The Other Sister is the second book in the Agent John Adderley series by Swedish authors, Peter Mohlin and Peter Nystrom. It has been translated from Swedish by Ian Giles and follows directly on from The Bucket List. It can be read as a stand-alone, but there are several spoilers for the first book.
Having wrapped up the investigation into the decade-old disappearance of a clothing-chain heiress, former FBI agent John Adderley is about to quit Karlstad for anonymity in Germany when there’s a message from Trevor, the partner who also went into witness protection. John is extremely wary: it’s quite possible that members of the Nigerian drug cartel have hacked the secure site and are using Trevor to find him.
Against his better judgement, John meets with Trevor to find this is indeed the case. Only his insurance policy, a video of the cartel leader murdering a Baltimore cop, stops him from immediately running. Will extending his insurance to Trevor keep them both safe?
Meanwhile, in his cover as Detective Fredrik Adamsson with the Karlstad Police, John is called to the murder scene of Stella Bjelke, CEO and founder of the unique dating app, Raw. Disfigured by acid and her throat slashed with a chisel, Stella was apparently meeting someone for a Black Tantra date, as far as her younger sister, Alicia knew.
She tells John “Stella has a trail of haters who compete to puke all over her on social media. Raw is a controversial company and she loves being provocative.” Turns out that Alicia’s relationship with Stella was very complicated, and something that happened eight years earlier is about to have repercussions.
Alicia Bjelke is the Chief Technical Officer of Raw who, because of her repulsive appearance, stays very much in the background, and when John shows her the image of the murderer from CCTV footage, she denies recognising the man, but is immediately afraid for her own life. When Birger Falk turns up at her home, she acts to save herself.
As the two scenarios play out, events get very tangled. John displays some questionable morals, admitting that “the law – in the strictly legal sense - was no longer his guiding principle. Instead, he was deploying his own homemade moral philosophy, which seemed to take for granted that most things were allowed, if you were trying to secure your own liberty and survival.”
There’s plenty of action: a lethal labyrinth in the carpark of an ice-hockey stadium; a confrontation with cartel hit men on the roof of a shopping mall; there’s also a good dose of black humour in the disposal of a certain body, and in the interactions between some of the characters. The authors of this excellent Scandi-noir thriller throw in plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing right up to the final reveal. Translation of #3, The Silent Bird is eagerly awaited.