Post Mortem

One is Consumed with Guilt, Another Consumed with Shame

The hunt for a serial killer that leads straight into Stockholm's literary circles.

David Lagercrantz has yet again achieved an intricate and exciting story. He draws accurate and entertaining portraits of the protagonists from the literary universe that he knows so well: authors, literary agents, film producers... The story about the hunt for a serial killer in Stockholm’s literary world is partly based on a first-hand account of when Lagercrantz as a young man travelled through Europe with a friend who showed unexpected sides of his personality during their journey.

It is the end of the 1980s and Dag, who has inherited some money, buys a red BMW Cabriolet and sets off with his friend Pompe on a road trip through Europe. They party and discuss Celine, Hemingway and Leonard Cohen at the same speed that they travel from town to town through France and down to the Basque Country in northern Spain. However, Pompe's drinking habits gradually reveal a violent and dark side and Dag becomes increasingly worried that everything is about to get out of hand.

It is November 2008 in Stockholm as we meet Hans Rekke, who is going through a hypomanic episode, and Micaela Vargas, who has a new boyfriend she hasn't yet told Rekke about.

Rekke receives a surprise visit from the Spanish chief inspector Rafael Corales, who is unable to forget about the unsolved and brutal murder of a young woman in Santander in 1988. He firmly believes this case is connected to other cases of murdered women that he has recently found out about. He cannot disregard the thought that he has found a serial killer who leaves signs on the bodies of his victims, signs that seem to be a numerical order. Could Rekke help him to decipher these signs?

Post Mortem switches between the two timelines – we follow Sandra during the last day of her life in Santander and Rekke and Vargas' search for clues in Stockholm's literary coterie. Soon a story unfolds about a serial killer who, aided by his sadistic and manipulative powers, has succeeded in making his closest friend believe that he is an accomplice. The men are connected by a dark secret, by shame and guilt, and in the repressed memories, the friend even believes that he is the one who carried out the brutal murder.

Pontus Bremer, a successful and boastful writer, manages to find some important clues with the help of Sandra's posthumously published short story. And when Rekke, under the pretence of publishing his solved cases, turns to literary agent Oliver Popov, who is partly admired and loathed, he believes he may have solved the mystery of who the killer is. But is it maybe a delusion? Is it one or two perpetrators? And if so, where can they be found today?

Fatal Gambit

“A classic murder mystery . . . one Holmes himself would have loved to solve.”
– The Independent, About Obscuritas

Claire Lidman has been dead for fourteen years, but Samuel, Claire’s husband, refuses to accept it. When he sees a woman in the background of a photography who looks just like Claire, he turns to Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas for help. The two are at first sceptical, but Rekke discovers details in the photo that indicate that it really is Claire. Is it possible? Or are they taking on the case as an excuse to continue working together? The investigation leads them back in time and Rekke is forced to revisit painful memories from his own past.

Meanwhile, and maybe just by pure coincidence, Rekke’s daughter Julia gets a new boyfriend whom she absolutely wants to keep a secret. And Micaela is continuously harassed and threatened by her criminal brother Lucas. But she’s not scared. It’s not until she realises who Julia’s new love is, that her world collapses, and Rekke realises that he again must face off with the nemesis from his youth, Gabor Morovia.

Memoria takes us back to the banking crisis of the 1990s, and the oligarchs’ battle with the old KGB. In the second instalment of David Lagercrantz Rekke/Vargas Series, brutal crimes are revealed as well as their effects on individual lives. The investigation therein, impacts Professor Hans Rekke and police officer Micaela Vargas on a deeply personal level.

Dark Music

The first instalment in a new crime series by David Lagercrantz!

Summer of 2003, and Iraq has just been invaded by the US. In Stockholm, a football referee with Afghan roots is found beaten to death. Hot-tempered Giuseppe Costa, also the dad of one of the players, is arrested for the murder in what looks to be an open-and-shut case. But Costa insists that he is innocent and the Chief of Police decides to consult Professor Hans Rekke, a world renowned expert on interrogational techniques. If there is anyone that can crack Costa, it is him.

But nothing turns out as the police expects. Rekke welcomes the investigational team to his grand family home in Djursholm. In a vertiginous display of reason, he discards the preliminary investigation completely – and shortly thereafter the whole case falls to pieces. Costa is released, and the police suddenly find themselves without leads. Only Micaela Vargas, a young community police officer from Husby, who has been let into the investigation as an act of grace, refuses to let things rest. She tries to get hold of Rekke, but he won’t return her calls.

Then Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas meet again, under dramatic circumstances. The odd couple decides to solve the case that appears increasingly like an enigma, and which leads them to CIA’s hunt for terrorists, and the Taliban’s war against music. What kind of a man was the referee? Is he a victim, or a perpetrator?

Obscuritas is a clever and exciting page-turner where nothing is what it seems.

The Girl Who Lived Twice

2019 - Buy the Book

 A man is found dead in a park in central Stockholm. It doesn’t look like anything but a tragic death of a homeless person, but despite carrying conspicuous characteristics, his identity cannot be established. Medical examiner Fredrika Nyman suspects that something isn’t right, and contacts Mikael Blomkvist. 

Mikael Blomkvist finds himself reluctantly interested. The homeless man has on several occasions been heard rambling on about Johannes Forsell, Sweden’s Minister of Defence. Could there be a genuine connection between them? 

Mikael needs Lisbeth Salander to aid him. But after Holger Palmgren’s funeral she has left the country and cannot be reached. 

Unbeknownst to Mikael, Lisbeth is in Moscow to once and for all settle the score with her sister Camilla. She has made up her mind: She shall be the hunter and not the hunted. 

The Girl Who Lived Twice – the grand finale of David Lagercrantz’s books in the Millennium Series – intertwines political scandals and international power play, with DNA technology, expeditions to the Himalayas, and hate-spreading troll factories. 

The Girl Who Takes an Eye For an Eye

2017 – Buy the book

The girl with the dragon tattoo is not given to forgiveness. Lisbeth Salander has been forged by a brutal childhood and horrific abuse.  And repeated attempts on her life. The ink embedded in her skin is a constant reminder of her pledge to fight against the injustice she finds on every side.

Confinement to the secure unit of a women’s prison is intended as a punishment. Instead, Lisbeth finds herself in relative safety. Flodberga is a failing prison, effectively controlled by the inmates, and for a computer hacker of her exceptional gifts there are no boundaries.Mikael Blomkvist makes the long trip to visit every week – and receives a lead to follow for his pains, one that could provide an important expose for Millennium: Salander tells him to check out Leo Mannheimer, a seemingly reputable stockbroker from Stockholm, somehow connected to the long-ago death of a child psychologist – and to the psychiatric unit where Lisbeth was an involuntary patient as a child.

"In Lagercrantz’s hands, the series is realizing grand ambitions of another sort. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for An Eye intensifies the mythic elements of Larsson’s vision […]moves the series further into the realms of Star Wars and Harry Potter”

– The Washington Post

The girl in the spider's web

2015 – Buy the book

Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist return. She is the girl with the dragon tattoo—a genius hacker and uncompromising misfit. He is a crusading journalist whose championing of the truth often brings him to the brink of prosecution.

Late one night, Blomkvist receives a phone call from a source claiming to have information vital to the United States. The source has been in contact with a young female super hacker—a hacker resembling someone Blomkvist knows all too well. The implications are staggering. Blomkvist, in desperate need of a scoop for Millennium, turns to Salander for help. She, as usual, has her own agenda. The secret they are both chasing is at the center of a tangled web of spies, cybercriminals, and governments around the world, and someone is prepared to kill to protect it . . .

"Lagercrantz has more than met the challenge. Larsson's brainchildren are in good hands and may have even come up a bit in the world."

- Wall Street Journal

"One of the Best Books of the Year."

- NPR * USA Today * O, The Oprah Magazine * Esquire

"Elegantly paced, slickly executed, and properly thrilling"

- Observer

I am Zlatan Ibrahimović

2011 – Buy the book

”Why be a Fiat when you can be a Ferrari?”

Welcome to Planet Zlatan. This is the story of how a Swedish immigrant rose from poverty to become a football genius. In his own inimitable style, Zlatan recalls every goal and training ground bust-up on his journey to dominate the world’s top clubs, including Barcelona, PSG and now Manchester United. Full of wicked one-liners and amazing stories, Zlatan lifts the lid on some of the biggest names in football, including Guardiola, Messi and Mourinho. Moving, funny and totally frank. I am Zlatan is unlike any autobiography you have ever read.

 “Probably the bestselling European immigrant’s tale since Zadie Smith’s White Teeth . . . Once you get past the obligatory snigger prompted by the phrase ‘footballer’s autobiography,’ you can see that Zlatan’s book strangely resembles an earlier immigrant’s tale: Portnoy’s Complaint.”

- Financial Times

Fall of Man in Wilmslow

2009 – Buy the book

England 1954. Several British KGB agents have defected to the USSR, while a witch-hunt for homosexuals is raging in Britain, inspired by the McCarthy trials in America. In these circumstances, no one is surprised when a mathematician by the name of Alan Turing, who also had a criminal conviction for homosexuality, is found dead at his home in the town of Wilmslow in Cheshire. It is widely assumed that he committed suicide, unable to cope with the humiliation. But young Detective Sergeant Leonard Corell, who had always dreamt of a career in higher mathematics, suspects greater forces are involved.

Driven by a desire for revenge, he begins to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that takes him to one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war: the Bletchley Park operation to crack the Nazis’ communication codes. Soon DS Corell finds himself being pursued and regarded as a threat to national security.

The sky over Everest

2005 – Buy the book

A group from the Villari fashion house are at Everest Base Camp. All of them are novice climbers.

Giuseppe Cagliari, the group’s guide, is acknowledged to be a skilled mountaineer, but he is under mounting pressure and the tensions in his expedition are growing. In the thin mountain air, the guide’s powers of judgment desert him and he leads the climbers to the peak too late. On their descent, the weather closes in and the expedition gets stuck in a brutal storm. As darkness descends on Everest, there is a glimmer of hope that the brilliant climber Jacob Engler will rescue the stranded group. But Jacob is pessimistic, angry and possibly ill. He refuses to help the amateurs on the mountain.

As the crisis intensifies, more old wounds are reopened and madness and hallucinations emerge in the grim atmosphere up in the death zone. The result was The Sky Over Everest, a magnificent depiction of yearning, folly and pain on the highest mountain peak in the world.

"David Lagercranz is a skilled writer, equally gifted in creating well-plotted crime stories as well as literary works of genius, always surprising us with the intensity of his language with his sharp psychological insight... Sky Over Everest is a great depiction of the grandiosity of nature  and human passions."

- Francesca Varotto, Editor Marsilio Editori