The Living and the Dead cover art

The Living and the Dead

A Novel About a Crime

Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Living and the Dead

By: Christoffer Carlsson, Rachel Willson-Broyles - translator
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $30.43

Buy Now for $30.43

About this listen

THE AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

One town. Two crimes. Twenty years of silence.

A “brooding and brilliant” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) murder mystery set in a rural Swedish town, where one community’s secrets will be laid bare over the next twenty years . . .

“All the makings of a page-turning thriller, but with an emotional depth that is truly rare.”—FREDRIK BACKMAN
“The finest crime writer we have in Sweden.”—DAVID LAGERCRANTZ
“Carlsson is to the police procedural what Cormac McCarthy is to the Western.”—ANTHONY MARRA
“A thriller rendered with precision and beauty.”—ADAM WHITE
“Carlsson plumbs what can and cannot be known about human lives and criminal investigations.”—THE NEW YORK TIMES

“A must for Nordic noir and psychological mystery fans.”—LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW)
"Carlsson is the creme de la creme of Nordic noir.”—BOOKPAGE (STARRED REVIEW)


One of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of the Fall

WINNER OF THE BEST NORDIC CRIME NOVEL (THE GLASS KEY AWARD) • WINNER OF THE BEST SWEDISH CRIME NOVEL AWARD • WINNER OF DENMARK’S PALLE ROSENKRANTZ PRIZE FOR BEST TRANSLATED CRIME NOVEL

Small towns sometimes have a voice of their own.

On a snowy winter night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together outside a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, the two seventeen-year-olds imagine they will remain so forever. But by the next morning, a corpse is found in the trunk of a car, and each boy is a suspect in the murder. Each has something they want to conceal from the police. And from the other.

The hunt for the killer will take more than twenty years. It will see the lead detective leave the force forever. And it won’t end until a second body turns up in similar circumstances, and the tight-knit community’s secrets are finally brought to light.

In The Living and the Dead, renowned criminologist Christoffer Carlsson masterfully transports us to the fields and forests of western Sweden, a region of farmers and truck drivers torn apart by economic injustice and self-deceit—a world where the portal between the living and the dead is flung wide open and where no one is entirely innocent.
Crime Fiction International Mystery & Crime Mystery Police Procedurals Suspense Thriller & Suspense
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.