The newest Swedish mystery series to reach our shores features Detective Inspector Joona Linna of the National Criminal Investigation Department in Stockholm.  Joona (Jonah in English) is tall, handsome and blond with gray eyes.  He comes from Finnish stock—Swedes would recognize Linna as a Finnish name—and he swears in Finnish.  At 45, Linna has been at the National CID for nine years and his record for solving homicides is unparalleled.  A mysterious trauma in his past has left him subject to occasional debilitating migraines.  The Hypnotist (Farrar, Strauss, 2011) was well-received, though some readers found the storyline disjointed.  The new book, The Nightmare (Farrar, Straus, 7/2012), concerns two peculiar deaths—a top government bureaucrat is found hanged in an empty room in his house, and a young woman is found dead alone on an abandoned motorboat.  Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of the husband and wife team Andrea and Alexander Ahndoril.

–posted 7/8/2012