Stockholm Delete

February 20, 2017
This gloomy crime novel from Lapidus (Easy Money and two other books his Stockholm Noir trilogy) focuses on Serbian immigrants. Teddy is trying to go straight after his release from prison—where he served time for kidnapping Mats Emanuelsson, a one-time police informer now believed dead—by working as a fixer for a law firm. Teddy’s 19-year-old nephew, Nikola, who idolizes him, is just out of Spillersboda Young Offenders’ Institute and is also trying to stay clean. Meanwhile, Teddy’s coworker, newly minted lawyer Emelie Jansson, gets drawn into criminal defense work, against the rules of her upscale business law firm, by defending Mats’s son against the charge that he murdered Mats. The complicated narrative unfolds through the viewpoints of Teddy, Nikola, and Emelie. Transcripts of police interrogations with Mats fill in the background. Lapidus tackles such matters as big-business fraud, police corruption, and refugee-related tensions in a dismal “new Stockholm,” but interminable financial scheming bogs down what might have worked better as a fast-paced, action-oriented thriller.

February 15, 2017
The author of the Stockholm Noir trilogy (Life Deluxe, 2014, etc.) uses a violent but enigmatic crime scene as the entree to layer upon layer of criminal intrigue, past, present, and future.It's only natural to assume that the young man found bloodied and comatose behind the wheel of the car outside a house on a Stockholm island has killed the even bloodier and more inert man inside. But nothing else about the crime is obvious. It's impossible to tell who the dead man is. It's impossible to question the suspect, Benjamin Emanuelsson, who revives just enough to request Emelie Jansson as his attorney. It's impossible to tell why Benjamin would be so intent on engaging this particular novice, who's just barely passed the bar and whose white-shoe firm is dead-set against her involvement. And although it seems obvious that the killing has some connection to the 2006 abduction of Benjamin's father, Mats, for which Najdan "Teddy" Maksumic served eight years in prison before his release, it's impossible to tell what that connection is or why Teddy, who refuses to talk, kidnapped Mats in the first place or why Mats, rescued by the police after five hellish days and eventually turned into a confidential informant, leaped midsea from the ferry to Finland four years later. About the only clear rules the characters observe are those of the criminal syndicate ("Emanuelsson, Petrovic & Co., Fraud Services--We move, launder, and reinvest") that lurks beneath the present-day mayhem and the injunction that whatever happens, no matter who leans on you or what they threaten, you never, ever abandon your friends--or, if you're a lawyer, your clients. A murky, repetitious, grueling dip into a sink of iniquity as immersive as a weeklong Berlitz seminar in crime that turns out to be a paean to loyalty in all its improbable guises.

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April 15, 2017

Best-selling Swedish author and criminal defense lawyer Lapidus's (Easy Money) latest U.S. release is a crime thriller featuring a newly minted lawyer. Emelie is working for a prestigious law firm in Stockholm, handling business deals and celebrating her official new status as a lawyer. When Benjamin, a young man accused of murder, requests Emelie as his defense lawyer, she is intrigued and accepts even though her employer disapproves. As she tries to build a case to defend Benjamin, the situation takes an unexpected turn when she finds out that her friend Teddy was the one who kidnapped Ben's father, Mats, years ago. Teddy went to prison for the kidnapping, and Mats disappeared. Yet Mats's shady past and the mysterious thugs who hired Teddy to do the kidnapping seem to be at the heart of Ben's current predicament. While Teddy is trying to leave his criminal past behind him, his nephew Nikola has only gotten more enmeshed in that world, and soon Emelie, Teddy, and Nikola will be dragged into Sweden's dark underbelly in order to uncover the truth. VERDICT Fast-paced and full of action, this dark, gritty crime novel is best for those who like a more visceral mystery experience. [See Prepub Alert 10/17/16.]--Melissa DeWild, BookOps, New York P.L.

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