Vietas: Lapland's Greatest Heist

by Martin Johnson

It’s the week before Easter in 1971, and at the local power plant in rural Lapland, the workers are heading out for the morning shift. But something’s different - a safe has been robbed, and no one knows how. In Vietas, award-winning crime author Jenny Rogneby explores the case of the missing money, why it was so badly handled and why, to this day, it remains unsolved.

This true crime is different: it features waterfalls and reindeers, but no murders. It is a tale of a crime executed in a spectacularly specific way, but also of a small Swedish town in the middle of nowhere, where everybody and nobody is a suspect.

It's been almost 50 years since one of the greatest Swedish heists took place, and to this day, no one is closer to solving the case. How could a crime be committed so seamlessly in a place where everyone knows everyone else’s movements at all times?

The power plant workers, police officers, and even a journalist’s wife, all have different theories on how it was carried out, but most of them do seem to agree on who did it. So Jenny calls this person up, and asks them if the rumours are true.

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, True Crime

2 pages, Audible Audio

First published July 29, 2020

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting enough, but lacked a little something

Podcasts, true crime, and investigative journalism. It's certainly a growth industry that audiobook producers and ad-revenue content producers are really trying to tap into. So this is certainly an interesting little area for examination and a story - a remote site, an effective "locked room" crime, and a long mystery that's etched in the popular memory. Overall, the story is adequately told, but I felt the whole thing lacked a bit of depth and effort by the reporting team. They certainly had some challenges due to the passing of time, but also lent heavily on a fictionalised account that was supposed to be close to the truth for what kind of became a significant portion of the run time.

I also had some audio quality issues where it sounded a bit robotic - not sure if that was the recording or the download.

So, an interesting tale, worth a listen, but I felt it was "ok" and could have been that bit better.

[Ursula Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story sounds interesting. The author narrates and that is a mistake for this title. Her dull and monotonous tone simply bores you. You stop caring what happened. The gentleman doing the translations would've been a much better narrator, and this would've been far more interesting. Skip it and listen to Heists with Michael Caine and the True North Canadian Heists titles, those are far more interesting and entertaining.

[Lloyd · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is interesting but I found the whole thing rather chaotic and all over the place. It hop from item to item with little link and kept going back and forth to different sections in no real direction.

The podcast seems to lack a lot of real details and focuses on fiction and hearsay.

Overall interesting subject but could have been done better

[Sheldon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Going off the Audible description this should have been an intriguing and entertaining listen but for some reason I struggled to keep focused on the endless waffle; even though it’s a relatively short recording it felt like I was listening for at least twice that.

[Róisín · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting