Wow. At first I didn’t think I would finish this book. I was confused and somewhat overwhelmed by a beginning that wasn’t clearly related to the story that was unfolding. About a third of the way in, I went back to reread the opening chapters. But then, it all took off, and I couldn’t put it down. The story is fascinating, the writing superb. The author puts you in the moment and in the place—Sweden, of which I knew nothing—and provides solid characters with believable lives and behaviors. Well-written and satisfying.

3.5 rounded up. It was a well-written story and although it kept me wanting to find out who the killer was, I felt that it took way too long to get there. Overall I enjoyed the characters and the different family dynamics that we learned about throughout the course of the story. I just wish that the pace had been a bit quicker.

Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC of #blazemeasun

After seeing a five-star recommendation from a friend (thanks, Kat!) I decided to request Blaze Me a Sun from Netgalley myself. I don't read mysteries very often, and the last Scandinavian author I read was Stieg Larsson more than a decade ago, but I have been missing out. In 1986, Sven Jorgensson, a small town police officer, gets a call from a man who says he has raped a woman and claims he will do it again. I won't recount the rest of the plot, but this book is a page-turner and thoughtful at the same time. Christoffer Carlsson subtitled this A Novel About a Crime, and it is that but also so much more. There are layers with well-developed characters, decades of police work, the tolls it takes on some of the families involved, and one of the best fictional endings I've read in a long time. Real-life Swedish poet Elsa Grave and her poem "Darkness" is also used in the story; this is where the title comes from:

"blaze me a sun tonight
you who shall bring me the dark"

This is a stunning American debut from Christoffer Carlsson, and I will happily read whatever he writes next. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House, Hogarth Press for providing me with a copy of this exceptional book.

This is a well written, drawn out, suspenseful murder mystery that reminded me of other Swedish crime authors such as Stieg Larsson and Camilla Lackberg. It held my interest throughout despite the somewhat slow pace, but as soon as things escalate, it does so quickly, then concludes with an ending that was totally unexpected.

There's lots of detail and insight into police procedurals, which could have been shortened a bit, and the relationship between father and son (both cops) dealing with a potential serial killer. This part reminded of another book 'Anxious People', so am wondering if the author had some influence there.

I won't give anything else away, but highly enjoyable!

Thank you NetGalley, Christoffer Carlsson, and Random House Hogarth publishing for this ARC!

I am not normally a crime thriller reader, but this book may have just converted me. This work has so many surprising plot twists and is incredibly detailed in the processes it takes to catch a killer, even so many decades later. The reader can truly feel the emotional turmoil come from the pages as police tackle the darkest parts of humanity without getting an explanation into the creation of such darkness. It is an incredibly well-written book with so many realistic and nuanced perspectives that make you grow fond of most of the characters. I think this work is also relevant to a time of distrust in police, especially in America.

When the prime minister is assassinated in Stockholm the same night a serial killer makes his first kill in the small town of Tiarp, a local policeman is thrown into an obsessive pursuit to find the killer while coping with the whole country’s loss. This work has a long timeframe, starting in 1986 with Sven Jörgensson’s investigation and carrying into his son, Vidar’s policework into the late 2010s. In the last couple of years of the novel, a writer making his return home sets the stage for this case in his new novel but finds more secrets than resolutions on his own.

I was truly swept away by this book’s universal themes of the pursuit of truth, justice, and obsession. Carlsson expertly relates these themes from a whole country’s perspective in finding the man who shot the prime minister, to a small town’s paralyzing fear of a serial killer, to Sven and Vidar’s own grappling with the unknown of their own cases. Old folklore weaves into real-life discovery, and the author truly captures fear on all levels of the human psyche.

I loved the paralleling of certain symbols as they reappear as omens throughout decades. I also really enjoyed the author’s deep psychological narrative where you empathize with each character thoroughly. I also enjoyed how we got to explore the personal lives like the marriages and relationships.

The book was also fast-paced enough to keep me reading throughout the night but not too fast that I couldn’t keep up. The plot twists were so unexpected; I’m usually pretty good at predicting mysteries in crime shows, but this ending threw me for a loop. This book is incredibly memorable!

The book was a bit slow to start, and until Sven’s POV in 1986, I felt confused in certain parts about the narrator’s intentions.

I will definitely be looking out for Carlsson’s new works and always have this one in the back of my mind!

3.5 stars. Blaze Me A Sun was a layered Swedish crime novel that followed multiple people obsessed with a particular case over time. Sven was a cop in 1986 when he was first on a scene for a murder that he would become consumed with solving. Decades later, an author decides to write a novel about the case and as he digs deeper, he makes some discoveries that opens the case back up. Finally, all the old secrets begin to surface and the truth is revealed.

Thanks to #NetGalley, Christoffer Carlson, and for the e-ARC of #BlazeMeASun in exchange for an honest review.

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for letting me read and review an advanced copy of this book.

When a writer returns to his hometown after a failed marriage, he comes across the story of an unsolved case where a serial killer was never caught. It was the story of Sven Jorgensson, a policeman, who was never able to solve the case. Sven’s son Vidar, also a policeman, also became obsessed with the case. The first rape/murder happened on the same night that the Swedish Prime Minister was killed, leaving many people in shock and fear. As the writer unravels new clues, the case seems to be resolved, but a few open questions remain, leading the investigation in additional directions.

Searching for the truth can be difficult, as not all people are willing to tell all that they know. This was a good story about the difficulties faced by the police in trying to unravel clues in murder cases.

If you are a fan of Nordic mysteries, as I am, this book is well worth reading.

A police officer, Sven, is called to a scene where a woman has been raped -but dies before he gets there. A phone call had come in confessing to the crime - but the criminal is not found.
Despite Sven's best efforts the case becomes cold but doesn't leave his psyche. Even into retirement the case haunts him. In fact, the case changed the trajectory of his life.
The descriptions of the environment around the town add an element all their own.

I couldn't put this book down. Thanks to netgalley for the arc

I finish this book about a week ago and I have been trying to figure out how to write a review. It is a very layered an interesting mystery. It’s roughly about a man who goes back to the town he grew up in an befriends a widow lady who was one of the first female police officers in their Swedish town. The reason he befriend her is under the guise of just being another lonely soul but that isn’t the reason it goes much deeper and further in the past. That seems like a very lame summary, but it also involves his childhood hero his hero son and why they say sometimes it’s better not to know or meet your heroes. They have three dead people and they suppose it suspect but not all is what it seems in this little town. I truly enjoyed this book I have read many books from Switzerland and Sweden in the past month and I must say this is my absolute favorite of any book I’ve read in the past year from anywhere. I thoroughly enjoyed it it was so interesting and keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat and you’re thinking what does he have to do with that and what does that instance from that long ago have to do it today and this woman? OMG so many questions and they all get answered by the end but what a great story end though yes the guy is an author I don’t know why I thought it important to mention that but he has and it’s just such a great book I loved it and it’s long but so worth reading. This is what they call a must read and a true five star review if you love good intricate and bold mysteries you will love this book! I received this book from NetGalley and the author but I am leaving this reveal voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are definitely my own.

This book was more of a slow burn than a complete blaze for me. It’s a thoughtful crime thriller that slowly layers the clues and tension over time to reveal its outcome. It’s not flashy or slick, but moves quickly with short chapters and engaging characters. It may not have been exactly what I expected, but it was very good.

A disappointment. This was far too involved with the main character's disallusionment with his police work, his son, his neighbors, the bureaucracy and himself, which distracted from the otherwise fine serial killer tale.

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<p>Review copy provided by the publisher.</p>
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<p>This is the English language debut of a Swedish bestseller. It reads like a bestseller, very short chapters and a lot of simple sentences. It also reads like it's translated from Swedish, where I can see the ghosts of a couple of jokes that were impossible to translate and a few places where the translator chose to stick close to cognates in places where a more colloquial translation might have served them better. ("These were the sentiments of such men": a cromulent English sentence, but not for a late 20th/early 21st century thriller.)</p>
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<p>I <em>hope</em> that an Anglophone audience receives the Swedishness of the central conceit well, too. Because while it's a thriller murder mystery, it's also a book about the emotional confusion and angst many people--including those who didn't support him politically--experienced in the aftermath of Olof Palme's assassination. The psychological importance of this event, the sense that the world was falling to pieces, is in every page of this book, and I hope that that's comprehensible to an Anglophone readership that may not be entirely clear on what happened to Olof Palme in the first place. (No, I know the Swedes are not clear either, but they know Christer Petterson from Krister Peterson in a dark alley.)</p>
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<p>So. There are two generations of police, father and son, but not working together, on a single set of murder cases. They're also each trying to figure out their place in the world, their relationship with their child, whether this is all there is. Some mysteries are tagged as "competence porn." This is almost the opposite, very nearly <em>in</em>competence porn. Bewilderment literature. There is illness, struggle, wrong turnings that never do get righted. It is almost disorienting to be in thriller-type prose but deep in the headspace of people having thoroughly literary crises. It's a very weird book, and I don't really have an "ultimately satisfying" or "ultimately unsatisfying" verdict, it just...goes hard at what it is. I suppose we should all hope for as much to be said of us.</p>
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"Blaze Me a Sun" is a story about how obsession with an event or a person can alter the course of people's lives and have unintended and potentially dire consequences. Sven Jorgensson was a police officer who had the misfortune of discovering the first victim of the rapist/killer who would become known as Tiarp Man (because the first victim was found near Tiarp Farm), as well as taunting phone calls from the killer. Sven became obsessed with discovering the identity of and capturing Tiarp Man, although his identity would not be discovered until 33 years after the first murder, and decades after Sven died. Sven's obsession with catching the killer and events related to the discovery of the first victim, and the secrets that Sven kept from his family related to the case, would widen the wedge that had been developing between Sven and his only child, Vidar, and would contribute to Vidar's decision to become a police officer (much to Sven's dismay).

Vidar's time as a police officer was relatively short, due to his experiences on the job, but would have a profound effect on his life. He was unknowingly involved in an incident that would help bring an end to Tiarp Man's life of crime, but that would also help ensure that the truth about Tiarp Man would remain hidden for decades.

The narrator of the story is a novelist who has returned to his childhood home and is writing a book on Sven and Vidar Jorgensson, and who befriends a former police officer, Evy Carlen, who worked with Sven. The narrator's name is never given, just a childhood nickname "Moth", but he was fascinated by the Jorgensson father and son growing up. His research into the Jorgensson's and the Tiarp Man case will result in him uncovering multiple secrets, including the identity of Tiarp Man and the location of the body of the second victim, but will also alter the public perception/memory of Sven Jorgensson and alter the lives of multiple families.

I received a copy of the e-book via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

These Scandinavian novels are a little like reading through a thin piece of gauze - and the setting is so different from where I live. In spite of that, I was hooked almost from the beginning. I felt really badly for Sven - who can't seem to bond with his adult son and who can't puzzle out who the serial killer is. Or did he? Sven is sick and dies when his son is in his early 20's. So the son picked up the puzzle. You'll keep wondering what will happen next, what clue will turn up next, and what happened to one of the victims. The ending was shocking.

I do love Swedish crime novels, however, this one, I found a bit long in the tooth. I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over and over again. It finally picked up speed at around Chapter 60 (there are 117 very short, like 1 or 2 page, chapters). It is a good premise, it just took a long time to get to the finish line. Thank you to Netgalley and Hogarth - trademark of Penguin Random House LLC, for the ARC.

Wow! I have a hard time with most thrillers simply for guessing the ending. Not the case here. This kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. It's an immersive book that will keep you guessing until the very end. Really great read!

Wow. I’ve always been so picky about the crime/thrillers I read as a lot of them give you the over the top gore as a means to be memorable. This however is far scarier as you believe that it’s just a normal town, full of normal people and unremarkable lives. This story is given to you from a few different perspectives but it continues in a nice and easy linear fashion, slowly turning up the heat and unease as you go. I think the other thing that makes it so eerie is the underlying social behaviors or characters big and small. I guarantee you, you’ve heard people who think these things, people who act this way and you’ve seen situations that could’ve gone better with open communication. But you’ve got a small town, in the 1980s and the only bit of efficiency comes from the fact that everyone knows your business.


Great book. This early review was made possible by an ARC from the publisher. I’ll be watching this author and their future works.