The Sandman

Starred review from January 1, 2018
Kepler (the pen name for the husband-and-wife writing team of Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril) proves that a gifted storyteller can make something memorable from an overused plot in his nail-biting fourth novel featuring Det. Insp. Joona Linna (after 2013’s The Fire Witness). Jurek Walter has been confined to an ultrasecure psychiatric ward near Stockholm for 13 years after being convicted of just two of the more than 20 murders he is suspected of having committed. Joona, who has always believed that Jurek had an accomplice, is vindicated when Mikael Kobler-Frost, a crime writer’s son who was thought to have been killed by Jurek, manages to escape captivity and provides some information about his captor, whom he calls the Sandman. Mikael’s revelation that his sister, who disappeared with him, is also still alive prompts the police to attempt a dangerous gambit: sending Insp. Saga Bauer into Jurek’s ward posing as a patient to try to get him to reveal enough information to rescue Felicia. Kepler doesn’t pull any punches, and his care in creating characters will make readers deeply invested in their fates. 75,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

January 1, 2018
"You don't become a serial killer for no reason": the Swedish duo (The Fire Witness, 2013, etc.) who write under a single pseudonym return, and it isn't pretty.Leading the cast in the fourth novel in the series devoted to him, the smart, steely detective Joona Linna is sure that the psycho he helped put away is still conducting awful business behind bars. When a starved young man is spotted atop a railroad bridge, having escaped from captivity at the hands of yet another psycho--"the Sandman took us," he says to police, meaningfully--Linna puts two and two together. That's not easy: the imprisoned bad guy, Jurek Walter, has a knack for whispering sweet nothings into the ears of anyone who will listen, programming them for mayhem, so much so that his jailers and psychiatrists wear earplugs in his presence. (So much for talk therapy.) Linna, who has searched every conceivable database to try to find out who Walter really is, tries a risky gambit: he sends his colleague, young detective Saga Bauer, into the lion's den to try to ferret out information about his victims and accomplices, for Linna is sure that Walter is not acting alone. He's not, though learning the eventual identity of the aforementioned Sandman may carry a whiff of red herring gone bad. Saga has to tough out some very unpleasant behavior while undercover inside the stir--"The girl has a dozen knife wounds to her chest, deep cuts into her lungs and heart," Kepler writes of one inmate who gets in Walter's way--even as Linna solves the mystery. Writing, as always, in short chapters, most just a couple of pages in length, and in telegraphic sentences, Kepler builds a story whose pace is occasionally off but that resolves in a satisfactory if blood-soaked manner. The yarn isn't as spine-tingling as, say, Jo Nesbo's The Snowman or as action-packed as Stieg Larsson's original Millennium trilogy, but as Swedish mysteries go, it does the trick.Fans of Kepler's detective won't be disappointed.

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Starred review from February 1, 2018
Thirteen years after he and his sister disappeared, Mikael Kohler-Frost stumbles toward police, nearly skeletal and covered in blood. Mikael pleads for police to find his sister, Felicia, who is still held captive by the Sandman. Mikael's reappearance resurrects Stockholm DI Joona Linna's worst nightmares: he knows that Sweden's most dangerous serial killer, Jurek Walter, masterminded the kidnappings. When Linna and his partner, Samuel, captured Walter years earlier, he swore he'd take their families as revenge. Then, while Walter's incarceration lulled the partners into complacency, his hidden accomplice snatched Samuel's family and drove him to suicide. Determined to find Felicia, Linna crafts a dangerous plan to draw clues from Walter. The task force plants Saga Bauer deep undercover in Walter's maximum-security psychiatric unit, gambling that Walter finds the brilliant (and beautiful) officer irresistibly intriguing. But, once inside, Saga is on her own to navigate the unforeseen dangers posed by the unit's predatory head psychiatrist. If any Scandinavian crime series is poised to top the characterization and gripping action of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, it's this one. Kepler has crafted a phenomenal hero in Linna, who wields intuition, strategic genius, and refreshing vulnerability against a foe as compelling and calculating as Hannibal Lecter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018

In the fourth entry (after The Fire Witness) of the internationally best-selling "DI Joona Linna" series, the Stockholm detective finds himself facing Jurek Walter again. He arrested the psychotic serial killer 13 years ago and always suspected he had an accomplice who remained free. Joona's theory is confirmed when a long-missing victim, Mikael, is found wandering on a railroad track. He has escaped from his kidnapper whom he thinks of as the Sandman, but his twin sister Felicia is still in captivity. Jurek is smart and dangerous, but they need to get him to talk if there's any chance of finding Felicia before it's too late. Joona plans a risky strategy: Insp. Saga Bauer will go undercover as a patient in the high-security psychiatric ward where Jurek is being held and try to draw out information from him. Joona has lost his partner and his family to Jurek and will stop at nothing to end the terror. VERDICT More dark psychological thriller than police procedural, this shiver-inducing read will have you turning pages until the cliff-hanger ending. For fans of Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir and Danish writer Sara Blaedel. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17.]--Melissa DeWild, Spring Lake Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2017

When Mikael vanished 13 years ago with his little sister, serial killer Jurek Walter was blamed. Now Mikael is back, claiming his sister remains captive to the gruesome Sandman. Fourth in the internationally best-selling DI Joona Linna series.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.