En mörk augustikväll kommer ett larm till Hagfors räddningstjänst: en villa står i brand. När journalisten Magdalena Hansson kommer till platsen har huset nästan helt brunnit ner, väggarna har rasat och svart rök pulserar från de förstörda fönstren. Dagen därpå avlider en fyrtiotreårig kvinna av skadorna hon ådrog sig i branden.Några dagar senare brinner nästa hus. Och sedan ytterligare ett. Hagforspolisen står inför en av sina största utmaningar medan den lilla värmländska staden lever i skräck.Magdalena Hansson dras in allt mer i jakten på seriepyromanen och till slut är hennes engagemang djupt personligt. Och mycket riskabelt.
Ten years ago, Blythe Randall broke James Pryce’s heart. Now she needs his help. Her enigmatic appeal lures the elite hacker into his most tantalizing, and most personal, assignment yet. A Harvard dropout employed by Manhattan-based RedRook Security, James makes a living finding people who don’t want to be found, pursuing their digital tracks around the globe, flushing out criminals, and exacting creative high-tech revenge on behalf of his clients. But this time he’s following his target—billionaire multimedia artist Billy Randall—into an exotic and treacherous world: a virtual one. Capping off an erratic, increasingly violent series of stunts meant to plague his family’s media empire, black sheep Billy sends a video of his own suicide to his older siblings, aristocratic twins Blythe and Blake. In it, Billy “jacks out,” reanimating onscreen as an avatar in a decadent online world called NOD. The performance is pure Billy—he has always been obsessed with “the Bleed”: the moment when real and virtual selves intersect, where actions in one life breed consequences in another. Blythe uses her influence to install James at GAME, a downtown media collective and one of Billy’s recent haunts. Posing as a documentarian, James gains access to a small band of artists and programmers—contemporaries, and in some cases enemies, of Billy Randall—whose top secret project represents the holy grail of virtual reality. Meanwhile, James learns that as part of his most recent scheme, Billy himself has designed a lavish alternate reality game, an escalating, high-stakes virtual landscape of strange flesh. In order to find him, James must play along.
Vivian Glenne, en trettini år gammel trebarnsmor som bor i en falleferdig tomannsbolig på Lambertseter, blir funnet halvt nedgravd i et skogholt like ved. Hennes femten år gamle sønn Dan og vennen Jonas setter i gang sin egen etterforskning. Cato Isaksen og Marian Dahle blir satt på saken. Vivian Glennes samboer, Roy Hansen, søker trøst hos naboene Birgit og Frank Willmann, men Marian kjenner raskt at ikke alt er som det skal med dette ekteparet. Så viser det seg at dagen før Vivian ble drept, ble hun forfulgt av en mørk BMW kjørt av en gråhåret mann. Dan gjenkjenner mannen når han kommer med BMW-en til verkstedet der han jobber for Frank Willmann etter skoletid. Etter hvert kommer det fram at Vivian hadde et forhold til en mye eldre mann. Men hvem er han, og hvorfor ble hun drept? Som vanlig er ikke ting som de ser ut til. Når det skrapes i overflaten, kommer dystre familiehemmeligheter fram i lyset. Flere av de involverte har ting å skjule og er villige til å bruke alle midler for å dekke over sannheten.William Landay: Defending Jacob (Mars 2012)
Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive. Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.
Labels: Defending Jacob, Djevelkysset, Fremtidige favoritter, Michael Olson, Ninni Schulman, Pojken som slutade gråta, Strange flesh, Unni lindell, William Landay