Reviews

• “A dark novel with a matching temperament, told in a fast-paced style, and the first book in a trilogy that stands out markedly from the slow Scandinavian crime novels in the vein of Henning Mankell, glancing as it does toward Tarantino's territory and his world populated with dumb crooks.”

• “Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney meet James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane.”

• “The world of criminals is described in a frightfully authentic way.”

• “Easy Money is an entertaining book with a smooth narration. Once the book is finished, the world of Easy Money stays long in mind. So intensively does Lapidus affect his readers.”

• “A modern mafia story with characters so smoothly narrated, that the book is hard to let go.”

• “Lapidus draws a merciless picture of the nightlife of his home town. In Sweden, the book was an instant hit. In Finland, the book is expected to have a similar kind of success.”

• “A very fine thriller. Craftily composed, and the social couleur locale appears to be spot on as well. Vivacious, brutal, touching at times, and as fast-paced as you’d want it to be: Lapidus can hold his own very well.”

• “Easy Money is a terrific book about the underworld of Stockholm. The perspective of the criminal is refreshing. The three storylines that start intermingling early on in the book render it enormous speed. /…/ An absolute must-read.”

• “Has the Millenium bug struck again in Sweden? Yes, because Jens Lapidus has written a breathtaking book about the underworld of Stockholm.”

• “Easy Money is a raw and rebellious thriller about Stockholm’s underworld. It’s a novel, but it could easily all be true. Language-wise it makes a remarkable use of a host of vernaculars, which in addition gives it a highly authentic feel. Lapidus’s writing sweeps you along with its short and rhythmic sentences that are fast and engaging. Very professionally, Lapidus alternates speed with slower intervals. Ultimately, it’s the superbly drawn characters that make Easy Money an utterly captivating read. Sharp and entertaining.”

• “Reading Easy Money is like a ride on a train thundering along at break-neck speed. It’s fast and furious and written in a flowing urban language. Jens Lapidus allows every one of his characters to speak in their own, idiosyncratic voice – criminal gangsters and materialistic twenty-somethings alike. Apart from being a superb thriller this book offers a parable on the complexity of morality and the human condition.”

• “Lapidus is a shockingly good writer … after this impressive debut there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Lapidus has the potential to become a truly big author.”

• “Easy Money is an effective cornucopia of sex and violence, hookers and pickpockets in a Stockholm of good and bad. /…/ An efficiently told, staggering gangster novel.”

• “Jens Lapidus has accomplished an outstanding crime novel centering around the gangster scene of Stockholm’s underbelly.”

• “A new Swedish comet.”

• “There can be little doubt that Easy Money is among the best Nordic crime novels this year.”

• “The lives of the three men cross paths, their stories are elegantly tied together, and we are made to feel the fear, the paranoia, the smell of money and cheap happiness. Easy Money produces a believable portrait of the in-scene that the hip crowd wants to be part of, and it does it with compassion, distance, and freshness. No sentimentality, but a chunk of present-day Stockholm.”

• “To me, Easy Money stands out as one of the best foreign crime novels published in Poland this year. /…/ Easy Money contains everything that makes up a good crime story: fast-paced action and expressive characters, and it shows society in a bright and interesting light. /…/ Any questions?”

• “Jens Lapidus’ Easy Money is the most well-informed portrayal of Stockholm’s organized criminal world that I have ever come across.”

• “James Ellroy in Swedish.”

• “Damn good, Lapidus. /…/ It is so entertaining, so much a thermometer in the ass of our time, so finished that many readers will not even see how close it comes to reality. /…/ This guy – where did he come from? – simply comes out with a novel that is the best crime novel at this time. Sorry, Arne Dahl and Roslund & Hellström, there’s a new guy in town.”

• “It is not only the tersely realistic account, but also the realistic use of slang that makes for an unusually strong first novel. (…) this is damn good!”

• “A fascinating and frightening portrait of Stockholm’s underworld today.”

• “Jens Lapidus has written this fall’s hottest novel: you take Scorsese’s Casino and Goodfellas, spice it up with young Swedish upper-class and their partying among the royal family in Stockholm, and you get Easy Money. /…/ The hottest novel this fall. Suspenseful, well-written, sad and with a sense of humor that can only be called twisted. You laugh to the point where you think you are crazy. Really. Has everything one could wish for if you like hard-boiled novels. Also poses important questions of integration and criminality.”

• “It is James Ellroy in Swedish, from time to time incredibly suspenseful and a first novel with ambition.”

• “Jens Lapidus is a Swedish first novelist with the same stylistic acuteness and massive contents [as Simon Beckett], working as a lawyer – and obviously in possession of first-hand knowledge about Stockholm’s criminal world. That he has read his James Ellroy, Ian Rankin and laid a foundation upon Hammet does not make it any worse. Easy Money is a furiously fast novel, told in a choppy style. The absence of cynicism is blatant. It is without a doubt a debut to take very seriously.”

• “… this fall’s most frightening novel is Easy Money by the debutant and lawyer Jens Lapidus. /…/ Broken immigrant Swedish, official jargon and economics jargon is relentlessly mixed with the genuine, hard quality of the role models Lehane, Chandler and Ellroy. A worrying novel from the backside of Stockholm. Read it!”

• “Jens Lapidus has written a novel that belongs to the most frightening I have read. …liberated of the political correctness that so often works to censor literature. The style is hard-boiled. Muscular. Acid and full of four-letter words. The pages reek with the sadism of the perpetrators and the helpless hatred of the victims.”

• “First novelist Jens Lapidus has written one of the toughest accounts of Stockholm’s underworld that I have read. It is a coke-dizzy, sweaty and fast-paced odyssey… Sure, the settings have been portrayed before – but never in this contemporary style that almost takes your breath away… a hard-boiled view of a Stockholm that might as well have been spelled New York or Los Angeles. I am mighty impressed! /…/ This hip, intelligent up-to-date mumbo jumbo is linked to high – and met – literary ambition. Not bad at all. Respect.”

• “Lapidus’ debut has every chance of becoming a commercial success among the male reading public who normally turn West in search of good reads – to John Grisham, Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, etc. But Easy Money is more than a prospective bestseller. His role models are obviously to be found among the more hard-boiled and well-reputed crime writers, such as Raymond Chandler, Dennis Lehane and James Ellroy…”

• “Easy Money has every possibility of becoming the defining crime novel of Stockholm’s underworld. /…/ He has succeed enormously well with his first novel. The dialog is brisk and he switches elegantly between the slang of the suburbs, the local lingo chewed on Söder or the language of the bratty rich kids on Östermalm. The characters in the story are convincing. /…/ In short: I’m over the moon about Lapidus’ book.”

• “Easy Money is a new and completely different voice in the Swedish backwaters of crime. It was about time, to say the least.”

• “An impressive first novel. /…/ Easy Money is a solid, rich and in part very witty page-turner about the criminal world in Stockholm, where cocaine is the prime mover. /…/ The odds that Lapidus has had Ellroy’s White Jazz within reach while working on this book are ridiculously low. The language is a decoction of the heated, feverish, choppy tirades of the American writer. Panting. Feverish. Awesome. /…/ Jens Lapidus is a big literary promise. Nobody else in Sweden does what he does here. Daring. Hip. Awesome.”

• “Straight-forward and without compromising, he describes the brutal violence that strikes so many people; and it is the greed, the desire for money, that drives people to use the violence. /…/ Jens Lapidus’ employs a no-nonsense style, the dialog is acrid and the story itself is tough. Jens Lapidus has the necessary insights in order to give color and feel to the story. This is a book well worth reading, and my guess is that Jens Lapidus will becomes one the fall’s most read Swedish crime novelists.”

• “…a phenomenally fast-paced and gripping first novel about the life on the back side of Stureplan.”

• “The style is brisk, choppy, and effective. The credibility of the novel is high, which makes reading it even more fascinating.”

• “Swedish crime fiction has for so long been about detectives with alcohol problems and over-ambitious female journalists that we have forgotten to link the genre to originality. That thought strikes you while reading Jens Lapidus’ hard-boiled Stockholm thriller.”

• “Lapidus has picked up the American style that is represented by James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane. That is, raw stories with a language unfit for Sunday school. /…/ …it is suspenseful and you can almost see why the main characters have turned out the way they are portrayed. It is actually really well done…”

• “Easy Money is a gripping, hard boiled crime novel, which has a real ring of authenticity due to the author's professional familiarity with the Swedish underworld. Characterization and plotting are fast and furious, and show the moral vacuum of gangster life down to the nitty gritty of the gym and drug regime of Mrado, and the banal label-consciousness of JW. This book is also distinctive from a stylistic point of view, as the author has consciously chosen a fast, punchy realist style salted with slang to mirror the aggressive lifestyle of his characters. Easy Money represents a new development in Scandinavian crime fiction, a breakaway from the more typical socially conscious police procedurals, or books that feature journalists as proxy sleuths. This novel reinforces themes of much of the recent quality fiction and non-fiction regarding the black economy such asCollusion, McMafia and Gomorrah, with regard to the way organized crime is mirroring more and more the language and techniques of big business, and how desire for money can override conventional ethnic or traditional gang boundaries. I look forward to the translation of the next two books in this trilogy.”

• “Easy Money eschews ice and angst for clipped, classically American noir à la Ellroy and Lehane … There's much to enjoy.”

• “Easy Money delves into the dark side of Sweden. /…/ This book has sold more than half a million copies in Sweden and is a brutal story of Stockholm’s seedy underworld.”

• “Easy Money: drugs and weapons in old Stockholm… /…/ Influenced by the American tradition and especially by authors like James Ellroy, this book is not a typical Scandinavian crime novel.”

• “Lapidus: a new promising star in the dark Swedish sky. /…/ First novel in the Stockholm Noir Trilogy, Easy Money is an amazingly fast-paced thriller. /…/ Easy Money is an intense, absorbing and fast-paced novel with short sentences and a brutally realistic dialogue.”

• “Jens Lapidus has been compared by international critics with authors like Henning Mankell and James Ellroy.”

• “Easy Money is a detective novel without detectives; its protagonists are drug addicts, prostitutes and thieves living in Stockholm’s gloomy underworld. They all want to make easy money.”

• “In his first novel Easy Money, young Swedish lawyer Jens Lapidus makes a portrayal of Sweden that sharply contrasts with the idyllic image of the Scandinavian country.”

• “The new Swedish sensation. /…/ As precise as a surgeon, Jens Lapidus makes an incision in the Swedish society and shows us its rough, indifferent and divided nature.”

• “[A] searing debut of Swedish criminal defense attorney Lapidus. /…/ This sprawling novel, full of offensive language, exposes moral degradation of every stripe while relentlessly depicting Sweden's underworld and the reasons it exists and grows.”

• “The first-time novelist, an attorney who's defended some of the most notorious figures in Sweden's underworld, creates a magnetically rich, murky man's world in which women are mostly chattel, the police remain mostly offstage and nothing is ever personal, just business. Inevitably, however, it's their personal ties and quests that most endanger Jorge, Mrado and JW. The closest models for this sprawling, ambitious debut are gangster movies from Scarface to Mesrine.”

• “If you're hardy enough to tackle crime narratives drenched in vitriol, grit your teeth and tackle Jens Lapidus's lacerating Stockholm Noir trilogy: Easy Money is the first volume. Lapidus paints a more cosmopolitan canvas than other writers – not to mention employing a far grimmer and more nihilistic use of the genre, with nary a comforting Swedish copper in sight. … The vividly evoked world of the books is Stygian and uncompromising, with an unvarnished picture of the criminal fraternities of Stockholm … The other element that shows Lapidus treading a different path from most Scandinavian contemporaries is the flavoursome use of language. Easy Money is written in an in-your-face combination of street argot and new word coinages.”

• “Jens Lapidus is the latest Scandinavian storytelling success, drawing on his knowledge of the Stockholm crime scene as one of his nation's most prominent defence lawyers. Having represented some of the country's most notorious criminals, he is perfectly qualified to write about the schemes and dreams that drive the Stockholm underworld.”

• “An intelligent and original thriller that displays as much wit as it does muscle . . . Lapidus skillfully weaves together the narratives of characters from every level of the Swedish criminal underworld . . . Lapidus is a fantastic writer of action, but he also knows when to leave the guns holstered and build suspense.”

• “Hands-down the best gangster thriller in years.”

• “Lapidus writes like James Ellroy, explicit prose evoking a brutal criminal universe that threatens, like a black hole, to engulf civilized society.”

• “Mr. Lapidus does not disappoint. His climactic shoot-out scene would make Tom Clancy cough and take respectful notice. … Easy Money is raw and dark, with crisp dialogue that shouts authenticity.”