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    Box 21
    Box 21
    Box 21
    Audiobook10 hours

    Box 21

    Written by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström

    Narrated by Christopher Lane

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and then trapped in a Stockholm brothel. Suddenly they are given an unexpected chance at freedom and with it the opportunity to take revenge on their enslavers and reclaim the lives and dignity they once had. What will happen now that the tables are turned and the victims fight back? Box 21 is a mind-blowing psychological thriller of the highest order.

    “Superb...Roslund and Hellström play out the tale in taut, short scenes, meting out revelations and shocks in sure, knowing fashion, ending with the shock that all but undoes the rest.... Box 21 is profound.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

    “This dark, explicit novel is another impressive crime thriller from Scandinavia.... A good read.” —Arizona Republic

    “Gripping...the story takes a number of surprising twists and turns.” —The Washington Post Book World

    “This excellent crime thriller is bound to please fans of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series.” —Library Journal

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 4, 2011
    ISBN9781455827404
    Box 21
    Author

    Anders Roslund

    Award-winning journalist Anders Roslund and ex-criminal Börge Hellström are Sweden’s most acclaimed crime fiction duo. Their unique ability to combine inside knowledge of the brutal reality of criminal life with penetrating social criticism in complex, intelligent plots has put them at the forefront of modern Scandinavian crime writing. In 2009, their book Three Seconds, which was awarded the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers’ Award for Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, previously won by both Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, became a top-10 bestseller in Sweden for eight months, and hit The New York Times bestseller list in the United States.

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    Reviews for Box 21

    4/5

    137 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      adult crime fiction. Reading very much like Stieg Larsson's trilogy, here is another suspenseful read from a Scandinavian author. I didn't like it as much because it doesn't have the strong female character that triumphs in the end (well, depending on how you look at it), but it will keep readers satisfied for a couple of days--the amount of time it takes to finish it.
    • 5/5
      Box 21 is not for the faint of heart. It’s not even for the mid-strength of heart. It is strong stuff. There were things about it that I thought were excellent, one thing that didn’t work, and many things that made me very, very angry. Basically, there’s not a lot of middle ground with this book.

      Though dark and extraordinarily sad the plot is quite outstanding. There are two main threads, both involving Stockholm detective Ewert Grens. In the first Grens is on the trail of Jochum Lang, a criminal of the nastiest kind who is being released from prison on the morning the book opens and Grens’ sole objective is to send him back there as soon as possible. Twenty five years earlier Lang caused an injury to Grens’ colleague (who was also his girlfriend) which resulted in massive brain damage. She has been institutionalised and unable to recognise him or communicate with him since the incident and Grens has proven pathologically incapable of recovering from the incident himself. When Lang is sent to sort out a young heroin addict who has upset Lang’s criminal bosses, Grens sees an opportunity to arrest Lang again.

      The second thread is one of the saddest stories I have ever read. Lydia Grajauskas and Alena Sljusareva are two Lithuanian girls who have been tricked into leaving their country for lives as whores (not the waitresses they believed they would be), the property of a man they call Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp. As the book opens the girls have been working for him for 3 years, servicing 12 clients every day and have become fractured souls in the process. On this particular day Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp beats Lydia so badly that neighbours call the police and she is hospitalised. This enables her to put her long-dreamed-of escape into action.

      These threads unfold and intertwine expertly. The pace is fast, and the action credible. The ending is horrific but, in the best noir tradition, is entirely suitable. Although the violence and abysmal treatment of the two women is described in quite graphic detail it never felt gratuitous to me. There was no revelling in the descriptions here, merely a factual accounting of events and their impact that would surely make even the toughest reader weep. I have read books dealing with this theme before but none has touched me in quite the way this one did; keeping me awake, making me seethe with anger and feel impotent that there is nothing I can do about the real-world examples this fiction is surely based on.

      The characters, even the minor ones, are vivid. Lydia and Alena are credible in addition to being heart-wrenching and that’s not an easy combination to achieve. But they will stay with me, especially Lydia, and her truth. Ewert Grens will, unfortunately, stay with me too. He is a self-absorbed, dysfunctional, cowardly, bigoted, hypocrite. I regularly fall in love with fictional characters but it’s very rare for me to fall in hate; Grens is an exception. While he is the worst of the bunch there isn’t a remotely decent male in the entire book, which is the only real qualm I have about it. I shy away from unintelligent generalisations about any population group and I know in my heart that all men are not the bastards they are collectively depicted as here (though I might have argued differently in the wee hours of this morning as my anger at the book’s resolution swirled around my un-sleeping brain).

      I baulked at giving a book which made me feel so wretched, a book in which there is no lightness, no levity and never even the merest suggestion of a happy ending a five star-rating. But in the end I had no choice. Box 21 does everything I could ask of fiction: it transported me into another world, it introduced me to people I will never forget and it explored social issues thoughtfully and so credibly that I have lost sleep.
    • 4/5
      I am disappointed in this book. I read 3 Seconds by the same authors, and found it to be a taut, well-structured, first-rate thriller. Box 21 is well-structured, perhaps (and I mean perhaps), but it is not as tight and engrossing as the other book. The story does bring back Supervisor Detective Investigator Ewert Grens, who in 3 Seconds was written as a curmudgeonly sort of guy, adept at police work, inept at life. Here, however, he comes off more mean-spiritedly, underhanded and simply unlikable. Story line: human trafficking involving Lithuanian girls who are tricked into coming to Sweden only to be sold into prostitution. One of the girls ends up being whipped nearly to death and then taking her revenge.A side story involves Grens' obsession with the criminal responsible for the injuries suffered by Grens' girlfriend Anni. The criminal is released from prison, and Grens is intent on putting him back behind bars forever.This is, basically, an attempt to make one novel-sized book out of two unrelated novelettes. The result is a book that really has no direction, and in which one is not able to get involved.Any remaining Ewert Grens stories have fallen way down on my reading list. A fair story, no happy ending, not even nice.
    • 5/5
      Excellent thriller, fast paced, complex plot, interesting characters. A seriously injured young prostitute is rescued from an apartment where it is obvious she and another have been kept locked up. When she takes hostages and makes an odd demand, they have little time to figure out what is behind it. The consequences lead them on another search for deeper and more disturbing answers.
    • 4/5
      This is another good thriller from the writing team of Roslund and Hellstrom. I was lucky to have received their previous novel, "Three Seconds" from Library Thing. In Box 21 we enter the brutal world of the trafficking of young women from eastern Europe to Sweden. Promised a good life with a job, these women are then held captive as sex trade workers. One woman fights to escape and Ewen Grens is lead to the grisly scene but the adventure is just begining and the twist at the end of the book is worth waiting for..
    • 3/5
      (This review is for the Swedish version, original language)Good book about a murder in Stockholm and prostitution - well-written, detailed, but sometimes lacking in character descriptions. I loved the intricacy and ending. It felt very reality-based and seemed based on many true stories.
    • 5/5
      Craving more bleak Scandinavian crime? Box 21 is a winner! A gritty suspense novel of awkward moments, unbearable situations, sorrow, and shame.Tormented by his past detective inspector Ewert Grens is a cold-hearted workaholic obsessed with taking down Jochum Lang, a career criminal and enforcer, who years earlier stole his future. Lang is let out of a jail, once again, and this time Grens vows to put him away for life.Lydia Grajauskas and Alena Sljusareva, pretty young girls from Lithuania, had their futures stolen by men who promised them a better life in Sweden, a life that now includes prostitution and enslavement.When Grens is called in to investigate the horrific beating of Lydia their futures collide testing Grens' convictions on friendship, loyality, and duty. Utterly lacking in feel good moments and redemption this book is for the serious crime/thriller fan. - Recommended
    • 5/5
      Having read somewhere that fans of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo would also like this book, I picked it up. It's nothing like Stieg Larsson's book at all. In his novel, there's a mystery to be had as well as a strong heroine who lives by her own inner sense of morality and never wavers. Here, what you've got is a police procedural, a story of revenge and betrayal, and at its heart, an ethical and moral dilemma. That's not to say that this isn't a good book (it is), but it's a different animal altogether than Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The main focus of this novel centers around the sex-slave trade. Young girls Lydia Grajauskas and Alena Sljusareva lived in Lithuania until promises of good jobs in Sweden brought them there, only to realize the first night on the boat trip to their new home that they had been horribly misled. They find themselves locked in the rooms of a house, prisoners, kept there by a nasty piece of work named Dmitri, brutalized into submission and forced to perform twelve times a day for various regular clientele. Their situation has lasted three years and comes to a head one day, bringing the police into the situation, beginning a story that will absolutely make you cringe and want to look away as you read it. But you can't.Aside from Lydia and Alena, the main characters in the novel are policemen, especially Ewert Grens, a detective who has been obsessively gunning for a criminal named Jochum Lang who years earlier, caused Grens' partner Anni to live in a permanent state of brain damage and to be confined to a wheelchair. Grens is a puzzle to his co-workers -- his crime-solving rate is high, and he's good at his job, but since Anni's accident, he's been a loner, spending his time as a chronic workaholic, finding some solace in the music of a pop singer from the 1960s. As Grens works the case involving Lydia and Alena, he comes into possession of some information that leads him to a critical juncture both in his life and in his career. His partner, Sundqvist, can't figure out what's going on until an order from above sends him off to find out the truth.This is a dark book all the way through to the last page, which actually made my blood run cold. There are no feel-good or warm fuzzy moments here, no happy endings, and you will definitely have food for thought after you've finished. It's well written, the plotlines hang together well and all in all it is a great read.I'd recommend it to people who like Scandinavian crime fiction, or crime fiction in general on a somewhat more gritty level than the usual fare.
    • 5/5
      First Line: She clung to her mother's hand.If you prefer to read books which are basically positive and all turns out right in the end, you shouldn't touch Box 21 with the proverbial barge pole. However, if you like reading a book that gets its hooks in you from the very start and doesn't turn you loose until days after you've turned the last page, this is the book for you.I am a fan of Scandinavian crime fiction, so there was very little doubt that I'd be reading this book once I learned of its existence. Anders Roslund is the founder and former head of Culture News on Swedish Television, and co-author Börge Hellström is an ex-criminal who helps rehabilitate young offenders and drug addicts. They have turned what would be a few sound bites and appropriate facial expressions on the evening news into a gritty, hard-hitting and ultimately heart-breaking look into the world of sex slavery, drugs and revenge.Lydia Grajauskas and Alena Sljusareva are two young Lithuanian women lured into sex slavery by the promise of good jobs in Sweden. Ewert Grens is a tough, hardened Swedish detective who's determined to put Jochum Lang behind bars for the rest of his life. (Twenty-five years ago Lang was responsible for the accident which caused permanent brain damage to Grens' wife.) Bengt Nordwall is Grens' mentor, and Sven Sundkvist is Grens' partner in the Stockholm police. Added to this mix is Hilding Oldéus, a desperate drug addict. All these characters converge at Söder Hospital.There is so much going on in Box 21 that it's difficult to talk about the book without giving too much away. I'm going to try my best to leave the plot as something for you to discover on your own. Halfway through the book, the action comes to an explosive climax, and I was puzzled. What in the world could the last half of the book be about? After the first half, it was bound to be a tremendous letdown.When I am wrong, I am spectacularly wrong.Within a very few pages, the subplots are being explored, and many more layers of character are revealed in each of the players. The book zigzags through the past and the present. The suspense continues to build as do nuance and detail. Although the plot of Box 21 settles down, more or less, into a straight line, the ending is one that's going to shock many readers.As I read this book, I couldn't help but be reminded of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series. Here, too, the abuse of women is a fundamental theme. But where Larsson's series gives the reader a glimmer of hope for the future because of characters who continue to fight for right against the odds, Box 21 seems to hold no hope. All the characters seem shrouded in the perpetual gloom of bad choices, cynicism and evil.I found Box 21 to be totally engrossing in plot, pacing, characterization, setting, detail-- many times I felt as though I were a passenger in a plane that was about to crash-- and only two small details kept it from being a "Wow!" book for me. The first fifty pages or so read awkwardly, and it took me a while to become familiar with the cadence and phrasing. (No translator is listed for the book.) The other small detail? The end didn't shock me. Sometimes I'm more cynical than I'd like to be.Box 21 is grim. It's brutal. It certainly isn't pretty. It is compulsive reading, and the cynical side of my nature has the feeling that its story is much closer to truth than fiction in the worlds of addiction, victimization and revenge.*Review copy provided by the Amazon Vine program.