Number 13 - The Writing In The Water- John Ajvide Lindqvist

 

The newest book from Lindqvist- still best known for Let the Right One In- is a marked departure from anything else he's written. He's switched genre altogether and written an international crime thriller.

This is very much a gender switched version of the Millennium books and he leans into the similarity with gusto. 

Julia Malmros is an ex cop,  50 something crime writer who is offered the contract to write the new book in the Millennium series. She's not the most computer literate so enlists the help of  Kim Ribbing, a 28 year old hacker with a dark past, as an advisor on the computer side of the story. Things become intimate between them both very quickly.

When the book deal falls through in a blaze of publicity, she retreats to one of the islands in the archipelago for a break.  Unfortunately, whilst there, she and Kim witness a shooting on the neighbouring island. This catapults them both into an international scandal and a dangerous plot that threatens both their lives.

Mixed into the plot is Julia's ex husband and local senior police officer, the man in charge of the investigation from an official viewpoint. the Chinese mafia and evil billionaires with blood on their hands.

This is all very entertaining.  The whole Millennium storyline is meta to the point where I was wondering if Lindqvist actually was asked to write one which was rejected. After Julia's book is rejected, she toys with the idea of gender swapping the book she's written and sending that out into the world instead... 

The sex scenes are probably some of the worst sequences JAL has ever written. There's one that is particularly cringeworthy.  Thankfully, they're short and don't detract from the overall quality of the book.

Being a crime thriller with a somewhat humorous take on the subject, this is obviously not the dark and scary Lindqvist that we're used to. However, it is still a very good read- sex scenes excepted. The epilogue does promise a darker edge to the sequel, with Lisbeth's, I mean Kim's, character potentially taking a less heroic role.

There were some verbal tics that annoyed me in the prose, especially where certain characters were referred to almost exclusively by their full name, first name and surname, sometimes multiple times in individual paragraphs. But that's still a minor irritation.  I already have the second book of this trilogy on preorder.