Never Fuck Up: A Novel
This second novel in the Stockholm Noir Trilogy (following Easy Money, 2012) intertwines three perspectives of Stockholm’s underworld, showcasing contradictions in Swedish society, where idealism, racism, hope, and corruption all swirl. Mahmud, an Arab immigrant just released from prison, longs to be free of gangland clutches even while ­shaking hands with one kingpin to escape another’s wrath. Thomas is a hardened, violent, surprisingly idealistic cop who turns to the Serbian Mafia when the Stockholm police betray him. And Nicklas, recently returned from a mercenary tour in Afghanistan, is convinced that Sweden’s true enemy is its epidemic of violence against women, prompting him to launch an obsessive mission to avenge those wrongs. These stories orbit the murder of an unidentified man discovered by Thomas and his partner in Nicklas’ mother’s building. Lapidus contrasts personal violence with a powerful criminal conspiracy by linking the victim to both Nicklas’ childhood and the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986. A grand-scale portrait of Stockholm’s criminal world that shares James Ellroy’s hyperrealism and Richard Price’s blend of atmosphere and sociology. --Christine Tran