The Nightmare

On a summer night the dead body of a woman is found on board an abandoned pleasure boat drifting around in the Stockholm archipelago. Her lungs are filled with brackish water, but there are no traces of this water on her clothes or other parts of her body.

Detective Inspector Joona Linna takes up the case. Forensics state that it was a simple drowning, that she must have been pulled aboard the boat, which explains the lack of brackish water. But Joona knows better and suspects something much more sinister.

The next day a man is found dead in his state apartment in Stockholm. The man is hanging in a noose from the lamp-hook in the ceiling. How did it happen? The room has a high ceiling with no furniture, absolutely nothing to climb on. Nevertheless Linna is convinced that it is suicide. Of course he is right. The man has committed suicide, but this fact doesn’t close the case. It is only a prelude to a dizzyingly intense and dangerous course of events.

There are certain agreements which cannot be broken off, not even if you are dead...

About the Author

Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril & Alexander Ahndoril, both critically-acclaimed writers under their own names. Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril's first novel Stjarneborg (Castle of Stars) has been translated in several languages while Alexander Ahndoril's novel, The Director, about Ingmar Bergman, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. They live in Sweden. The Nightmare is the second in a series featuring Detective Inspector Joona Linna. The first novel in the series, The Hypnotist, has sold over half a million copies in Sweden and has been a bestseller wherever it has been published to date.