Within the Circle

Swedish novelist Dahl (the Detective Sam Berger series) impresses in this taut procedural about a frantic search for a bomber who selects victims based on their complicity in global warming. Insp. Eva Nyman of Stockholm’s National Operations Department is assigned to probe the potential connection between two recent deaths: the first victim, steel executive Alf Stiernström, died in a car explosion that was initially deemed an accident; the second, ad executive Jesper Sahlgren, was killed by a package bomb sent to his office, where he was drawing up ads for an oil company. Early in her investigation, Nyman receives an anonymous letter that alludes to the two crimes (“It has begun. The clock no longer ticks of its own volition; it has to be wound with violence”) and threatens a third. Her team scrambles to identify the potential target, and Nyman becomes increasingly suspicious that the perpetrator may be her former mentor on the force, whose idiosyncratic vocabulary matches the killer’s manifestos. Dahl’s crackerjack plotting is enhanced by nuanced characterizations of Nyman and her colleagues, whose inner lives are given equal weight with the story’s procedural elements. This deserves a sequel. Agent: Tor Jonasson, Salomonsson Agency. (Feb.)