Beast [Hardcover]

Anders Roslund (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2005

Two children are found dead in a basement. Four years later their murderer escapes from prison. The police know if he is not found quickly, he will kill again. But when their worst fears come true and another child is murdered in the nearby town of Strengnas, the situation spirals out of control. In an atmosphere of hysteria whipped up by the media, Fredrik Steffansson, the father of the murdered child, decides he must take revenge. His actions will have devastating consequences. As anger spreads across the whole country, the two detectives assigned to the case - Ewert Grens and Sven Sunkist - find themselves caught up in a situation of escalating violence. A powerful and at times profoundly shocking novel, The Beast has been likened to both Hitchcock and le Carre. It is also an important and timely exploration of what can happen when we take the law into our own hands. It is the winner of Glasnyckeln 2005 (The Glass Key 2005) for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'THE BEAST is a frantic chase through the horror of the hunt for an escaped serial killer of children. At a deeper level, it is full of characters lost for love, or lost to humanity . . . it is a gripping, tragic story. This is a book with extraordinary insights and totally unexpected plots twists. Yet the most striking thing about it is the intensity of the emotion in the characters. It's hard to read without tears coming to your eyes. It has the blunt, matter-of-fact Swedish tone of thriller-writers like Henning Mankell, yet it is also subtle and nuanced. A fabulous read' SUNDAY BUSINESS POST 'A book which is as dark and unflinching as the subject suggests' THE LIST 'A must-read' OBSERVER 'A tale of tragedy and revenge that is truly gripping, and all the more horrifying because this kind of thing can happen anywhere' GUARDIAN

About the Author

Anders Roslund is one of Sweden's most distinguished journalists and worked for many years as head of news for the Swedish equivalents of CNN and the BBC. Borge Hellstrom is an ex-criminal who works to rehabilitate young offenders and drug addicts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown (May 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316729477
• ISBN-13: 978-0316729475
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,874,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström are the authors of 5 bestselling books in Sweden. Roslund is a professional journalist and creator of Sweden's number one cultural TV program Kulterkanna. Börge Hellström is an ex-criminal who founded a criminal rehabilitation program in Sweden.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing on many levels., August 8, 2007

By 

Daniel A. Scott "Just honest!" (Philippi, WV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Beast (Paperback)

This book isn't for the feint of heart, it was so graphic and disturbing that I almost stopped reading it. Then, I realized the author was trying to make an impact with all the sick and twisted details that were included. It starts out tragic and ends the same way, it's what you learn in between that make the book worth reading. The whole 344 pages seemed to scream one question: What would you do if the same situation happened to you?

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An agglomeration of interesting themes that is all squandered potential, January 12, 2008

By 

Bachelier ""1004"" (Ile de France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beast (Paperback)

A thriller should start with thrills, and the horrible crime depicted at the beginning of this book certainly churns your stomach and sets you on the edge of your seat waiting for the plot to unfold.

And "The Beast" starts out okay, with excellent character sketches establishing each person's place in ordinary and underworld Swedish society. With each new chapter you anticipate how these various characters are ultimately going to come together.

The major spine of "The Beast" follows the interior meditations of Fredrik Steffanson as he raises his daughter alone, and has various interactions with the other characters, which include his ex-wife, his current girlfriend (only described as beautiful and half his age and his daughter's nursery school teacher), police officers, prisoners, their guards, no-nothing working class Swedes who can't differentiate between a sadistic murderous sexual pervert and a flasher, and a pointless and unresolved side plot about a married prison warden carrying on a homosexual affair with a guard (one suspects that the authors simply wanted to put a sympathetic gay character in somehow, but it all looks tacked-on).

The more interesting and brutal interior dialogue is from the sexual predator, which does approach art as the horror of reading it is absolutely nauseating and horrifying.

But halfway through the work, the thriller stops, the "chase" is resolved, and it all becomes a preachy middle-brow meditation on what is justice in the face of a horrible crime in a society with the absence of the death penalty. There is a side meditation on vigilante justice. But these themes are not worked out in any complex or challenging way and lack the intellectual depth of an editorial in a giveaway newssheet. The allusions to empty Swedish state churches and a single mention of two popular evangelical free churches and their true ideas and the thoughts of their adherents is left unexplored and a squandered opportunity to make this vapid work slightly more complex.

An agglomeration of interesting themes that is all squandered potential.