Liza Marklund

Vanished

Journalist: Annika Bengtzon

Location:  Stockholm, Sweden

Time:       Present (Recent Past: Pub 2002)

Genre:      Scandi Noir

This is one of the earlier novels in the Annika Bengtzon chronology.

The story opens with the murder in a transshipment area of two Balkan immigrants and the dramatic escape of a woman from the assassin. Bengtzon's paper carries the story.

Bengtzon herself is contacted by a woman who want coverage of her organisation which, she alleges can can help people, particularly battered wives,, to disappear completely from Government records.

When Bengtzon takes a phone call from and meets the escaped woman, helping her to avoid the gunman a second time, she decides to help her by putting her in touch with the woman running the organistation.

However Bengtzon is not completely sure that the organisation is completely above board and she starts investigating its probity assisted by a local government finance officer who has challenged his superiors about paying it large sums of money.

At the same time the gunman, clearly involved in Balkan mafia smuggling is still on the loose loking for a lorry load of stolen fake cigarettes.

The themes weave together well. 

The backround story arc involves

a) Bengtzon meeting the man who is to feature as her partner/husband in later novels (the local government officer)

b) The politics of the editorial battle at the Evening Post as an editor with vision begins to position himself to achieve dominance in an attempt to improve the quality and integrity of the paper,

A

Liza Marklund Website

Previously read

Prime Time

The Bomber

Red Wolf

Last Will

Liza Marklund

Last Will


Investgative Journalist: Annika Bengtzon
Location:                     Stockholm, Sweden
Time:                          Present
Genre:                         Scandi Noir

This is the sixth of Marklund's Annika Bengtzon Novels which have followed her career from fist being appointed as a reporter. This plot begins with a murder of a member of a Nobel Prize selection committee by a hired assassin at the annual awards ceremony in front of Bengtzon

As the plot develops there is a questioning of the relationship between the integrity of the Nobel Prizes and the commercial pressures on medical research. A sub plot is developed as a terrorist cell takes credit for the murder and the Swedish Government is too happy top collude with the CIA to allow the rendition of suspect to Jordan.

Although the hired assassin returns to cover her mistakes, this is incidental to the main concern of the plot and the way Bengtzon becomes the target of the killer happens very rapidly at the end as an almost afterthought and is the least satisfactory aspect of an otherwise impressive thriller.

The underlying story ARCs concern 
a) Bengzon's professional development and the integrity of tabloid journalism competing with emerging electronic media 
b) Benggzon's personal life with the stresses on her marriage as she copes with her job, two small children and a husband with his own developing career as a Government adviser working on anti-terrorist legislation and which at one stage leaves hi trying to justify the rendition.

Rating A++ (I read it non stop in a day)

Liza Marklund's web site

Previously read, 
(in chronological but not published order)


Prime Time
The Bomber
Red Wolf