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Published Jun 2013
512 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
From Sweden's internationally best-selling crime novelist, the author of Easy Money, comes the riveting second installment of the Stockholm Noir Trilogy. With his trademark live-wire staccato prose and raw energy, Jens Lapidus returns to the streets of Stockholm with an electrifying tale of seedy police officers and vicious underworld criminals.
Mahmud, an iron-pumping gym fiend raised among the city's many concrete high-rises, is fresh out of jail and heavily indebted to a Turkish drug lord. To get free he accepts a job from the henchman of brutal mob boss Radovan - a job that quickly becomes something Mahmud wishes he'd never agreed to.
Meanwhile, Niklas is living at home with his mother and keeping a low profile after working as a security contractor in Iraq. When a man is found murdered in the laundry room of their building - a startling event that coincides with Niklas's discovery of a young Arab girl being beaten by her boyfriend - Niklas decides to put his weapons expertise and appetite for violence to use and begins to mete out his own particular brand of justice.
Thomas is the volatile cop called to investigate the murder in Niklas's building. When his efforts are suspiciously stymied and the evidence tampered with, he goes off the grid in search of answers. As the identity of the murdered man is discovered, the paths of these three men intertwine, and crimes and secrets far greater than a mere murder come to light - raising the stakes of Stockholm's criminality to staggering new heights.
"Despite the book's sprawling length, its morally ambiguous characters and rough street argot will compel reader attention to the last page." - Publishers Weekly
"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." - Booklist
"A delightfully murky tale of sunny Sweden's rough 'n' tumble dark side ... It's like visiting the perfect party: exciting guests, great location." - 8Weekly (Netherlands)
"Lapidus is a master raconteur. The story is irresistible." - Kouvolan Sanomat (Finland)
"It's rare for a first novelist to emerge out of nowhere and turn an entire genre upside down, but that is exactly what happened when Jens Lapidus roared into Swedish crime fiction with Easy Money ... He is alone in his game." - Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden)
"A deft and bold crime novel." - Berlingske (Denmark)
This information about Never Fuck Up was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jens Lapidus is a criminal defense lawyer who represents some of Sweden's most notorious underworld criminals. He lives in Stockholm with his wife.
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