Top Dog

Lapidus’s hard-hitting sequel to 2017’s Stockholm Delete updates the careers of diverse characters caught up in Stockholm’s criminal underworld. Teddy, a Serbian immigrant, can’t get a regular job after spending eight years in prison for kidnapping a money launderer, so he falls back in with his former lover, Emelie. Now a defense lawyer, Emelie needs Teddy’s help after a client is murdered. Nikola, the nephew Teddy adores, abandons a good future as an electrician to seek revenge for the fatal gang shooting of a boyhood friend. After Roksana, a crafty young Iranian, finds someone’s drug stash and parties it away, she ends up enlisting Nikola’s help in dealing with the drug lord to whom she owes thousands of kronor. Meanwhile, police transcripts of tapped phone conversations cast a revealing light on big business corruption. Lapidus overdoes the melodrama at times as the various stories converge on the somewhat contrived ending, but his picture of Swedish social debilitation is powerful stuff. (Nov.)