Tjuv och polis
(A Thief and a Police Officer)
by Johan Eriksson
reviewed by James Walker
Niklas is a hardened gangster who, having taken part in bigger heists, is now more of a petty criminal specialising in stealing high-end designer watches.
He is also in trouble with his gangster mates as he has not been entirely upfront in splitting the booty from a previous heist, and now his parents are under threat from them unless he rights this wrong and pays up.
The novel is set in Stockholm, where the newly separated Ida, an ambitious police officer from provincial and ultra-religious Jönköping, is enjoying big city life.
One evening after a night out with her girlfriends, she stays behind at a bar and encounters Niklas, the watch thief, and accompanies him back to his hotel room at The Grand Hotel. Niklas however has been under surveillance and when the police swoop on the hotel, Ida is also arrested and immediately comes under suspicion as being in on Niklas’ crimes.
Enter two of the other main characters in the novel: Sandra, an ambitious, young and talented prosecutor tasked with putting Niklas away; and Torsten, an aged, respected, slightly down-at-heel soak of a defence lawyer who has defended Niklas before and is defending him in this case too.
Along with the main plot centred on whether Niklas is guilty of the watch thefts and whether Ida was knowingly complicit is a subplot where a senior police officer is known to be feeding confidential information to the criminal underworld. That the material is being leaked is certain, but what is not known is who is doing the leaking, which means that the clock is ticking and the perpetrator must be unmasked.
As a result of the hotel room raid and despite her being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Ida is demoted back to provincial Jönköping where, unbeknownst to her colleagues, she is working undercover to help Sandra, the Stockholm prosecutor who in the meantime has been promoted and is now working in the department of internal affairs, where she is tasked with uncovering the police mole.
This is the first work of fiction by real-life, well-known Swedish criminal lawyer Johan Eriksson and it was nominated for the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy for Best Swedish Debut.
The narrative technique which he employs works extremely well. Each short chapter is, in turn, variously named after one of the four main characters, sometimes Niklas, sometimes Ida, or Sandra and Torsten and so in each chapter we get that particular character’s perspective on the case as it develops. The narrative evolves rather interestingly through these perspectives.
The novel seemed slow to start but picks up momentum as the characterisations develop and grow and comes to a rather enjoyable conclusion.
Tjuv och polis
Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2023, 349 pages
Rights : Bonnier Rights
Johan Eriksson is a criminal lawyer who has previously published non-fiction works. Tjuv och polis is his first work of fiction.