Bad Blood

June 3, 2013
An American serial killer preoccupies Det. Paul Hjelm and his National Criminal Police colleagues in Dahl’s second Intercrime novel (after 2011’s Misterioso). The “Kentucky Killer,” who murdered 18 people almost 15 years earlier, has within the last year struck again repeatedly. He tortured to death his latest victim, a Swedish literary critic, at New Jersey’s Newark Airport. When the elaborate effort to catch the murderer as he returns to Sweden fails, the police must wait for another murder. The various team members—including the captivating Kerstin Holm, who was briefly involved with Hjelm—assume tasks that play to their individual strengths. The reader will find the characters even more distinctive and well defined than in the first book. The American FBI agent Ray Larner is also memorable, though the descriptions of New York City are heavy-handed. The plot heats up in New York, races back to Stockholm and environs, and skids to a fair conclusion. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

May 15, 2013
A U.S. serial killer goes transcontinental. Stockholm's A-Unit hasn't had much to do since they put away the so-called Power Killer, and the team is prepared to do a bit of police grunt work when the body of Swedish literary critic Lars-Erik Hassel is found in an American airport closet. Not only has Hassel been tortured to death in the most cruel and unusual way imaginable, but it quickly becomes clear that the killer has taken Hassel's seat on the next flight to Sweden. Although A-Unit leader Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin dispatches the team to the airport to keep the killer out, he manages to evade them and sneak into Sweden to institute his own peculiar reign of terror. After the team extricates itself from a few dead ends, Jan-Olov sends star players Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm stateside to work with FBI Special Agent Ray Larner, who's been researching the Kentucky Killer for years. It's been a long time since Larner saw his top suspect burn alive in a fiery wreck, but the unsolved case haunts him, and his madness soon infects Paul and Kerstin. The former lovers are acutely conscious of the boundaries of their relationship when the investigation leads to late nights, while their colleagues are kept busy tallying the body count as the killer gets down to work. Though Dahl's writing has lost some of the melancholy beauty of Misterioso (2011), the eerie premise and cogent reasoning will still satisfy.

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Starred review from May 1, 2013
Autumn in Stockholm can be a time of foreboding for many Swedes, and that's especially true this year, thanks to the unending, torrential rains, which seem almost biblical. Paul Hjelm is obsessively listening to John Coltrane's wailing-yet-strangely-reverent Meditations, reading Kafka's Amerika, and worrying about his relationship with his teenage children. It gets worse: an American serial killer who has eluded the FBI for two decades has arrived in Sweden. The killer's MO is believed to involve a monstrous and lethal form of torture that the FBI says was first used in the Vietnam War. Clues to the killer's identity and whereabouts are nil. Bodies begin to pile up, and Hjelm and his mismatched detective squad seem hopelessly overmatched. As in his wonderful Misterioso (2011), Dahl's latest is a stunning, muted howl of Scandinavian despair for a once orderly nation unhinged by racial malaise, predatory capitalism, and the sense that Swedish society is becoming Americanized. But, like Coltrane, Dahl plays all over the scale. He's mordantly funny, particularly in dialogue between squad members. His caustic appraisal of American community policing and the justice and penal systems will resonate with many American readers. And his coda on the damage parents may visit on their children is poignant. With two superb novels, Dahl has established himself as one of the leading voices in Scandinavian crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2013

When he wants to, poet/critic Jan Arnold becomes Arne Dahl, the author of crime fiction that features the Intercrime team and wins major awards throughout Europe. Here, when a Swedish literary critic is found tortured to death in a janitor's closet at Newark's Liberty International Airport, his ticket home missing, the investigation ends up with Intercrime detectives Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm.

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