Jens Lapidus

Super bra bok som beskriver hur maffian i Sverige ser ut, språket är laddat så det blir inte trist en minut. Det finns tre huvudpersoner och det häftiga är att ingen av de är någon som man i vanliga fall har någon sympati, för men i Snabba Cash lär vi känna de och får veta deras livshistoria och innan man vet ordet så börjar man heja på de och förstå hur de tänket och varför de gör det de gör. Det är bara att konstatera att i marginalerna är inget svart eller vit och show more fel kan lätt bli rätt. :

Handling & Tema : 5/5
Karaktärerna: 5/5
Miljöbeskrivning: 5/5
Språk och berättarkonst 5/5 show less

Wow! I had no idea a Swede could write like this. Way better than any American thriller - and there aren't even any cops in it. OK, so the writer is really an attorney and has therefore some special insight into the darker parts of the criminal world, but still. The jargon and the accents are spot on and the characters are absolutely captivating. The big key here is that none of them are Evil but rather human - they have kids and stomachaches and make falukorv och makaroner for lunch. And show more they're funny! Of course, as the plot unravels, we get to see the monster part of them and it's with a bit of reluctance that we have to admit that the characters we've come to kind of love are vicious torturers and murderers. Lapidus wins us over by not passing judgment on any of them, but calmly exposes the traumas that have made them the creeps that they are, without pity or excuses. Apparently it's getting translated into English, but I wonder if "juggemaffian" translates well... :) show less

JW: 20-something young student desperate to fit in with the young Stockholm elite of rich hard-partying kids who dress to impress, date all the beautiful girls, and are treated like royalty at the hippest night-clubs, when not hosting their own parties featuring strippers and mounds of coke. In other words, a really good kid. Not. He secretly drives cab at night to pay for his designer duds and clubbing, and has an older sister who mysteriously disappeared 4 years before and was never heard show more from again.

Jorge: known as Jorgelito and J-Boy, which are names he uses when talking to himself about himself and telling himself how clever he is. He's also a latino drug dealer who was caught and put in prison but has big escape plans. Has delusions of grandeur. Another adorable fellow.

Mrado: A giant thug, Serbian mafia member and juiced up bodybuilder who is used by the big boss to generally hurt and kill people. He's a nasty piece of work, but thinks he's the world's greatest dad. Surely he must be, since he gets all broken up about having to stand up his little girl for their bi-montly visits when he has to do last-minute torture and maiming jobs when his boss commands him to.

What do these three guys have in common? One word: Cocaine. Also, they have very few redeeming qualities and take turns occupying roughly one-third of the novel each. Of course, they all end up being inter-connected somehow, but it's going to take well over 500 pages of really badly translated Swedish to find out how that goes down. Why I wasted so many precious hours in hopes that I'd end up liking some part of this book is beyond me. I'm still trying to figure out what's supposed to makes this story Noir, but nope, I just don't see it. Some passages seemed to have been written by a guy who might have done too much coke himself and couldn't seem to get over how clever he was being. I was going to give this one two stars to be generous and because I figured I might as well since I did force myself to finish it, but that's just not fair to the books out there that deserve to be thought of as "just ok" when this one just deserves to be put out of it's misery. Nothing, and I mean nothing in this story seemed new or fresh in any way. show less

Lapidus' first novel, Snabba Cash, was nothing short of a revelation - "what, a Swede can write like this!?" It even started a new genre in Sweden, "Stockholm Noir," since Lapidus did with Stockholm what James Ellroy has done with Los Angeles. This second novel follows the same format (three main characters telling the story in separate chapters) and has a few characters in common (we still follow Mahmud in the first person and the others from Snabba Cash have cameos) and the story again show more deals with the underbelly of Stockholm. Is it as good then? Not quite, unfortunately. The story is a little too similar to its predecessor, not just the format. And (and this is a big "and"), the humor just isn't there in the same way it was in Snabba Cash. For a sophomoric novel, though, it's still a great read, and I can't wait until Lapidus gets translated into English so I can share with my fellow (non-Nordic) readers (keeping my fingers Xed in hopes that there is a translator out there who is adequately knowledgeable about gang-slang to do a proper job!). show less