Top Dog

September 3, 2018
Lapidus’s hard-hitting sequel to 2017’s Stockholm Delete updates the careers of diverse characters caught up in Stockholm’s criminal underworld. Teddy, a Serbian immigrant, can’t get a regular job after spending eight years in prison for kidnapping a money launderer, so he falls back in with his former lover, Emelie. Now a defense lawyer, Emelie needs Teddy’s help after a client is murdered. Nikola, the nephew Teddy adores, abandons a good future as an electrician to seek revenge for the fatal gang shooting of a boyhood friend. After Roksana, a crafty young Iranian, finds someone’s drug stash and parties it away, she ends up enlisting Nikola’s help in dealing with the drug lord to whom she owes thousands of kronor. Meanwhile, police transcripts of tapped phone conversations cast a revealing light on big business corruption. Lapidus overdoes the melodrama at times as the various stories converge on the somewhat contrived ending, but his picture of Swedish social debilitation is powerful stuff.

Narrator Jon Lindstrom's raspy vocals pull back the curtain on the Swedish "utopia" to show us the seamy underside of the drug scene. His voice captures the sense of dark danger that permeates this thriller, which throws together unlikely partners. Nikolas is trying to leave a life of crime, Roksana is a party girl trying to find her way, and Emelie is the lawyer who will keep them all honest. Lindstrom is a deft narrator, moving back and forth between male and female characters and drawing us further into the web of the Swedish underground. Fans of Nordic noir will find this an enjoyable listening experience with all the signature features of the genre. M.R. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine