Overview

THE AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER One town. Two crimes. Twenty years of silence. A “brooding and brilliant” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) murder mystery set in a rural Swedish town, where one community’s secrets will be laid bare over the next twenty years . . . “All the makings of a page-turning thriller, but with an emotional depth that is truly rare.”—FREDRIK BACKMAN “The finest crime writer we have in Sweden.”—DAVID LAGERCRANTZ “Carlsson is to the police procedural what Cormac McCarthy is to the Western.”—ANTHONY MARRA “A thriller rendered with precision and beauty.”—ADAM WHITE “Carlsson plumbs what can and cannot be known about human lives and criminal investigations.”—THE NEW YORK TIMES “A must for Nordic noir and psychological mystery fans.”—LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW) ""Carlsson is the creme de la creme of Nordic noir.”—BOOKPAGE (STARRED REVIEW) One of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of the Fall WINNER OF THE BEST NORDIC CRIME NOVEL (THE GLASS KEY AWARD) • WINNER OF THE BEST SWEDISH CRIME NOVEL AWARD • WINNER OF DENMARK’S PALLE ROSENKRANTZ PRIZE FOR BEST TRANSLATED CRIME NOVEL Small towns sometimes have a voice of their own. On a snowy winter night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together outside a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, the two seventeen-year-olds imagine they will remain so forever. But by the next morning, a corpse is found in the trunk of a car, and each boy is a suspect in the murder. Each has something they want to conceal from the police. And from the other. The hunt for the killer will take more than twenty years. It will see the lead detective leave the force forever. And it won’t end until a second body turns up in similar circumstances, and the tight-knit community’s secrets are finally brought to light. In The Living and the Dead, renowned criminologist Christoffer Carlsson masterfully transports us to the fields and forests of western Sweden, a region of farmers and truck drivers torn apart by economic injustice and self-deceit—a world where the portal between the living and the dead is flung wide open and where no one is entirely innocent.

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Reviews

“I just don’t know anyone else who writes quite like this. All the makings of a page-turning thriller, but with an emotional depth that is truly rare. Carlsson is far and away my favorite Scandinavian crime writer at the moment, and The Living and the Dead is among his very best.”—Fredrik Backman, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“I just don’t know anyone else who writes quite like this. All the makings of a page-turning thriller, but with an emotional depth that is truly rare. Carlsson is far and away my favorite Scandinavian crime writer at the moment, and The Living and the Dead is among his very best.”—Fredrik Backman, #1 New York Times bestselling author “The Living and the Dead is the kind of novel I’m always looking for but can rarely find: literary fiction stocked in the crime shelves, a thriller rendered with precision and beauty. Carlsson makes this place and these people feel absolutely real.”—Adam White, bestselling author of The Midcoast “In 1999 Sweden, police arrive at the scene of a gruesome car crash with no driver and a corpse in the trunk. Twenty years later, a similar crime occurs, and a retired detective comes out of hiding to investigate both cases.”—Publishers Weekly (One of the Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of the Fall) “Days before Christmas 1999 in the small Swedish town of Skavböke, eighteen-year-old Mikael Söderström and his friends are partying to celebrate the end of term. Mikael leaves the party around midnight but never returns home. . . . Carlsson has a knack for psychological procedurals, as his latest proves, with numerous characters and motives to keep readers guessing. . . . A must for Nordic noir and psychological mystery fans.”—Library Journal, starred review

Author Information

Christoffer Carlsson was born in 1986 in Marbäck, Sweden. He holds a PhD in criminology from Stockholm University and is one of Sweden's leading crime experts. He is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, which he has won twice. The New York Times named his debut, Blaze Me a Sun, one of the best crime novels of the year. He lives in Stockholm. Rachel Willson-Broyles lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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