This book was sitting on one of the hillocks in front of Mt TBR around the place when last weekend my partner happened to pick it up (the hillock was close the couch and he was somewhat movement hampered by 3 dogs demanding nurses). From the first chapter he was extolling its virtues so I thought I should take a look :)
From the Blurb:
At a remote military base in the Indian Ocean, the CIA is trying to get a prisoner to confess. But the detainee, a suspect in an Islamist-inspired terror attack in the United States, refuses to talk.
Ernst Grip, a Swedish security officer, gets dispatched to New York, without knowing why. FBI agent Shauna Friedman, who meets him there, seems to know a little too much about him. Though when he arrives at his real destination, the American authorities have just one question for him: Is their terror suspect a Swedish citizen?
Grip works to uncover the man’s true identity. In the process, he discovers the prisoner’s ties to a group of other suspects—a ruthless American arms dealer, a Czech hit man, a mysterious nurse from Kansas, and a heartbreakingly naïve Pakistani. The closer Grip gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that others involved have something to hide. Who is real, and who is leading a double life?
The Swede is a thriller about the compromises that people—and nations—make in the name of security and survival. Within this world built on secrets, Grip and Friedman have to learn to trust each other, if they hope to stay alive.
Jo Nesbo meets Homeland in this sophisticated debut literary thriller about a Swedish security force agent sent to the U.S. for a special assignment, which delivers a breathtaking global twist on the darkly riveting narrative tradition of Nordic noir.
Ernst Grip of the Swedish security police has no idea why he is being summoned to the U.S. When he lands at a remote military base in the Indian Ocean, his escort, FBI agent Shauna Friedman, asks him to determine whether a prisoner who has been tortured by the CIA is a Swedish citizen.
At the military base, the prisoner, known only as N., refuses to talk. It appears he was involved in an Islamist-inspired terror attack in Topeka, Kansas. The attack was real, but the motivations behind it are not so simple. Evidence points to a group of desperate souls who survived the 2004 Thailand tsunami: a ruthless American arms dealer, a Czech hit man, a mysterious nurse from Kansas, a heartbreakingly naïve Pakistani – and a Swede.
Meanwhile, Grip himself is leading a double life. No one in Sweden knows that he is bisexual, passionately in love with an art dealer in New York who is fighting AIDS. Together, the couple will do anything to get him the drugs he needs to survive, a situation that leads Grip into terra incognita.