Knock Knock

Starred review from November 2, 2020
In Roslund’s heart-pounding fourth Grens and Hoffman novel (after 2019’s Three Hours with the late Börge Hellström), a break-in at the Stockholm apartment where every member of the Lilaj family, except five-year-old Zana, was killed 17 years earlier prompts Det. Supt. Ewert Grens to reexamine the case. Grens discovers that Zana’s witness protection file has disappeared from a secure police archive just as several criminals are murdered in the same manner as her family. Meanwhile, Piet Hoffman is contacted anonymously by a person who knows all about Hoffman’s time infiltrating Stockholm’s criminal underworld for the police. If Hoffman doesn’t start a gang war and thereby kick start demand for this new player in the weapons smuggling business, he and his family will be killed. Grens and Hoffman combine forces, as Grens senses they’re working two ends of the same problem. While the peril that Hoffman faces is palpable, Grens’s impending retirement and loss of purpose presents its own existential threat. This terrific mash-up of police procedural and crime thriller has strongly imagined characters, explosive action, and a twisty plot with an unexpected conclusion. It’s a must for Scandinavian noir fans. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

December 1, 2020
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.

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January 1, 2021
After a lifetime of consuming devotion to his calling, Stockholm DS Ewert Grens faces his looming retirement with dread. It's fitting, then, that a cold case from Grens' past resurfaces; the recent killings of three Albanian gang enforcers bear unsettling similarities to the murders of four members of the Lilaj family 17 years earlier. The victims in both incidents were killed with the same unique signature. There was one survivor in the Lilaj murders, five-year-old Zana, whom Grens found alive in the apartment. As Grens tracks Zana through Sweden's witness-protection system, former undercover operative Piet Hoffman approaches Grens for help turning the tables on a deadly extortion plot. A traitor inside Grens' own department has stolen Hoffman's confidential informant files, threatening to unveil him to the gangsters he betrayed unless he carries out a high-profile hit, as a way of promoting a new weapon to Stockholm's gangs. Grens ferrets out the traitor, burning relationship bridges along the way, while Hoffman heads to Albania, determined to take out the arms dealers behind the extortion. Grens is an immensely compelling character whose sharp intuition and dedication to justice are reminiscent of Harry Bosch. This tense, sophisticated procedural can stand alone, but readers will find themselves drawn to Grens' seven earlier investigations.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.