Within the Circle
A Novel
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
This new and ingenious pulse-pounding thriller from legendary Swedish crime author Arne Dahl tracks a string of bombings in Stockholm that are seemingly connected to the climate debate and a secret organization, perfect for fans of Jo Nesbo and Lars Kepler.
When a steel industry executive is found dead in a burning BMW, the death is quickly dismissed as a tragic accident. After another nearly identical accident occurs, criminal inspector Eva Nyman receives a letter that reveals details of an upcoming, and much more vicious, attack, leading her to believe that these are a deliberate series of murders, possibly even a case of climate terrorism.
In the letter Eva recognizes a phrase that was often used by her disgraced former boss, Lukas Frisell, who went off the grid after botching a kidnapping investigation. Eva cannot believe that Frisell is responsible for the murders, but evidence keeps pointing toward him. And as her new team, NOVA, races to uncover the murderer before more people die, Eva is reluctant to disclose her suspicions regarding her old boss.
As further bombings targeting public places begin, countless lives rely on NOVA’s ability to find out who’s behind it all and put a stop to the terror. The killer is out there somewhere, but all they have to go on is a cryptic letter and a strange symbol that keeps appearing everywhere they turn: a circle within a circle.
Who is hiding within the circle?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Swedish novelist Dahl (the Detective Sam Berger series) impresses in this taut procedural about a frantic search for a bomber who selects victims based on their complicity in global warming. Insp. Eva Nyman of Stockholm's National Operations Department is assigned to probe the potential connection between two recent deaths: the first victim, steel executive Alf Stiernström, died in a car explosion that was initially deemed an accident; the second, ad executive Jesper Sahlgren, was killed by a package bomb sent to his office, where he was drawing up ads for an oil company. Early in her investigation, Nyman receives an anonymous letter that alludes to the two crimes ("It has begun. The clock no longer ticks of its own volition; it has to be wound with violence") and threatens a third. Her team scrambles to identify the potential target, and Nyman becomes increasingly suspicious that the perpetrator may be her former mentor on the force, whose idiosyncratic vocabulary matches the killer's manifestos. Dahl's crackerjack plotting is enhanced by nuanced characterizations of Nyman and her colleagues, whose inner lives are given equal weight with the story's procedural elements. This deserves a sequel.
