Another thrilling read by a very talented author. I love the way he weaves a story, keeping the reader entertained and gripped until the ending you never see coming! Recommended for anyone who loves a good read!

Thank you to #NetGalley for allowing me to read #KnockKnock
Unfortunately this book was not for me.
I have never tried the genre before so I thought I should as I know so many people enjoy it.
I am sure if you enjoy scandi thrillers this will be a knock out for you.

“There’s no such thing as a coincidence”
At least not in the kind of world our two main protagonists inhabit. Seventeen years ago Ewert Grens was the detective superintendent in an investigation into the brutal execution of the Lilaj family, whose sole survivor was five year old Zana. The suspected perpetrator evaded justice, something which still plays on Grens mind to this very day. Now only six months away from retirement Ewert is reminded of this cold crime when a close colleague, Mariana Hermansson informs him of a reported burglary at the same address in which Zana’s family members were gunned down. Bizarrely nothing is missing. But Ewert Grens gut instinct tells him a different story and suddenly locating Zana Lilaj becomes his top priority. Elsewhere in the city Piet Hoffmann is playing doting father when an incident involving one of his sons brings into sharp focus the reality that his former life as an infiltrator will forever place his family at risk of imminent danger. Unless he acts quickly the lives of his innocent wife and three children will remain in jeopardy, each one forced to atone for his past misdemeanours. Obviously that’s a sacrifice he’s unwilling to make so in collusion with Grens, Hoffmann slips back under the radar in an attempt to help find a solution to their pressing double crisis. With the action hurtling it’s way from Sweden to Albania and finally to Montenegro fasten your seatbelt for this death defying race against the clock thriller that severely tests your powers of perception and leaves your nerves in tatters.

Surrender yourself to the inevitable. Everything outside of these pages will cease to exist until having read the final word you come up for air! Those all important first pages which are violent but not gratuitously so promise a first class storyline and the author doesn’t let you down. You’ll be in thrall to the predominant voices of Grens and Hoffmann and agog at their every move in a thriller that is dizzying in pace, sharp, intelligent and sophisticated;one in which the lines between victim and perpetrator are blurred and even motive is ambiguous. Ranking this novel in pole position in what I consider to be the formula one league of crime writing I felt as if I was hanging on for dear life as the author sends you on a heart palpitating,stomach plummeting, mind bending trail towards the truth with twists aplenty.

Grens and Hoffmann are an unlikely double act but oh my goodness what a team! I felt ludicrously spoiled by the existence of not one but two such fantastic protagonists. Outmanoeuvring the enemy whilst metaphorically blindfolded requires immense skill and nerves of steel and these two characters have it by the bucketload. Anti hero Piet has honed his survival skills to perfection, moving through each stage of the operation with the stealth of a ninja warrior and the sharply focused mind of a grandmaster chess player. His plans ALWAYS contain an escape route! His family may be his Achilles heel but they are his greatest provider of strength, motivating him through all manner of situations us mere mortals wouldn’t even countenance. Meanwhile Ewert strikes me as your typical married to the job detective whose personal history leaves him with no desire for a life outside the constraints of his demanding job. This latest investigation proves he still has fire in his belly and his involvement staves off his biggest fear, that of loneliness (at least for the time being!) Together these two are dynamite!

This is non stop action all the way with the time constraints that Hoffmann and Grens face taking the tension and excitement up yet another level, fear and apprehension keeping you on the edge of your seat. The way in which Grens search for Zana Lilaj and Piet’s undercover mission link together is executed flawlessly so whilst I had vague inklings as to where this trail might lead my intellect was no match for the author’s fiendishly clever plotting. Absolutely superb. And if your heart can withstand the amount of adrenalin pumping through your veins in reaction to every new twist, the final hammer blow will smash your expectations of an impressive ending into 2022! My mouth was agape and it still is!

I’m no aficionado of Swedish noir crime fiction but I know what I like and I like this VERY MUCH!! I was left breathless by the sheer mind blowing brilliance of this novel, exhausted by the pace, tension and complexity of the puzzle. If you like your thrillers to be on the sophisticated side then you cannot go wrong with this one. 5 ⭐️ without hesitation.

My thanks as always to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review.

I picked up Knock Knock assuming his would be a gritty, Scandi Noir tale which saw the lead character dwelling on an old investigation and trying to work out how events from seventeen years ago were connected to a current case. How wrong I was! This is a fast-paced action thriller with a high body-count, characters under constant threat of death and a story where you never know what’s coming next or who you can put your trust in.

It’s a dark one too. The book opens with the murder of a family, executed in their homes with a trademark/signature two shots to their heads by the killer or killers. But the killers missed one of the family and a five year old girl was locked in her house with her dead parents and her siblings. Inspector Ewert Grens was first on scene and he was shocked by what he found, he made sure the young girl was placed safely into protective custody and rehomed with a new family and a new identity. That was seventeen years ago and now there are murders taking place where the victims are found with the same signature shots to their heads. It appears someone may know of the existence of the young survivor and Grens is worried they may come back to find her. The problem is, he doesn’t know her name or where to find her now.

A more pressing and intense issue lies with the second thread to this story – a police officer (Hoffman) who worked undercover for many, many years discovers that his secret identity has been discovered by all the wrong people. A full file of his background has been taken from police headquarters and now seems to sit with gangsters who intend to use their knowledge to gain leverage over Hoffman for their own gain. His family are targetted to ensure he cooperates and Hoffman receives instruction he is to recover a rare weapon and use it to attack a gang in Sweden whilst ensuring a different gang take the blame for the attack. If he stirs up this in fighting then his family may be spared.

Hoffman is under constant surveillance and feels backed into a corner – he has very little time to deliver on the demands or his family will be killed. But when backed into a corner Hoffman becomes very dangerous and his fightback is going to have to be conducted very carefully as the consequences of a single mistake will be catastrophic.

This is a pacy thriller which felt edgy, tense and exciting to pick up. I hadn’t encountered Inspector Ewert Grens prior to this book but it seems to be the 9th book in which he has featured. It made not a jot of difference to my enjoyment that I didn’t know about the first eight books – this is a story anyone could enjoy and you should absolutely give it a blast if you like the books of Simon Kernick, Neil Lancaster or Jo Nesbo.

Knock Knock is an exciting story in which a police inspector and a former police informant are in a race against time to try to save the life of the only remaining witness to a crime from the past. Five candles on the cake. Joy. Impatience. The anticipation. Zana could not have imagined that the destinies of many people would be erased that day. Hers, too. She just wanted to sing Happy Birthday with everyone, yet her fate irrevocably changed that day as did those of family and friends closest to her. Crime Inspector Evert Grens was summoned to take part in an investigation in a Stockholm apartment. One family, seemingly randomly selected, was brutally killed. Only a five-year-old girl who was placed in a witness protection program survived. Seventeen years later, except for Inspector Grens, everyone has forgotten about the case. However, when he is informed that someone broke into the apartment where the massacre once took place, he will immediately suspect that someone has returned to clean up and cover their tracks, to find and remove the only surviving witness.

Grens' search for Zanzibar will intersect with the investigation of Pete Hoffman, a former police informant whose family is threatened by Hoffman's former employers from the underworld. Together they have seventy-two hours to solve cases and save innocent lives. This is a compulsive and exciting part thriller part police procedural from an award-winning crime writer at the peak of his powers. He writes with gritty realism, something I love when it comes to European crime fiction, and this Sweden-set tale keeps you on your toes throughout as the unlikely investigative pair race to save innocent lives. It's a terrifying yet believable story about betrayal and revenge, which brings together Ewert Grens and Piet Hoffmann - two of Anders Roslund's iconic characters - in an alert, scintillating and tense action novel. In three days, secrets kept sacred for two decades come to light, and finally, the curtain falls, revealing the most unexpected perpetrator in an explosive final twist. Highly recommended.

What a chilling opening for this story! It is the 9th book in the Ewert Grens series but my first. I always think it is best to read a series from the start, but this author does not make you feel like you have missed anything. I took to Inspector Grens straight away, he had compassion for both the living and the dead.

What he had never accepted was not being able to close a case from seventeen years ago. That night was unforgettable. The night he found a five-year-old girl, Zana Lila, so traumatised she did not know that her family were dead around her.

Now, something else had happened at the same property, and being the man he is, he knows when something does not feel right. It appears that it is not just him that hadn’t put that night behind him. Someone else was back to finish the job. Now he had to find that little girl.

It is a full-on action-packed race against time that never lets up. Events throw Piet Hoffman, a security expert who is been blackmailed and Grens together, as they dart mainly between Sweden and Albania, desperately trying to solve the past and present. The main characters felt established with pasts which always makes them seem real. It is a great pairing in the story, they both wanted the same result for personal reasons.

Time flew by, as did the pages to a breathtaking conclusion which was awesome. The translation of this book is smooth and never loses its constant fast flow.

I wish to thank Net Galley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have reviewed honestly.

Okay. So it's not really surprising news when I say this is the first book in the Ewert Grens series that I've read. This is what I do after all. But I think that in this case it's been a good test as this really is a self contained thriller that, whilst you will without question get more background on some of the characters if you read earlier books, shows that you really don't need to in order to appreciate this story, or to get to know the character of Ewert Grens. At least I didn't.

Be warned. The opening to this story is quite stark, the scene that is set very dark and slightly emotional when you start to understand what it is you are reading. It also comes to inform the case that Ewert Grens is called upon to assist with, a break in at a home he remembers all too well and one that precedes a series of murders that will take him back to a case he can never forget. Alongside this we have a separate story,one which seems immediately at odds with the main case, but one which soon becomes entwined and drives the tension and the action of the whole story.

This was an intriguing story for me. I didn't see the initial connection between the two story threads and it almost seemed like to different stories. I didn't know which interested me more, but I found that after a while I was captivated by both. It is not a particularly fast paced read, much of the story being about the investigation and most of the real present tension coming from the secondary story. But from about a third of the way through more starts to become clear, including how the two stories are linked. That's not to say we have the full picture - we don't - and the author is able to pull of a number of twists that will leave you surprised and maybe a little shell shocked. I guessed parts, was blind to others - just as a novel should be.

Anders Roslund does a great job of establishing the characters enough for those, like me, who haven't read any earlier books, but without overloading the book with backstory that could turn off regular readers. I liked Ewert Grens, even if he did seem a little tired, jaded even, and towards the end of his career. His determination to do right by his witness from all those years before really had me rooting for him. Then there is Piet Hoffman, the key character from the secondary story. He is not necessarily the perfect character - let's say he has an interesting past - but his dedication to his family and his cunning had me on side pretty quickly, even if you couldn't fully trust him. In fact this felt like. avery character driven story and while setting plays a key role - both set in Sweden and Albania - it is the actions and the past of those central to the story that really dominate.

I'll admit it. I'm intrigued. Think i'm going to have to go back and see how many of the earlier books I can find. This book has definitely whet my appetite.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK, Vintage for an advance copy of Knock Knock, the seventh novel to feature Stockholm detective Ewert Grens.

Seventeen years ago 5 year old Zana Lalaj’s family was killed, a case Grens never solved. Now there has been a break in at the same apartment and he needs to find Zana, given a new identity, before something happens to her. At the same time former criminal and infiltrator Piet Hoffmann is receiving threats.

I have not read this series before so I am not in a position to be able to offer a comparison between the previous joint efforts and this first solo outing. What I did find was a compulsive, well paced thriller with a hard edge and a sense of plausibility often missing in the genre. I would also say that it works well as a stand-alone. Yes, it might have been nice to have the full backstory on Hoffmann and Grens, but I didn’t feel its lack when reading the novel.

I was very impressed by the professionalism, I don’t know what other word to use, of the novel. The story is tightly plotted with logic and a sense of inevitability, but the author introduces several twists to change the course of that inevitability to make a new one. It’s skilfully done. Then there’s the tension and excitement. I guess from the titles of the previous novels that putting a timescale on events is one of the author’s devices, well, whatever, it works. It ratchets up the tension and excitement as the characters fight against it. I don’t know how many times I put the book down for a breather when things got sticky. So, apart from all these things, it is a thrilling read with a bit of mystery thrown in as a bonus. It should also be noted that this is a violent novel, so maybe not for the faint hearted, and yet, paradoxically it has a survivor’s optimism.

I liked the characterisation as well. Piet Hoffmann is a justifiably paranoid man and always has an exit plan. These plans tend to be torturous and inventive and probably the least credible part of the novel, but certainly the most fun. At 64 and a half Ewert Grens is staring into the abyss of retirement and he’s not liking it, but that won’t stop him putting his heart into this latest case.

Knock Knock is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.

Thank you for a free e copy of this book. This book was very different to my usual genre. I would say this is action adventure and I must say at the beginning I wasn't too sure if I would enjoy, but I really, really liked it! It had tension and pace through out. The writing style was easy to follow. I learnt so much regarding weapons and different countries and their police procedures.

This book follows two different families that become interlinked by the Swedish criminal world. It is a race against time to try and save a family before someone else gets to them.

I don't want to give too much away, but the plot was cleverly thought out.
I would recommend this book and author to others and will also be keen to read more in this series and other books from this author.

Knock Knock is a difficult book to review as it is a series of books which I wasn’t aware of when I began reading, and although you can read it as a stand alone book, I really felt out of the loop. I expected the book to have gone in a different direction as the synopsis gave me a different impression, and I suppose the way it did go was not entirely to my interest. The book was well written and I did get into it until it went into the realms of guns and mafia.

Detective Superintendent Ewart Grens six months from retirement is alerted by colleague Mariana Hermansson of a break in with nothing apparently taken from the same address of the worst crime scene he has ever seen for which he never secures a conviction. Seventeen years ago Zana Lilaj survives the brutal slaughter of her family. Meanwhile, former under cover operator Piet Hoffman receives some shocking threats which demands he takes certain action or his beloved wife and family will pay the ultimate price. The story is principally told by Grens and Hoffman who work together to solve what appears dangerously insoluble.

Well, that’s how you grab a readers attention and hold them in a vice like grip until the very end! This novel is impossible to put down, your eyes are glued to the pages, perched on the edge of your seat, as you just want to solve this huge puzzle. The danger, the huge danger that especially Hoffman faces as the world he has built nearly explodes, is breathtaking. The storyline takes us from Sweden to Albania and it seems as if all roads in the fast paced plot lead to Albania and across the border into neighbouring Montenegro. This is extremely well written, it’s action packed from start to finish as you get a ringside seat in a dramatic race against time, against perpetrators who are always one step ahead and who seem to have metaphorically tied their hands behind their back and shackled them at the same time. The characters are good, Grens is very complex, taciturn, trusts few but is excellent at his job. Hoffman is brave, inventive and creative and could have a starring role in Line off Duty daringly unmasking the villains and staying well below the radar. Their two storylines flow well and the complex plot connects cleverly. You get shock after shock, several are real jaw thunking to the deck kind and the tension is so taut a high wire act could cross it and as if that isn’t enough the author adds more layers so be prepared for palpitations! I had semi worked one thing out but still didn’t see that ending coming and I like that it doesn’t neatly tie in a bow as that would have been a travesty. Brilliant.

If you like your thrillers full of pace, with multiple bends and twists in the plot road, if you want action, suspense and tension so thick you could cut it then look no further than this very high quality Swedish jet black noir. The translation is outstanding too.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House UK, Vintage, Harvill Secker for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

A experiencedly written crime novel with tons of tension and interesting entanglements, which particularly convinces through the psychological components. There are a good amount of throwbacks so even if you haven’t read their earlier pieces of the series, you will understand it easily.

Thank you NetGalley / Random House UK Vintage for providing me with this arc in exchange of a honest review.

Zana Lilaj was found in her family home at the age of 5 with her murdered family all around her.
This sets the scene for this police thriller where missing files relating to the Lilaj family murders prompts Piet Hermansson to work with the Swedish police once more to save his family.
This book is full of twists and turns, and the ending was unexpected. The story is written in the same style as many other scandi-thrillers and if you enjoy a police drama thriller then you will enjoy Knock Knock.
The characters are well developed and you can tell that there is some past there that will be explained in other novels, but it isn't necessary to know about his past in order to follow the story.
Thanks to Netgalley for letting me read and review this book.

Detective Ewert Grens finds brutally executed family, only 5-year old child is still alive. Seventeen years later, same MO murders, with identical wounds and identical ammunition and associated with notorious arms dealers appear through the city and Ewert must find the child, now with new identity, before is too late and she would be killed too.
And there is also Piet Hoffmann, unusual character with dark past, whom someone tries to blackmail. Threats against the Hoffmann family, which in turn were supposed to create and opening for an international arms dealer, are real. It might be coincidence or are the cases connected?

Brilliant Scandi thriller, full of action, twists and turns. Cinematic till the end.

Seventeen years ago, Ewert Grens was called to the scene of a horrific murder - a family executed in their own home, leaving just their five year old daughter alive. When a break-in occurs at the same apartment, it sets off a chain of events that Ewert isn't prepared for - someone is killing in the same way, and they are coming to get the remaining survivor.

This is a really good book - well-paced and keeps you on the edge of your seat. When it all came together, I was very impressed as to how everything fit!

Very scandi and definitely not hygge. Really enjoyed this book as it had a very scandi feel to it. I won’t spoil the plot but it’s really worth a read