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Misterioso

A Crime Novel

#1 in series

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
After successfully—but bloodily—dismantling a complicated hostage situation at a bank in the suburbs of Stockholm, Detective Paul Hjelm is faced with the requisite investigation by Internal Affairs. It is a potentially career-ending inquiry, but he is plucked out of it by the National Criminal Police commissioner, who drops him into an elite task force of officers assembled from across the country to find an elusive killer with a sophisticated modus operandi and even more sophisticated tastes.
 
Targeting Sweden’s high-profile business leaders, the killer breaks into their homes at night, waits for his victims, places two bullets in their heads with deadly precision, and removes the bullets from the walls—a ritual enacted to a rare bootleg recording of Thelonious Monk’s jazz classic “Misterioso.”
 
As Hjelm, his young, doggedly energetic partner, Jorge Chavez, and the rest of the team follow one lead after another in their pursuit—navigating the murky underworlds of the Russian Mafia and the secretive members-only society of Sweden’s wealthiest denizens—they must also delve into one of the country’s most persistent ills: a deep-rooted xenophobia that affects both the police and the perpetrator in a small nation that is becoming rapidly internationalized.
 
The first novel in Arne Dahl’s gripping Intercrime series—widely considered to be one of Sweden’s best—Misterioso is a penetrating, dark, and absorbing introduction to this acclaimed author’s world.
BONUS MATERIAL: This edition includes an excerpt from Arne Dahl's Bad Blood.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 23, 2011
      Originally published in Sweden in 1999, the first in Dahl's acclaimed Intercrime trilogy focuses on the A-Unit, a freshly formed elite team of six mavericks and misfits from various police units. Typical is Paul Hjelm, who was about to lose his job for the unorthodox handling of a hostage situation. The author artfully fills in the disparate backgrounds of the other four men and one woman, each of whom emerges as a substantial, nuanced character. Plot, though, is not Dahl's strong suit. A less than compelling story line, full of Stockholm street names, leaves the reader floundering in clueless murders for too long, burdened with extended lists of possibilities that don't pan out and a lot of talk about corporations and their board members, some of whom are thought to be possible targets of the media-dubbed "Power Murderer." Eventually, clues come pouring in and the pace picks up.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from June 1, 2011

      An elite team of misfit police officers band together to stop a serial killer.

      Detective Inspector Paul Hjelm never intends to be a hero when he diffuses a hostage situation in his local precinct, but the media can't help but latch on to the story. Hjelm thinks the situation ironic, given the fact that his wife Cilla and their children look at him as if they could see right through him. Hjelm is on the verge of being dismissed from his post for acting outside protocol when Detective Superintendent Jan-Olov Hultin taps him to join a special targeted group which Hultin, for lack of a better term, has called the A-Unit. As Hjelm is introduced to his new colleagues, he sees his own overworked, outsider perspective reflected in their tired faces. Hultin tasks the team with investigating a series of murders of local businessmen, seemingly unrelated but all bearing the mark of cool and calculated executions. Hjelm thinks he's developed a promising lead by investigating the Order of the Mimir, a local group echoing the secrecy of the Freemasons, but his astute cohort brings in equally likely leads that implicate everyone from a young male-prostitution ring to the Russian Mafia. The investigation slowly devolves into a study not only of the facts of the case but of the characters of the investigators themselves; the darkness they face within the mystery has them all questioning their own reasons to be.

      Thoughtfully haunting and sometimes beautifully written, the first of Hjelm's cases to be translated into English is likely to resonate with readers of the Stieg Larsson trilogy.

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

    • Library Journal

      May 15, 2011

      This exciting debut in a three-book series follows Paul Hjelm, a Swedish detective considered a hero by the media and a loose cannon by Internal Affairs. After his mostly successful resolution of a hostage situation, Hjelm is told to clean out his office--but instead of losing his job, he is asked to join the A-Unit, a new, elite law enforcement group. Their first investigation is to solve the killings of Sweden's top business leaders. The clues are few but have the A-Unit questioning the Russian Mafia, booze smugglers, and their own xenophobic tendencies. VERDICT Nunnally has smoothly translated the novel from Swedish to English, although it is easy for a reader unfamiliar with Sweden and its capital, Stockholm, to get confused by city and business names. The intriguing plot can be complicated at times, but Dahl neatly ties up all of the loose ends in a symmetrical exposition. Fans of hard-boiled detective and Swedish crime novels will enjoy this. [See Prepub Alert, 1/21/11.]--Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL

      Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from July 1, 2011
      It's 1997, and a serial killer is methodically killing Sweden's wealthiest businessmen while listening to a tape of Thelonious Monk's haunting classic Misterioso. The National Police, still traumatized by the unsolved assassination of Prime Minister Olaf Palme a decade before, decide to create a special unit to hunt down the killer. Paul Hjelm, a detective in Stockholm's southern suburbs, is selected as one of the unit's six seemingly mismatched members. Hjelm is thunderstruck. Although he's the hero du jour in the newspapers, he's expecting to be fired for shooting a blackhead, a Kosovar Arab who had taken hostages in an immigration office. Dahl, who is hailed in northern Europe as Henning Mankell's successor, sets a full plate for himself in the first of a series about Hjelm and his colleagues. He introduces and fleshes out a baker's-dozen characters. He describes a once comfortable country fragmented by racial malaise; East European Mafias; a financial collapse brought on by greedy, reckless bankers and government deregulation; postindustrial capitalism; and a gnawing fear that Sweden has lost its way. Although this is also Mankell's turf, Dahl handles it differently but also very successfully. Mystery devotees who loved Mankell's Kurt Wallander, and crime-fiction lifers who still treasure Sjwall's and Wahl's Martin Beck, will want to add Paul Hjelm to their short lists of international favorites.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

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