Scandinavian Crime Thrillers

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The White Lioness by Henning Mankell, read by Sean Barrett. In 1992, in peaceful Southern Sweden, Louise Akerblom, an estate agent, pillar of the Methodist church, wife and mother, disappears. There is no explanation and no motive. Inspector Wallander and his team are called in to investigate. As Wallander is introduced to this case, he has a gut feeling that the victim will never be found alive, but he has no idea how far he will have to go in search of the killer.

An unbearably tense novel of revenge, murder, bereavement and the destructive force of passion. The single-mother families of the isolated community under the shadow of the Pyderhorn, Bergen's greatest mountain, are being terrorised by a teenage gang. But teenage violence is nothing compared to what awaits detective Varg Veum when he gets to know the blue-eyed Wenche Andersen.

A woman’s skeletal remains are excavated on an uninhabited island in Sandhamn’s archipelago, and Thomas Andreasson is called to officially investigate. But his best friend, Nora Linde, can’t help but get involved. On leave after her last case took a dark turn, Nora is tortured by depression, nightmares, and guilt. Her marriage fractured, her pride chipped away, Nora could find redemption in this investigation.

The new summer house on Sandhamn Island is an architectural dream for its owner, Carsten Jonsson. It’s a nightmare for the locals. The venture capitalist has flouted local traditions, property lines, and the natural beauty of the coastline. He’s also too wealthy and arrogant to heed the anonymous warnings to leave. The threats escalate when his guest lodge is burned to the ground and an unidentifiable corpse is found in the charred ruins.

When perpetual bachelor Gunder Jomann goes to India for two weeks and comes home married, the town of Elvestad is stunned. On the day the Indian bride is supposed to arrive, the battered body of a woman is found in a meadow on the outskirts of town. None of the "good people of Elvestad" can believe that anyone among them would be capable of such a brutal murder. But in his quiet, formal way, Inspector Konrad Sejer understands that good people can commit atrocious deeds, and that no one is altogether innocent.

Aldis hates her job working in a juvenile detention center in rural Iceland. The boys are difficult, the owners are unpleasant, and there are mysterious noises at night. And then two of the boys go astray.... Decades later single father Odinn is looking into alleged abuse at the center. The more he finds out, though, the more it seems the odd events of the 1970s are linked to the accident that killed his ex-wife. Was her death something more sinister?

La primera nevada cae en noviembre este año en Oslo. La mañana siguiente, al despertarse, un niño no encuentra a su madre en casa. Se le hace raro encontrar su bufanda favorita colgando del cuello de un muñeco de nieve que alguien ha hecho en el jardín. El detective Harry Hole empieza a sospechar que hay un psicópata suelto, desde hace demasiado tiempo, cuando descubre que un alarmante número de madres y esposas han desaparecido en circunstancias similares, tras caer la primera nieve.

The Bucket List starts when undercover FBI Agent John Adderley wakes up in a hospital bed in Baltimore with extensive gunshot wounds. He knows he’s lucky to be alive. And just a few beds away is the man who 24 hours ago pointed a gun to his head. Soon, a high-profile cold-case file is sent to Agent Adderley, now living in Sweden (where he’s not lived since he was a boy) in witness protection, hiding until he can testify against the drug cartel he infiltrated back in the States. Adderley is determined to solve the case, even with a price on his head....

A nurse, wife and mother of two, Nina can’t say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in a Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Police detective Hannah Duncker didn’t expect to return to her native Öland. She fled after her father’s murder conviction and returns to make peace with her shame. She has a new job with the local police and a nosy new partner. A 15-year-old’s death catapults her into a murder investigation that resurrects ghosts from her previous life. As she hunts for the truth, she must confront the people she abandoned. Not all are pleased to see her back home, and she soon learns that digging through the past comes with consequences.

A grievously mutilated young woman arrives at the hospital in Espoo, Finland - only to vanish without a trace. Though the victim refused to identify herself, Violent Crimes Unit Commander Maria Kallio suspects she's connected to the city's sex-worker underworld. The next day her suspicions grow when celebrity call girl Lulu Nightingale is murdered during a live television broadcast. The victim's clients included some of the top names in Finnish society, but the list of suspects is longer: her infatuated bodyguard, a suicidal TV producer, and a talk-show host with political aspirations.

A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. There are no obvious clues apart from a cryptic note left on the body and a photograph of a young girl's grave. Delving into the dead man's life Detective Erlendur discovers that 40 years ago he was accused of an appalling crime, but never convicted. Had his past come back to haunt him? As Erlendur struggles to build a relationship with his unhappy daughter, his investigation takes him to Iceland's Genetic Research Centre, where he uncovers disturbing secrets that are even darker than the murder of an old man.

When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. They very quickly establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her complex landlady, Esther de Laurenti. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist - and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she's writing, the link between fiction and real life grows more urgent.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Buried, the fifth installment of the Department Q series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, read by Steven Pacey. More than three years ago, a civil servant vanished after returning from a work trip to Africa. Though he is missing and presumed dead, the man's family still want answers. It is one of the many unsolved crimes left for Department Q, Denmark's cold-case unit headed up by Detective Carl Morck.

It begins with a nursery rhyme. Nineteen minutes later you die.... The sixth gripping thriller in Lars Kepler’s best-selling series featuring Joona Linna. Perfect for fans of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo. There’s a face at the window. A stranger wearing a mask stands in the shadow of a garden. He’s watching his first victim through the window. He will kill him slowly, make it last - play him a nursery rhyme - make him pay.

Summer 1983: four-year-old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared. Never to be seen again. Today: Veronica is a bereavement counsellor. She's never fully come to terms with her mother's suicide after her brother Billy's disappearance. When a young man walks into her group, he looks familiar and talks about the trauma of his friend's disappearance in 1983. Could Billy still be alive after all this time?

After completing a dangerous mission training police officers in war-torn Afghanistan, Detective Maria Kallio returns to Finland as the head of a new special crimes unit. But what awaits her in her home country is her most challenging and unsettling case yet. Three immigrant Muslim girls, all members of the same social club, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances. When the body of a fourth girl is found in the snow, strangled with her own headscarf, the investigation takes on a grim new urgency.

Sonny's on the run. Sonny is a model prisoner. He listens to the confessions of other inmates, and absolves them of their sins. He's been lied to his whole life. But then one prisoner’s confession changes everything. He knows something about Sonny’s disgraced father. Sonny wants revenge. He needs to break out of prison and make those responsible pay for their crimes. Whatever the cost.

In this crime drama, detective Varg Veum's adventures take him into the world of privileged teenage girls who have been drawn into drugs and prostitution. The situation worsens when the local judge is found dead in a luxury hotel, clad only in women's lingerie. Called in by anxious parents to look for a missing daughter and explain the judge's death, Varg is led deep into Bergen's criminal underworld.

Midsummer approaches, and Wallander prepares for a holiday with the new woman in his life, hopeful that his wayward daughter and his ageing father will cope without him. But his summer is ruined when a girl commits suicide before his eyes, and a former minister of justice is butchered in the first of a series of apparently motiveless murders.