The Sons

Starred review from January 29, 2018
Actual bank robberies, the planned bombing of Stockholm’s Central Station, and the largest weapons theft in northern Europe’s history inspired the events in this superb finale of the Dostoyevskian saga that began with 2016’s The Father from Svensson (the pseudonym of Anders Roslund and Stefan Thunberg). The abusive Ivan Duvnjac, an emigré from the former Yugoslavia, drives his three sons, Leo, Vincent, and Felix, into crime. Leo, the oldest, masterminds a daring robbery, but he goes to prison after he’s apprehended by Stockholm police detective John Broncks. There Leo plots to steal the millions recovered in the arrest, now housed in the Stockholm police station. After Leo’s release from prison, Broncks, aided by ultralogical detective Elisa Cuesta, follows his gut instinct and tracks Leo, only to discover that Leo’s accomplice Sam Larsen is his own convict brother, to whom Broncks owes a staggering debt. Seldom in fiction have a father’s sins been so brutally visited on sons as in this shattering tribute to the terrifying complexity of familial life and love. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

March 1, 2018
This is the second of two parts in the Made in Sweden saga, following The Father (2016), which was an international best-seller. The story picks up six years later, when a resolutely unreformed Leo Duvnjac is released from prison. His plan is to pull off one final heist, targeting 100 million Swedish krona from Sweden's largest police station. The job will involve his despicable father and dysfunctional brothers and pit him against the formidable detective John Broncks once again. The stakes are even higher in this round, and the battle of wits between Duvnjac and Broncks is riveting. Both men are badly scarred by the brutality of their childhoods, which simultaneously emboldens and inhibits them. Based on an actual series of events, this absorbing, often heartrending tale reads like superb narrative nonfiction, with disturbing images of domestic violence and ice-cold criminality. This will appeal to fans of the Scandinavian noir masters Henning Mankell and H�kan Nesser. Stefan Thunberg, half of the novel's pseudonymous writing team, is the screenwriter who brought their series to television.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)