In a buy before the London Book Fair officially got underway, Laura Tisdel at Little, Brown bought world English rights, in conjunction with Ed Wood at Sphere in the U.K., to a Swedish thriller that’s being shopped by a new agency. In addition to the U.S. and U.K., Chain of Events, by Fredrik Olsson, a Swedish novelist and screenwriter, has been acquired in Germany and Holland, with Warner Brothers optioning the film rights.
Jonas Axelsson, a former editorial director at Bonniers, is representing the book, as a member of a new Swedish agency called Partners In Stories. Axelsson said the new agency, which is a joint venture with the Swedish publisher Natur & Kultur, "plans to produce in diverse formats, including books." To that extent it intends to go beyond selling rights for translation and for film/TV adaptation, into representing artists in all their professional endeavors, potentially publishing their works direct to market.
Tisdel said the book, which is set in the near future, features "thriller-pacing and an ominous mood” and that the book is “riveting from the get-go." The novel follows a washed-up cryptologist and his ex-wife, a go-getter journalist, who, after a series of strange happenings, are pitted against, as Tisdel put it, "a ticking clock with more than they know at stake."
