The Swede

Starred review from May 25, 2015
Early in Karjel’s English-language debut, a superior thriller set mostly in 2008, Ernst Grip, a member of Sweden’s security police, joins forces with FBI officer Shauna Friedman in New York City. The pair fly to Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean, where Grip’s job is to interview a prisoner, another Swede, who has been tortured for years. Meanwhile, in a subplot set in the wake of the 2004 tsunami that devastated Thailand, a survivor of the disaster known only as N. travels to an isolated beach community where he befriends several other survivors; they fall under the influence of a mysterious American, Bill Adderloy, who persuades them to commit a highly complicated crime that’s to take place in Topeka, Kans. Grip strives to ferret out the details of the impending crime and N.’s part in it. Filled with rich characterization and unforeseeable twists and revelations, this mesmerizing first in a planned series will leave readers gasping for breath.

October 26, 2015
In the first of Swedish author Karjel’s novels to appear in English, Ernst Grip, of Sweden’s security police, is sent on a mission to an American military base in Diego Garcia, a coral reef in the Indian Ocean, in 2008. His assignment is to interview a recalcitrant detainee known only as N and determine if he is a Swedish citizen. As Grip’s FBI contact, agent Shauna Friedman, explains, N is suspected of being conscripted by a wealthy American named Adderloy to rob a bank in Topeka, Kansas. Though the plot is unusually complex, reader Harding’s clear, appropriately dramatic rendition adds mightily to its accessibility and enjoyment. His presentation of the main characters is just as helpful. Ernst’s over-enunciated English mirrors his need for caution. Shauna’s voice, like the agent herself, is authoritative, uncompromising and unflappable. N, for good reason, sounds a bit like Ernst, though more taciturn, cynical, and hopeless. And Adderloy, the mastermind behind the robbery and its aftermath, apparently hails from the American Southwest. He is loud, arrogant, and demanding, and not the novel’s only example of America at its worst. A Harper hardcover.