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The Viper, by Hakan Ostlundh
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"Another Scandinavian star has been born into the world of crime fiction. Don't miss out on Hakan Ostlundh!"
--Stephen Booth, author of The Devil's Edge
Published in nine countries worldwide, Håkan Östlundh is well on his way to becoming one of the new superstars of Scandinavian crime fiction. In this gripping and haunting novel, Arvid, a ruthless business consultant for a major international company, returns home to Sweden after a lengthy assignment in Tokyo. Four days after his return, the maid discovers two dead bodies on the living room floor―a man and a woman. At first, police detective Fredrik Broman assumes the two bodies to be Arvid and his wife, but the male body is badly disfigured and could be anyone. Soon, Fredrik is knee-deep in case that is much more complex than he could ever have imagined.
Set on the island of Gotland, The Viper is a fabulous crime novel that explores the terrors lurking beneath small town life, where escaping one's past is impossible.
- Sales Rank: #1635848 in Books
- Published on: 2012-08-07
- Released on: 2012-08-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.57" h x 1.32" w x 5.95" l, .98 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
Review
“An engrossing thriller [that] upholds the Scandinavian literary tradition of using crime to peek into deep-rooted social malaises.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Combining the viewpoints of police and local residents gives Ostlundh's first crime novel to appear in English an extra level of interest. This latest Swedish import is sure to please fans of Asa Larsson and Johan Theorin.” ―Booklist
“A future classic of crime fiction.” ―Stephen Booth, author of The Devil's Edge
“There is no question about the fact that the Swedes have captured the Nordic crime throne and Håkan Östlundh is definitely one of the most interesting authors in the genre... A classic crime story.” ―Helsingør Dagblad
“A classic crime novel that touches upon our time and the relationships between the people that our time creates.” ―Gotlands Tidningar
“Swedish crime writing at its best.” ―Ove Österman, UNT
“Exceptionally thrilling…Breath-taking reading.” ―Dagens Nyheter
About the Author
HAKAN ÖSTLUNDH grew up in Stockholm, Sweden, where he still lives today. He has worked as a journalist for Sweden's bestselling morning paper and spends summers on Gotland with his wife and three sons.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1.
A bounding neon horse reflected in the dark glass facade opposite Arvid Traneus’s apartment on the border between Roppongi and Akasaka in Tokyo’s Minato district. Its precise gait was unclear and with each step it changed colors in a shower of stars. Its rounded babyish features bore little resemblance to a real horse. Missing was the muscle definition, the nervous gaze, and the awesome power that a live animal of that size possessed—a massive creature that could easily injure a human being without intending to.
A raven flew sluggishly between the skyscrapers, virtually indiscernible in the darkness. He had shuddered the first time he had heard that lingering shriek. In Tokyo it wasn’t the seagulls that took over the city when the human population retired for the night, it was the ravens.
You got used to it.
Arvid Traneus turned his back on the October night outside the bedroom’s panorama windows, the horse’s never-ending gallop and the flickering lights of the city. He looked at Kass, the young woman who had just entered the room. She had tilted her head slightly and smiled sadly at him. Her black hair cascaded down over the shoulders of her red silk dress. She was holding a wineglass with both hands, in it the last of the Cheval Blanc from the bottle he had uncorked.
It was a final farewell.
The assignment had originally been intended as just a quick consulting job. As it turned out, he had ended up spending seven years traveling back and forth, and three more in the apartment; ten years in Tokyo altogether, the last two of them with Kass. And now it was time to return home. It was over. All of it. The job, the city, the woman.
He walked up to her and she met him halfway. He took the glass from her and set it down on the ledge in front of the window. He pulled her close to him and laid his hand on her golden-brown thigh protruding from the slit in her short dress. She pressed up against him.
“Kass,” he mumbled into her hair, which was decorated with shiny little bows that matched the red of her dress.
She had brightened up his last two years in the city. Made it easier to breathe in the scattered shards of free time he had allowed himself between work and sleep.
He ran his hand up between her legs and spread her hairless vulva with his fingers. She let out a loud, shrill moan. Out of arousal he thought at first, but as he continued to move his fingers in the manner she usually liked, he noticed that she had gone rigid. She had turned cold as ice.
Then came another whimper, only pitched higher this time, and definitely not pleasure induced. She gasped the way one only does when one is truly frightened.
He looked at her. She stared out at the bounding manga horse.
“Kass?”
She didn’t answer.
“Kass, what is it?”
He waved his hand in front of her staring eyes.
“Kazu-mi!” he cried out. Like one might to a child about to put her hand on a hot stove.
She gave a start and looked at him with a furtive, anxious expression.
“What is it?” he asked again.
She shook her head and ran her fingers nervously through her hair so that the red bows came off and dropped to the floor.
“I don’t know. Nothing. It’s just silly…”
Yet her eyes still sought their way back to the window and lost themselves in the distance, as if she saw something else completely than the neon horse’s fitful prancing.
The animated horse had not been there six months ago. He had chosen this neighborhood because it lay far from the neon lights and nightlife. It was the government and diplomatic district, where interspersed among the office complexes was an occasional stack of high-rise apartments. Not a soul on the sidewalks after seven at night. But the city was constantly changing, above and below the surface. From his window he could see four new skyscrapers rising ever higher; the cranes at the very top had shut down for the night, visible only by their blinking red aircraft warning lights.
Constant flux, interminable growth. Neon flickered. Money changed hands. Sums that made the national budget of a small country like Sweden seem like chump change flowed daily through the stock exchanges and currency markets. Multinationals collaborated, competed, and annihilated one another. And that was where Arvid Traneus came into the picture. In the annihilation. Of corporations that is.
This assignment had, following a drawn-out struggle, ended badly for the competitor, much worse than had been intended. And the slaughter was actually pointless. His employer would only be able to fill up part of the void that was left behind. The rest would just fall into the hands of some other grateful competitor.
He stroked Kass’s back.
“Better now?”
“I’m fine,” she said and kissed him on the neck. “Make love to me now,” she whispered.
She lifted her arms above her head as he pulled off her dress with a rustle. She stood there naked in front of him, smelling of earth and rubber from the robust red wine, vanilla, and a hint of lemon from her perfume, and something else that was her own essence. Warm skin and loins.
Kass backed him up toward the foot of the bed, as she unfastened the stubborn black leather belt that he had bought just the week before. She unbuttoned his trousers and grabbed hold of his cock.
“He wants to come to Kass,” she whispered, pursed her lips slightly, and let a thin string of saliva dribble down onto the head of his manhood and into her hand cupped underneath. In a quick, gentle motion, she rubbed in the saliva and he felt his legs turn to rubber.
Ten years. Had it been worth it?
For Arvid Traneus the answer was definitely yes. He had made a fortune for himself during these years. And yet that fortune was just a fraction of the money he had made for his employers, so their answer would likely be yes, too, if they would even be able to think of it in those terms. For them the contest was never over. All triumphs were temporary. They would continue to battle on for another ten years, and ten more after that.
He had been brought in to devise a strategy for increasing the company’s market share by 5 percent. That was what they had agreed from the beginning. A tall order, but still specific and realistic. Then it got bigger. Their ambition grew and he was drawn in deeper and deeper, enticed by an offer he couldn’t refuse; a breathtaking monthly salary and options the value of which, through his own efforts, would multiply many times over. If he succeeded.
He built up his own team. Flew back and forth to Tokyo, before finally ending up living there for the past few years.
Kass sank down onto her knees by the bed and looked at him with that wanton sideways glance that he could never quite decide whether she was feigning or not. But it didn’t matter to him. If she was putting it on she was doing a good job of it, and she was doing it so that he would like what he saw, and that was worth a lot to him.
He had very nearly lost his best man because of Kass. She had belonged to Stephen first. That was how Arvid had met her. His gaze had been drawn to her constantly throughout that dinner. It can scarcely have escaped Stephen’s notice. The following day he had gotten hold of her address and telephone number, and when he had called her up and suggested they meet she had answered yes at once.
Arvid was under no illusions about Kass and how she lived, but he knew that she had nothing to gain by leaving Stephen. She had done it simply because she had wanted to. Of that he was convinced.
Stephen had taken it hard. At first he had tried to reason with Arvid, get him to let her go. When Arvid refused, when he claimed on top of everything else that there was nothing he could do about it, that it had been Kass’s decision, Stephen became furious. He threatened to quit, even went to the extreme of packing his things and flying back to England, though he never turned in any letter of resignation.
Arvid went so far as to appeal to Stephen’s professionalism. Stephen sulked for a while, but of course he came back. He had far too much to gain to throw it all away just out of some vain demonstration of … well, of what … pride? He would only have made a fool of himself. She was just a kind of whore after all. Albeit not one you could pick up on any street corner.
She kissed his cock with gentle lips.
“Let me know,” she whispered before disappearing between his legs.
She always said that. He smiled at the black head of hair bobbing back and forth down there. If she didn’t know him well enough by now to be able to tell when he was about to come then that was her problem, he thought to himself.
It was actually Stephen who had come up with the idea that had made the whole thing possible, he and that blessed Norwegian computer whiz Olaisen. But it was Arvid who had been in charge when they had set the whole thing in motion. In the end it was neither marketing strategies nor product development that had brought Pricom to its knees, but an intricate scheme involving the company’s shares that had been made possible by Olaisen hacking into their computer system. They had been able to peer right into the heart of their competitor. And then they had crushed him. It was a dirty trick of course, but business is always dirty, so there wasn’t much more to say about it.
Kass’s tongue fluttered like a butterfly of moist flesh. He ran his hands over her glistening black hair, brought his fingers together behind her neck, and held her head firmly in place. He stared out into the darkness and his pupils followed the movements of the neon horse involuntarily when he came.
After a prolonged silence, a sudden spasm that caused everything to relax, he let go and slipped out of her mouth. She slowly raised her left hand and drew the back of it across her lips and chin. Arvid Traneus ...
Most helpful customer reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Disappointing
By Daffy Du
Oh dear. What a disappointment.
Scandinavian crime fiction is my go-to genre when I want something escapist but well written, and the accolades for Hakan Ostlundh and The Viper were enough to make me order it. But to rank Ostlundh among the likes of Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason and Jo Nesbo (despite his fondness for gruesome scenarios), to name just a few, is nothing short of sacrilege, IMO. Even a newcomer like Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes, which I really enjoyed, far outclasses this book.
On the surface The Viper has all the elements for a successful story: murders in a remote location, a dysfunctional family, adultery, etc. But the characters are all two-dimensional--sometimes less. It's as if the author was so caught up in the procedural aspects of a police procedural that he largely overlooked the human ones. The attempts to give the police in particular a back story seem perfunctory at best. Unlike Kurt Wallander, Erlender or Harry Hole, these are paper cutouts--I couldn't even keep all of them straight. If Ostlundh had spent more time on his characters and less describing the scenery and the cold weather, he'd have had a more successful book.
In the end, the resolution was fairly predictable, though what happens to Broman in the hospital is unresolved. I was just glad it was over so I could move on to something more satisfying.
Indridason once said "crime fiction is about so much more than just crime." It's a message Ostlundh would do well to take to heart. (And even though this was an advance reading copy, there were so many spelling and grammatical errors, I wonder if they will have caught them all before publication--a slap on the wrist for the translator.)
Two and a half stars.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Hints of a Nascent Swedish Harlequin Mystery Genre?
By SLS
So, what sets The Viper apart from the plethora of other mystery novels published each month? For starters, Håkan Östlundh adds a bit of steamy sex to the Nordic mystery, just short of spinning it off into a new Swedish Harlequin Mystery Genre. But what sets this book apart for me is the secondary mystery directly involving a key protagonist, police detective Fredrik Broman, and how he came to be so gravely injured. In an unusual twist, both his own story and that of the primary murders unfold as told through his partner Sara, as she lingers by his hospital bed. Sara also has her own story to tell to the injured Fredrik, which she does somewhat inadvertently, but in an entirely human and believable way.
With swift plot progression, credible characters, and a few racy images, Håkan Östlundh portrays how long-festering hatred can erupt into a relishable read. And while the few but noteworthy eroticisms might surprise some readers, others might be left panting for more.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Scandinavian Thriller Mad-Libs
By Sean Rueter
I've long been intrigued by the Nordic crime genre, even (gasp) before Stieg Larsson. Going back to Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's amazing Martin Beck series (Roseanna: A Martin Beck Police Mystery (1) (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)), through the admirable consistency of Henning Mankell's Wallander cases (The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)), to the more recent gritty thrills of Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole (The Redbreast: A Harry Hole Novel), something about the harshness of the land and the methodical nature of its people seems to bring out the best in all kinds of detective stories.
Unfortunately, Håkan Östlundh's "The Viper" doesn't belong in their company. Many of the elements utilized by the luminaries of the genre are present: criminals and crimefighters with skeletons in their closet, playing out a brutal crime story against a backdrop of corporate skullduggery and rough sex. But here they seem perfunctory and used because they're supposed to be. As a non-spoilerish example, the sex scenes add very little and are so fan-fictiony that they induce cringes. The working of the case, too, is perpetuated by the characters not asking each other questions that seem obvious; as a reader, I had to resist the urge to scream at the book in frustration. In mysteries, there's playing fair and then there's just stringing your audience and characters along.
There are a few very good character beats, particularly between the family at the center of the crime, and the lead detective and a forensic officer with whom he has a history. But these stick out amongst other characters who are described for long paragraphs only to disappear for most of the book and then reappear for a couple of sentences to deliver a clue.
I didn't hate The Viper, but I can think of ten other Scandinavian crime thrillers I'd recommend before it would come to mind.
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