The Other Son

Starred review from May 25, 2015
Stockholm nurse and single mother Sophie Brinkmann paid dearly for her romance with Hector Guzman—the seductive criminal she met when he landed in her hospital after being run down by a competing gang—in Söderberg’s acclaimed debut, The Andalucian Friend (2013). In this propulsive, Tarantino-esque sequel, Hector lies comatose after a second botched hit, and his associates have strong-armed Sophie into functioning as the Guzman syndicate’s mouthpiece to help maintain the illusion that Hector continues to run things. Sophie has to make some hard choices amid kidnappings, assassinations, and collateral damage to innocents, all of which mushroom as the remnants of the Guzman cartel come under fire from Colombian drug baron Don Ignacio Ramirez and the German Hanke brothers’ gang. Meanwhile, Tommy Jansson, a former associate of corrupt cop Gunilla Strandberg, embarks on a crime spree that threatens one of his few honest colleagues, dedicated Det. Insp. Antonia Miller. As the blood-splattered action accelerates across Europe and beyond, a shell-shocked Sophie tries to outmaneuver her adversaries with the help of a ragtag band of allies, including her first love, Jens, a smuggler. Readers won’t want this fast and furious—and fitfully funny—roller-coaster ride to end. Agent: Leyla Belle Drake, Salmonsson Agency (Sweden).

May 15, 2015
A clearer picture of a fuzzy moral universe emerges in the middle of this thriller trilogy shot through with bad cops, good gangsters, and Scandinavian chill. Following the conclusion of this series' opening salvo, The Andalucian Friend (2012), gangster Hector Guzman is in a coma in Spain after being attacked by rivals while his lover, Sophie Brinkmann, tries to carry on with her son, Albert, in Stockholm. German, Russian, and South American gangsters are once again angling for control of Hector's syndicate, and Sophie's talks with them to buy time has her under suspicion as a traitor-a status that gets more complicated when Hector's eyes flicker open again. Approximately two dozen characters of substance flow through this story, which largely turns on the kidnappings of Albert and of Lothar, a son of Hector's. But despite all the globe-trotting and moving parts, which often bogged down his debut, Soderberg here works in tighter and cleaner prose. And this time he has a subplot that in some ways trumps the main story, following Tommy, a corrupt cop who tries to shut down an investigation of Hector by replacing go-getter detective Antonia with Miles, a stripper-addicted piece of deadwood. Tommy's scheme backfires, which is no surprise. But Soderberg's treatment of the backfiring, particularly Miles' redemption, is marked by thoughtful characterization and the kind of black-hearted inside-out morality that's defined the recent Scandinavian crime boom; Soderberg can make you cheer for a man urinating on a beaten corpse. Sophie remains a frustratingly passive character in this milieu-Soderberg has deliberately made her untouched by such machinations, and here, she's mostly wringing her hands over Albert. But the pieces seem to be in place for her to fully claim the stage in Book 3. A thriller with plenty of vectors but a better sense of direction than its predecessor.

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July 1, 2015
At the end of Soderberg's masterful The Andalucian Friend (2014), we left Stockholm nurse Sophie Brinkman, whose involvement with a patient, Hector Guzman, drew her into the world of international crime, reeling from an attack that left Guzman in a coma and her on the run. As we pick up the story, she is in hiding with Guzman's inner circle. Matters accelerate to crisis proportions when Sophie's son, Albert, is kidnapped, as is Guzman's other son, whose existence was unknown to Sophie and who unwittingly forces Sophie to make her own Sophie's choice. Meanwhile, the Stockholm police are closing in, despite the presence of corrupt officials trying to impede the investigation. Soderberg juggles multiple stories and characters, new and old, in a novel that is perhaps a bit overstuffed with plotand with backstory, as the author struggles to bring new readers up to speed. Still, as the complex plot unspools and the many characters, all vividly drawn, vie for stage time, there are spectacularly choreographed and shocking bursts of action. In many ways, this is a transitional episode, skillfully setting up a finale that will find Sophie and her small cadre of friends hoping to forge a separate peace.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2015

Swedish TV screenwriter Soderberg, who got some stand-out praise for his debut thriller, The Andalucian Friend, follows up with a sequel. Sophie Brinkmann, now tangled up in Hector Guzman's crime family, grabs hold of her fate when Hector's brother is murdered.

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