Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present, Mr. Alexander Soderberg!

Wow! I can not tell you how many people have come to my sight searching for info on The Andalusian Friend! * That is the crime thriller written by a Swedish television script writer, Alexander Soderberg. Prior to writing this book, the forty-two year old Soderberg worked mostly on adaptations of well-known crime novels in addition to some dramatic shows and sit coms.  It's his  first novel and the first part of a trilogy featuring Sophie Brinkmann. It was the absolute  "book of the fair" at the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair, where foreign rights to the entire trilogy were sold in frenzied auctions across the world. Like some of my readers I was scouring the web searching for cover art and just a little tiny info on Soderberg please! I couldn't find a single picture, only images of a young Swedish runner, not the writer. Finally, today, my searching has been successful!

This is what the book cover looks like, this is what Soderberg looks like, and following, is  what the book is about. It's supposed to get released in Sweden in April. For those of us here in the States, who only read English, we'll have to wait for the fall...

His agent is the acclaimed Salomonsson Agency who seems to rep anybody who is anybody is Sweden including that other master of the crime thriller, Jo Nesbo. I just bought Nesbo's Headhunters for my husband for his birthday and am looking forward to reading it when he's done.

 

Here's what they say about Soderberg and the book:

The Andalusian Friend is an addictive thriller, at the same time sophisticated and brutal, that challenges our notions of good and evil. Alexander Söderberg's confident and convincing narration renders breath-taking action and psychologically complex characters with equal skill. The Andalusian Friend is the first part of a trilogy featuring Sophie Brinkmann and the crime organization of Hector Guzman.

Nurse, widow and single mother Sophie Brinkmann gets involved with one of her patients, a Spanish publisher named Hector Guzman, at the Stockholm hospital where she works. Sophie finds herself reluctantly but irresistibly drawn to Hector. However, Hector Guzman is not only a publisher, he is also the leader of an Andalusian crime organization with stakes in the transatlantic drug trade. Through her friendship with Hector, Sophie gets caught in a battle between two international criminal organizations and the Swedish police force. Soon, Sophie Brinkmann has become a pawn in a violent game that forces her to sacrifice everything she values and believes in, in order to save herself and her son.

*Notice it's Andalusian vs Andalucian, an error I picked up from the early net reports and ran with too.

And, the film rights have already been purchased by the people who gave you Steig Larsson's Millenium trilogy. YAY!