Review: Fredrik T Olsson – Chain of Events

I’m a fan of crime novels set amongst cataclysmic events. Of course, as crime readers, we are used to the opposite. From the country house murder in golden age crime fiction to the cold climate of Scandinavian thrillers, it is the thought of evil that runs against the natural order that gives us the biggest shiver. But there is something to be said in setting a crime in the middle of circumstances so monstrous that they are almost imaginable. I’ve reviewed a few of these books on this blog: Ben H Winters’ Last Policeman trilogy, Louise Welsh’s A Lovely Way to Burn and The Healer by Antti Tuomainen. Now we have a debut by Swedish writer Fredrik T Olsson that envisages a different type of scenario that threatens to wipe out the human race.

William Sandberg was a respected cryptologist but a series of family tragedies lead to a failed suicide attempt. When he disappears from his hospital room, his ex-wife Christina refuses to believe he has vanished voluntarily and sets out to discover the identity of the kidnappers. Sandberg finds himself in an ancient castle in a mountainous country and is given mysterious code to decipher. A chance meeting with someone inside the citadel reveals the true nature of the DNA sequences that William is studying and the potential implications of his failure to decode the messages.

Olsson comes from a screen writing background which is immediately apparent in his mastery of how to keep a reader hooked into the narrative. The book is, literally, a page turner and, although long, I can imagine it being possible to finish it in one sitting. There are multiple points of views which, again, I’d expect from someone with the writer’s background. These also work well, the characters are well drawn enough to be distinguishable, but sometimes depth of characterisation is sacrificed to momentum.

Although a Swedish crime novel, Chain of Events is much more located in the international thriller genre. The pandemic that threatens to wipe out civilisation needs a fair amount suspension of disbelief and yet the writer also manages to make the chase to decode the biological time bomb fun and interesting. The ending is, perhaps, a little pat but that’s the problem with dystopian narratives. Once you stare over the abyss, how can anything be the same again?

Thanks to Sphere for my review copy. The translation was by Dominic Hinde.