Slowly We Die by Emelie Schepp

 

(pb; 2016: third book in the Jana Berzelius series. Translated from the Swedish by Suzanne Martin Cheadle.)

From the back cover

“A tragic incident on the operating table leaves a patient damaged for life and leads a young surgeon to abandon his profession as a physician. . . Now, years later, a series of senseless, gruesome murders are rocking the same medical community.

“Then murderous revenge. . . The weapon? A surgical scalpel. But who exactly is preying on these victims? And why? What does this grisly pattern reveal? And who will be the one to stop it? Special prosecutor Jana Berzelius, who has her own dark secrets to hide, is in charge of the investigation. What she can’t know, until she is finally closing in on the murderer, is just how her mother’s recent death is intimately connected.”

Review

Slowly, like the two Jana Berzelius books that preceded it, is a gripping, reader-immersive read. The set-up has changed, with Jana’s travails sharing equal story-space with a medical-personnel murder mystery, with Danilo Peña (who’s escaped police custody) posing a different kind of threat—seemingly relatively benign, but potentially more invasive. Slowly is another skillfully woven thriller by Schepp, one worth owning, and one that makes me wish that Schepp’s fourth Berzelius novel, Daddy’s Boy (Swedish: Pappas Pojke), was translated into English and released in English-reading countries.

Marked for Revenge by Emelie Schepp

 

(hb; 2015: second book in the Jana Berzelius series. Translated from the Swedish by Suzanne Martin Cheadle.)

 

From the inside flap

“When a Thai girl overdoses smuggling drugs, the trail points to Danilo, the once criminal MMA-trained public prosecutor Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy. Eager to erase any evidence of her sordid childhood, Berzelius must secretly hunt down this deadly nemesis with whom she shares a horrific past.

“Meanwhile, the police are zeroing in on the elusive head of the long-entrenched Swedish narcotics trade, who goes by the name The Old Man. No one has ever encountered this diabolical mastermind in person; he is like a shadow, but a shadow who commands extreme resepect. Who is this overarching drug lord? Berzelius craves to know his identity, even as she clandestinely tracks Danilo, who has threatened to out her for who she really is. She knows she must kill him first, before he can reveal her secrets. If she fails, she will lose everything.

“As she prepares for the fight of her life, Berzelius discovers an even more explosive and insidious betrayal—one that entangles her inextricably in the whole sordid network of crime.”

 

 

Review

Set seven or eight months after the events of Marked for Life, Jana Berzelius still hasn’t found all the answers to her questions regarding her violent and mysterious past—but there are others who hold those answers, and they’re protecting or seeking to harm her (and it’s hard to tell which, e.g. as with Danilo Peña). Not only that, the events, elements, and people involved in her life, past and present, might also be involved in her current case, involving the overdose of a Thai bodypacker with heroin inside her, more deaths, and deeper political corruption.

Revenge is an excellent, immediately immersive sequel, just as—if not more than—hard to put down than its action-oriented thriller source book, with a deepening of its characters, new and recurring. Worth owning, this. Followed by Slowly We Die.

Marked for Life by Emelie Schepp

 

(pb; 2014: first novel in the Jane Berzelius series. Translated from the Swedish by Rod Bradbury)

 

From the back cover

“When the head of immigration is shot dead, suspects quickly emerge. But no one else can account for the mysterious child-size fingerprints at the scene.

“Public prosecutor Jane Berzelius steps in to lead the investigation. Young and brilliant but emotionally cold, Berzelius, like her famous prosecutor father, is not swayed by the devious widow or threats of blackmail. She is steely, aloof, impenetrable. Until the boy. . .

“On a nearby shore, the drug-addled body of a young teen is found along with a murder weapon. Reviewing his autopsy, Berzelius sees something hauntingly familiar. . . Carved deeply into his flesh are initials that scream child trafficking—and trigger in her a flash of recognition from her own nightmarish childhood.

“Now, to protect herself and keep her dark past a secret, she must solve the crimes and find the depraved mastermind first. . . before the police do.”

 

Review

Fans of Jo Nesbø, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series (and its streamlined David Lagercrantz and Karin Smirnoff-penned sequels), and other Nordic thrillers might find Schepp’s Marked for Life to be their burn-through-the-pages catnip—like Nesbø,Schepp alternates between past and present in her chapters, with strong characters, strong writing, excellent pacing and well-timed reveals. This is an excellent, tear-through-it read, one worth buying. Followed by Marked for Revenge.

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Viaplay, a streaming service specializing in Nordic thrillers, dramas and comedies, put out the Marked for Life-based series in 2024 (Jana—Märkt för livet). It was canceled after one season because of its production company’s “downsizing.” (As of this writing, it's streaming on for no extra charge on the Amazon site.)