KNOCK KNOCK

A veteran Swedish detective is forced to revisit the most disturbing case of his career.

After Detective Ewert Grens carried 5-year-old Zana Lilaj from the scene of her family’s massacre, he investigated the crime in vain, even with Zana as an eyewitness. Seventeen years later, DI Grens, who’s on the verge of retirement, can’t refuse the request of his abrasive boss, Mariana Hermansson, to investigate a burglary that's just occurred at the same address. His hopes that this is a coincidence are dashed when he discovers that his notes on the earlier crime have been stolen from the locked police archive. He soon determines that Zana’s life is in danger. Meanwhile, former police informant Piet Hoffmann revels in the domestic bliss of life with his wife, Zofia, and their three young children following his criminal past. All this is shattered when he sees his son Rasmus playing with a hand grenade that arrived in a package addressed to the boy. This unsubtle message is followed by even more literal and threatening ones. After Piet takes his family into hiding, he appeals to his old friend Grens. Although Roslund deftly brings the two cases together, readers hooked by the high stakes and urgency in the early chapters may be impatient with set pieces and narrow escapes that feel like smoke. When Grens finally locates Zana in a new location with a new identity, he’s in for a surprise that adds yet another wrinkle to the case.

Roslund’s fourth has punchy prose and plot twists that readers expecting another brooding Scandinavian noir won’t see coming.