my book, and I ask a lot of questions to make sure we’re on the same page. In that respect, I’m a pain in the ass. But once I make the decision to sell to you, once I put my faith in you, then I owe you my respect and unequivocal support. And the book is yours to do with as you see fit. So far this approach has resulted in three very good movies, so I don’t see any point in changing.

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What books of yours are you yourself most proud of?

MYSTIC RIVER, THE GIVEN DAY, and GONE, BABY, GONE.

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If there are readers who have not yet had the pleasure of getting to know your novels, which one do you recommend as a “starter” ?

A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR or MYSTIC RIVER.

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Would you mind sharing with us some news on what are you working on right now?

I just finished a script adaptation of one of my own short stories called ANIMAL RESCUE and I’m working on a script for an HBO movie with George Pelecanos about a police brutality case in Boston in the mid-1990s.

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I understand that you had some kind of accident involving your arms, this must have been really awkward and an effective break in your writing. How does one deal with something like that?

I took a six week break. It wasn’t bad. It made me realize my wife is right—I work too much.

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One last thing – do you have a piece of advice for aspiring new crime novelists?

Don’t try to be “crime” novelists, just try to be novelists who write stories in which crimes happen. There are no tricks and no shortcuts to becoming a good writer: you need depth of story, depth of character, depth of insight, and depth of language. And it takes a bit of time to learn how to execute that depth. But if you then apply that to any genre you choose, it’ll probably work out okay.

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On behalf of www.deckarhuset.se and www.thecrimehouse.com I thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts and views with us, and we wish you a long prosperous time without injuries

Ritual Murder?

The novel is about an Irish archeologist, Illaun Bowe, who during one of her excavations finds the remains of a human. It is a woman, who has been severely mutilated. Could it be a ritual murder? Soon thereafter the landowner, who was against the excavation from the beginning, is found murdered in the same brutal way.

Illaun cannot help but look into the issue, even though she knows she should leave the job to the police. Her investigation leads to a convent nearby. Illaun soon suspects that the murders have ties to terrible events that happened a long time ago. Are the nuns really as good-tempered as you think?

One person after another who has taken part in the excavation is found murdered – in the same awful way as the woman in the grave.

Irish Author

This is the first time I read something by the Irish author Patrick Dunne. He was born and raised in Dublin, where he has studied literature and philosophy at the university. He worked as a radio producer for several years before he made writing his full-time job.

First of all, I must ask you to tell us a little about yourself since you are unknown to most of the Swedish people.

Hello! I was born in Tehran in 1970 in an Armenian family, and left Iran for France shortly after the revolution with my mother.

Then I stayed about 15 years without going back because those were times of terror. But when I was about 24-25 I started working as a journalist by going regularly to Iran. I was very surprised by the country I discovered then, very different from the fanatical country described by the media. I tried to show the real country in my papers, and now, as a writer, I try to do the same in my novels although I write fiction.

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I have never heard of any other female crime writers from Iran, are you the first?

Actually I have never heard of any crime-writer, male or female, writing about Iranian society! Most Iranians in exile write either short stories (a Persian tradition since the great writer Sadegh Hedayat) or very autobiographical books (at least in France).

In Iran, there are many female writers. But I haven’t heard of any female crime writers. Anyway, the novels produced in Iran are often censored. Crime novels always treat of themes like good or evil, which, even if they don’t want to, have a strong political meaning. So it would be very difficult for an Iranian writer to produce a crime novel which is not either very ideological or completely censored!

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What inspired you to take this project on?

Killing an ayatollah seemed a good way to show everything that goes wrong in Iran! Also, it is a way for me, who lives in France, to be there in Iran. When I write my novels I have the feeling I am actually in Tehran, drinking tea with my characters.

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The very fascinating descriptions of Iran today, and also historically, are they pure fantasy or do they actually reflect the country as is/was?

The story in of course pure fiction but I tried to reflect very truly the reality of Iranian society and politics. As an exiled Iranian though my relationship to the county is full of fantasy. During at least 15 years I’ve lived far from it and with very deformed memories.

So when I started to write my book I tried to be very careful to show the real Iran and also to avoid showing only the point of view of the exiled Occidentalized Iranians. That’s why I created Leila’s character, the Islamic feminist, who is culturally very far from me and that I couldn’t have described so well, from the inside, if my novel wasn’t a fiction.

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Has your novel been published in Iran, and if so, how was it received?

No it couldn’t be because of the censorship!

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You have some interesting caracters in the story, for ex the feminist candidate for Presidency, do you have a role model for this woman?

Leila has a few models, but the main one is a woman called Azam Taleghani, daughter of an important ayatollah (like Leila), close to the Marxists (like Leila), who tried to run for presidency many times. But she is a fictional character with her own regrets and fantasies. In fact, she represents the idealists who are slowly defeated by the cynics, in Iran… but also in our societies.

Leila is the novel’s main character.

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The book has increased my knowledge and also my curiosity of the country of Iran, was this what you hoped for, or did you write to “entertain” as most of the crime writers of today do?

Absolutely! But I hope it also entertained you!

I also tried to reflect the warmth and the closeness there is between Iranian people in everyday life. Even more because it is a dictatorship! I also hoped you sensed this warmth and closeness through my characters and their relationships with each other.

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What kind of work do you do at the moment, anything you could tell us about your next book, for example?

Who killed ayatollah Kanuni? is the first novel of a series of at least three novels. I’ve almost finished writing the second volume of this serial. Narek’s character will come back to Iran four years after his first adventure and will go to Isfahan where a serial killer murders woman singers.

Although Narek comes back in this volume, the main character will once again be a woman…

And this novel, even more than the first one, tells us about the woman condition in Iran, where, among other things, women are not allowed to sing!

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Thank you for taking the time to let us begin to get to know you and also Iran a little bit!

Thank you to you for your questions! Have a nice time!

Swedish author Jonas Moström, welcome to TheCrimeHouse!

Thank you! I look forward to an exciting visit.

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How do you get the idea to write a crime novel when you work as a physician?

As a physician you meet a lot of people and make difficult decisions. Writing becomes a way of dealing with the things you experience. The fact that I ended up writing crime novels is partly due to the fact that life and death are tangible ingredients in both professions. Besides, I love the suspense in a real “nail biter.”

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How do your colleagues view your writing?

Many are impressed and they read my novels with a great curiosity – especially since the last two novels bring up two current topics in health care – active euthanasia and alternative medicine.

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Do you have a writing role model?

My role models vary from day to day and from novel to novel, but some favorites include Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island), Åke Edwardson (Frozen Tracks) och Karin Fossum (The Indian Bride).

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Which was the first book you can remember reading by yourself?

Hat Cottage by Elsa Beskow. It was dramatic with a fire, corporal punishment and a happy ending.

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Let’s say you go to the bookstore, what shelves do you look at, and how do you select a book?

Of course I always look at recently published crime novels, but biographies and psychological books interest me as well. I choose a book after I’ve read the back cover and looked at a few paragraphs at random inside the book.

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Writing novels and raising young children at the same time – somehow it just does not add up. Please tell us the secret…

It’s all about priorities. I don’t watch that much TV and I often do two things at the same time: like brushing my teeth and cleaning up after the kids. Besides I only work 60% as a physician.

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Do you let your wife read over your shoulder while you are writing?

No, absolutely not. It’s just me and the text at that time. But when the first draft is ready I usually read it out loud for my wife. She’s my toughest critic.

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You have written a few novels about Erik and Johan now, are they bonding more and more, or do you think that they will get tired of each other?

They’ll stick together. Johan only has one true friend and he’d be very lonely without Eric, especially considering the fact that he has difficulties with his relationship with women.

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If you were to let Johan solve the next crime together with another author’s literary problem solver, who would Johan want to work with then?

Mons Kallentoft’s heroine Malin Fors. She and Johan would most likely have an explosive and rewarding partnership. Both of them are skilled homicide investigators and they’re very lonely people who look for confirmation in different ways.

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Let’s say that you were to write your next novel together with another author, who would that be?

Karin Alvtegen. Her psychological problem formulations fascinate me.

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Please tell us about your experience with getting your first novel published, and if it is different when it is novel 2, 3, 4…?

The first novel is like your first child: unique. Even though you like all your novels the same amount and in different ways, the element of surprise and novelty is obviously less when it’s your fifth novel.

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Finally – what can you tell us about your current writing project?

I’m working on the sixth novel in the series about Johan Axberg and Erik Jensen. What’s new is that there is a historical parallel storyline in this one. It takes place in Sundsvall in 1888, the year when the entire city burned down. And I can reveal that this has ties to a pyromaniac in the present…

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Our readers are very interested in learning more about our Swedish authors, so many thanks for taking the time to talk to us!

Thank you, it’s always nice to answer questions and get the opportunity to think about what you’re actually doing!