ARE YOU LISTENING? THE NIGHTMARE: AN AUDIO BOOK REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S"
ARE YOU LISTENING? DAY"
I AM EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE TODAY'S
AUDIO BOOK CHOICE....

GIVEAWAY ENDED

THE NIGHTMARE 

BY LARS KEPLER

 Translated from the Swedish by Laura A. Wideburg

Read by Mark Bramhall

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Lars Kepler returns with a piercing, bestselling sequel to The Hypnotist
After spellbinding audiences in The Hypnotist, Detective Inspector Joona Linna is back in The Nightmare, an internationally bestselling Swedish thriller published to critical acclaim in dozens of countries. As the Swedish newspaper Arbetarbladet put it, “The reader is ready to sell his own soul for the opportunity to read this book without interruption, in one sitting.”

On a summer night, police recover the body of a young woman from an abandoned pleasure boat drifting around the Stockholm archipelago. Her lungs are filled with brackish water, and the forensics team is sure that she drowned. Why, then, is the pleasure boat still afloat, and why are there no traces of water on her clothes or body?

The next day, a man turns up dead in his state apartment in Stockholm, hanging from a lamp hook. All signs point to suicide, but the room has a high ceiling, and there’s not a single piece of furniture around—nothing to climb on.

Joona Linna begins to piece together the two mysteries, but the logistics are a mere prelude to a dizzying and dangerous course of events. At its core, the most frightening aspect of The Nightmare isn’t its gruesome crimes—it’s the dark psychology of its characters, who show us how blind we are to our own motives.

AN EXCERPT FROM THE NIGHTMARE:

1: foreboding
 
A cold shiver runs down Penelope Fernandez’s spine. Her heart beats faster and she darts a look over her shoulder. Perhaps she feels a sense of foreboding of what’s to come as her day progresses.
In spite of the television studio’s heat, Penelope’s face feels chilled. Maybe the sensation is left over from her time in makeup when the cold powder puff was pressed to her skin and the peace-dove hair clip was taken out so they could rub in the mousse that would make her hair fall in serpentine locks.
 

Penelope Fernandez is the spokesperson for the Swedish Peace and Reconciliation Society. Silently, she is being ushered into the newsroom and to her spotlighted seat across from Pontus Salman, CEO of the armaments manufacturer Silencia Defense AB. The news anchor Stefanie von Sydow is narrating a report on all the layoffs resulting from the purchase of the Bofors Corporation by British BAE Systems Limited. Then she turns to Penelope.
 

“Penelope Fernandez, in several public debates you have been critical of the management of Swedish arms exports. In fact, you recently compared it to the French Angola-gate scandal. There, highly placed politicians and businessmen were prosecuted for bribery and weapons smuggling and given long prison sentences. But here in Sweden? We really haven’t seen this, have we?”
 

“Well, you can interpret this in two ways,” replies Penelope. “Either our politicians behave differently or our justice system works differently.

To finish reading this excerpt, visit the Macmillan Audio website HERE.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S): 

WHO IS LARS KEPLER?

Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril, both established writers with several published books, teamed up professionally for the first time to write The Hypnotist. The pseudonym Lars Kepler allowed them to separate their earlier, independent work, from this new common authorship, and they even submitted the manuscript anonymously. Five days later, publisher Albert Bonniers knew they had a nail-biting best seller in the vein of Stieg Larsson's novels.

Still, the Ahndorils did not want to reveal their true identity. With successful separate careers, and a well-functioning life together with their three children, they felt no need to come clean. As expected, the media launched a huge investigation, and it wasn’t long before one of Sweden's largest tabloids paid a visit to their summer home, urging them to confess that they had written one of the most widely read European books of 2010.

ALEXANDRA:

Born in 1966, Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril grew up in Helsingborg. Her father was a teacher in maritime technology and her mother was a housewife. After becoming involved with the Helsingborg State Theatre and independent theater, she moved to Stockholm in the 90s to study at the Theatre Academy, before realizing it was not an actress she would become.

Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril has previously published three books: her debut book Stjärneborg (2003) described the life of astronomer Tycho Brahe; Birgitta och Katarina (2006) was about Holy Birgitta; and Mäster (2009) covered socialist agitator August Palm. She has also been a literary critic in Göteborgs-Posten and doctorate in Lund. Today, she works only on the books by Lars Kepler.

Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril married Alexander Ahndoril in 1996. The couple has three daughters and lives near the National Police on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, with a summer home on the west coast of Sweden.

ALEXANDER:

Born in 1967, Alexander Ahndoril grew up in Upplands Väsby, a suburb of Stockholm. At just 22 years old, his romance novel Den äkta kvinnan debuted. Since then he has written numerous books and scripts for film, radio and theater.

His latest book, Diplomaten (2009), deals with top Swedish diplomat Hans Blix. Along with the books by Lars Kepler, his most controversial book is the realistic-fiction novel, Regissören (2006) about Ingmar Bergman, who in an interview referred to the book as "bestiality."

Alexander and his wife Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril have published three Lars Kepler books: The Hypnotist (2009), The Paganini Contract (2010) and The Fire Witness (2011). The series is slated to include a total of eight books about Detective Inspector Joona Linna. Like his wife, Alexander now works exclusively on Lars Kepler novels. 

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW:

THE NIGHTMARE by Lars Kepler is a long audio book with quite a few hours of listening. At first, I was a bit wary by what I thought were unnecessary details adding to the length. However, as I kept listening, the story drew me in with the riveting action and mysterious twists. I found Kepler’s narration being in present tense to be very conducive to the audio book as well.

The story’s main character is Joona Linna, a police detective in Stockholm, who becomes involved in two murder cases from the beginning. These two mysteries wind up being logically connected as the story proceeds through the use of the author’s finely developed identifiable characters. One case involves a young woman, Penelope Fernandez, who appears to have drowned and is found on a drifting boat. The part Linna hones in on right away is that her clothes and body are dry even though her lungs are filled with water. The second is an apparent suicide of the General Director of the National Inspectorate that is in charge of military exports. The problem here is that after first glance, his death doesn’t play out like a suicide should.

As Linna becomes more involved, so does the reader (listener) and I found it hard to stop too often as I wanted to find out where this intricate, but plausible plot was going to wind up. Of course at the end, the author can’t just tie things up neatly but rather taunts the reader with some mysteries suggestions that there will be more to come. This was my first of this new type of mystery (I never read The Dragon Tattoo Series) and found it quite remarkable and thought provoking. 

  GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO ESTHER AND MY FRIENDS AT

MACMILLAN AUDIO, I HAVE ONE COPY OF 

THE NIGHTMARE, BY LARS KEPLER,

TO GIVE AWAY TO ONE LUCKY READER

 

--U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES, PLEASE
--INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
--ALL ENTRIES/COMMENTS MUST BE
SEPARATE IN ORDER TO COUNT
AS MORE THAN ONE ENTRY

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: READ ABOUT THE AUDIO BOOK ABOVE AND COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FOUND INTERESTING ABOUT THE NIGHTMARE THAT WOULD MAKE YOU WANT TO WIN THIS AUDIO BOOK

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND LEAVE A LINK I CAN FOLLOW IN THE ENTRY

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FIND INTERESTING AT LARS KEPLER'S WEBSITE HERE

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE CURRENT GIVEAWAY OF MINE YOU HAVE ENTERED. IF YOU ENTERED MORE THAN ONE, COMMENT SEPARATELY FOR EACH AND YOU WILL GET AN ENTRY FOR EACH ONE

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE WAY YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG. IF YOU FOLLOW MORE THAN ONE WAY, YOU CAN COMMENT SEPARATELY AND EACH WILL COUNT AS AN ENTRY

 

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT

6 PM, EST, JULY 31

GOOD LUCK!