Pascal Engman is debuting with this thriller novel. He has a background as a star journalist at Expressen. We are delighted to be able to override all our prejudices about Expressen people from Guillou’s Hamilton-books while reading. Because this is a skillfully written and meaningful book!

He firmly impose that journalists from this controversial, sensationalistic newspaper may also have a really sharp pen. This is a thriller written in a journalistic form. Short sentences, no superfluous words. No long family dinners or vintage wines. And an intrigue with high recognition factor.

The story revolves around hatred, xenophobia. Centered around these issues, the action is exciting and colorful. Intermittently, our thoughts wander to a similar case here at home, to thoughts that resulted in a certain manifesto and a terrible event just a few years ago. Breivik and Utøya are mentioned in the book.

Pascal Engman’s father was Chilean. The author himself states that the idea to the novel was born through the impressions he himself experienced during his time as a journalist, how his colleagues inboxes were flooded by hateful emails. This is a phenomenon we also experience here in Norway. It is therefore time that literature also depict these worrying topics. What is hidden within a person who is so blinded by hatred and failure, feeling like an outsider in our society, and therefore sees revenge as his right? Ultimately, it is our very foundation – democracy – that is at stake. In this context, we can not ignore what happened at the latest presidential election in the United States.

It is a meaningful and serious theme that Pascal Engman writes about in a skilled manner. He says that he wrote the book in just a couple of weeks.

Occasionally, the action speeds up and the violence is extreme. But the main thing is: a skilled thriller novel based on a thoughtful theme. We like this!