Borderline

February 9, 2015
In Marklund’s meandering ninth Annika Bengtzon thriller (after 2014’s The Long Shadow), the Swedish reporter pursues a story for the Stockholm newspaper Evening Post, trying to determine whether a serial killer is responsible for the death of a young mother whose body is found near a nursery school. Meanwhile, Annika’s newly reconciled husband, Thomas Samuelsson, has volunteered to attend an EU conference in Kenya. But during a trip to the Somali border, all seven delegates are kidnapped by rebel soldiers, who threaten to execute the delegates unless their exorbitant ransom for each hostage is met. The uneven action awkwardly moves from the overly graphic torture of the hostages to Annika’s efforts to deal with home, work, the kidnappers, and the political ramifications. While Annika remains a strong, intriguing character, the grueling scenes in Kenya overwhelm the exhausting plot. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).

February 15, 2015
After returning from three years as a correspondent in Washington, Swedish reporter Annika Bengtzon must contend with the abduction of her husband, Thomas, in East Africa and the discovery of a nursery school mom's body in Stockholm.Annika has never been through the kind of ordeal she faces here. The circumstances of the woman's death suggest there's a serial killer at work. And the kidnappers are demanding $40 million to spare Thomas, a justice department worker on a delegation to get Kenya to close its border with Somalia. Seeing an opportunity to turn Thomas' abduction into a boost in circulation, Annika's newspaper offers to foot the bill-if she'll file a first-person series on her negotiations with the abductors and her trip to Africa to deliver the ransom. An old journalist friend of hers shows up under false pretenses to get Annika to be a subject in her video report. Meanwhile, Annika's children are wondering who the stranger in her bedroom is. It's Thomas' appealing boss, monitoring the phone-and growing closer to Annika. Marklund fans will find plenty of gripping suspense in the book, which boasts a doozy of a climax. Some mystery readers may be put off by the broad strokes of humor she employs in nailing the desperation of the post-Web newspaper culture and holding Thomas accountable for his philandering ways-even as he is being threatened with dismemberment. But most readers should find the book irresistible. In balancing the sharp shifts in tone, Marklund is masterful. Annika's ninth adventure is a bravura performance that raises Marklund's game and lifts her above the mystery genre.

March 1, 2015
In the ninth book in this Scandinavian series, reporter Annika Bengtzon gets a tip about a body found behind a local school, and she arrives on the scene with the police. A woman has been stabbed to death, the fourth in a string of similar Stockholm murders. The police don't think the cases are related, but Annika disagrees. Her investigation gets sidelined when her on-again, off-again husband, Thomas, gets kidnapped. He'd volunteered as part of an EU delegation in Nairobi, mostly because of a hot young British delegate, but the group all go missing, their driver shot and killed. Thomas' boss is with Annika to handle the exorbitant ransom demands, and they get more involved than they probably should. The point of view switches between that of Annikaher investigation into the serial killings, and the effects of the kidnapping on her and the childrenand that of Thomas and the other kidnap victims, who are living in deplorable conditions and are constantly afraid of execution. Highly suspenseful and sure to appeal to Scandinavian-crime fans of Stieg Larsson, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Camilla Lackberg.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)