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Summary
Summary
The International Thriller that Stockholm City hailed as the Best Crime Novel of the Year has finally crossed the Atlantic! Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and then trapped in a Stockholm brothel, forced to repay their "debt." Suddenly they are given an unexpected chance at freedom, and with it the opportunity to take revenge on their enslavers and reclaim the lives and dignity they once had. What will happen now that the tables are turned and the victims fight back? In this masterful thriller, the celebrated team of Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom delve into the seedy underbelly of Stockholm. There we meet Lydia and Alena as they embark on a desperate plan to expose their captor and demand justice; police officers Sundkvist and Grens, on the trail of both Lydia's enslavers and Jochum Lang, a notorious mob enforcer; and Hilding Oldeus, a junkie on what might be his last - and most destructive - bender. At the Soder Hospital, their destinies begin to converge in unexpected and explosive ways. Box 21 is a Scandinavian thriller of the highest order: a mindblowing psychological drama written with powerful intensity. When it was published in Sweden, Solo called it "suspenseful, gripping, and intelligently written . . . Almost impossible to put down," while SVT exclaimed: "Forget crime literature; this is, simply put, great literature!"
Author Notes
Anders Roslund is the founder and former head of Kulturnyheterna (Culture News) on Swedish Television. Borge Hellstrom is an ex-criminal who helps to rehabilitate young offenders and drug addicts.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The Swedish writing team of Roslund and Hellstr^m make their U.S. debut with a remarkable tale of loss, addiction and revenge set in Stockholm's seedy underworld. Ewert Grens, a veteran detective, is haunted by a tragic incident that occurred 25 years earlier that left his young wife, a fellow police officer, an invalid. When the man responsible, notorious criminal Jochum Lang, is released from prison, Grens vows to put him away for life. Meanwhile, the detective arrives at a crime scene where a teenage prostitute, Lydia Grajauskas, has been nearly beaten to death by her Russian pimp. Alternating chapters fill in the backstory of Lydia and Alena Sljusareva, girls lured away from Lithuania under false pretenses and sold as sex slaves. In a bizarre twist, Lydia escapes from her hospital bed and ends up taking hostages. This taut and nuanced thriller should appeal to fans of Mo Hayder, Denise Mina and, of course, Henning Mankell. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A tangle of criminal plotlines converge combustibly at a Stockholm hospital in this edgy thriller, the second the collaborators have published in English (The Beast, 2005). As a child, Russian-born Lydia Grajauskas visits her father in a Swedish prison. Eleven years later she's a sex slave, working with other immigrant girls and beaten regularly by her boss Dimitri. Police detective Ewert Grens visits his ex-fiance Anni, barely alive in a convalescent facility. In the 25 years since mobster Jochum Lang put her in this condition, Ewert has simply been going through the motions of his life. Hilding Oldeus, drug addict and petty criminal, roams the streets, committing an array of offenses. Upon learning that Lang is about to be released, Ewert seeks the calming influence of Bengt Nordwall, veteran and family man, his mentor on the force. He tries unsuccessfully to get Hilding to turn state's evidence against Lang and secure his retention. All these plot threads lead to Sder Hospital, where Lydia is taken after her latest beating. Her friend Alena uses the surrounding confusion to escape and try to implement the duo's grand getaway plan. Pursued by Lang, Hilding also arrives at the hospital demanding drugs of his sister Lisa, who's a doctor there. Then Lydia gets hold of a gun, takes a group of hospital staff hostage and demands to see Bengt. Further twists follow. Fresh, slangy and moves at breakneck pace, though it loses some of its energy as it narrows its focus. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
BOX 21 (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26) has something of that trapped quality. Scene by violent scene, this thriller by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom (in a blunt, uncredited translation from the Swedish) never loses sight of Lydia Grajauskas, who was exposed to violence as a child in Lithuania before being duped into prostitution and ferried over to Sweden to cater to the tastes of rough men with disgusting sexual habits. After landing in the hospital when the Lithuanian diplomat who moonlights as her pimp flays the skin off her back with a bull-whip, Lydia embarks on a daring plan to take vengeance - a plan that involves holding hostages in the hospital morgue and occasionally blowing one up with Semtex. For all their cinematic hyperbole, the authors don't contribute to any further degradation of Lydia, who makes a believably tragic model for all the real women exploited by human traffickers.
Library Journal Review
Another best-selling Swedish crime thriller translated for American audiences, this book is the work of TV personality Roslund and former criminal and current youth worker Hellstrom. Their dark and gritty tale revolves around Lithuanian sex slaves Lydia and Alena, vicious and rarely convicted mob enforcer Jochum Lang, and Hilding Oldeus, a desperate heroin junkie. Their stories converge when cranky, old-fashioned police inspector Ewert Grens is assigned to the investigation of Lydia's horrific murder by her pimp, Lang and Oldeus get out of jail, and Grens resumes his crusade to put Lang away permanently. Bleak and pessimistic, even for Scandinavian crime stories, this international best seller has a style reminiscent of the classic Maj Sjowall and Per Waloo Martin Beck mysteries and is also set in downtown Stockholm. Verdict This excellent crime thriller is bound to please fans of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/09.]-Jessica Moyer, Univ. of Minnesota, Coll. of Education & Human Development, Minneapolis (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
