The Bucket List

Agent John Adderley, Book 1

By: Peter Mohlin, Peter Nystrom

Narrated by: Dion Graham

A brilliant new Scandinavian noir series from Sweden introducing Agent John Adderley, already sold in 15 countries

The Bucket List is the gripping debut novel by writing team Peter Mohlin and Peter Nyström, launching a stunning new Nordic noir series featuring Swedish-American FBI Agent John Adderley. Like the best writers of the genre, such as Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbø, Mohlin and Nyström combine a strong crime story with a novel of psychological richness and depth for an irresistible listen.

The Bucket List starts when undercover FBI Agent John Adderley wakes up in a hospital bed in Baltimore with extensive gunshot wounds. He knows he’s lucky to be alive. And just a few beds away is the man who 24 hours ago pointed a gun to his head. Ten years earlier in Sweden, Emelie, the young heiress to (H&M-esque) clothing empire AckWe has gone missing. When local police find blood and semen in a deserted area, they arrest a teenage boy. He denies the charges and since the body is never found, he can’t be prosecuted.

Back to the present, Emelie’s high-profile cold-case file is sent to Agent Adderley, now living in Sweden (where he’s not lived since he was a boy) in witness protection, hiding until he can testify against the drug cartel he infiltrated back in the States. Adderley is determined to solve Emelie’s case, but, at the same time, he knows that the drug cartel has a price on his head....

©2021 Peter Mohlin and Peter Nystrom (P)2021 Recorded Books

The pace was very good!

The reveal was who I guessed it would be, but the tension was well plotted! Like I expect a good Scandinavian detective novel to be. I will always wonder why the best detective stories come from Northern Europe!

Engrossing

I like everything about this book! Great storyline. Great character development. Awesome narration. The plot moved fast and dialogue was smart and believable.

Started out well...

then became increasingly far-fetched and ridiculous. A former undercover cop goes into FBI witness protection in Sweden as a police officer. His first assignment is a cold case disappearance where his half-brother is the prime suspect.

He manages to dig up the missing girl's dead body in a day after 10 years of no leads, then tells half of Sweden who he really is (but shhhh! don't tell anyone). He couldn't do more to draw attention to himself and his true identity- visiting his mom in a nursing home, visiting his brother at his home, digging up the body himself, paying cash for a showy new car in 5 minutes, emailing his former undercover colleague - who may be foe rather than friend.

Then he meets with his brother's female public defender multiple times while she is getting a massage in a Thai massage parlor?? Right. Oh, and our hero just happened to inherit $20 million from his father, who owned a bodega, which doesn't seem suspicious at all.

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this book, but it's definitely not me.

why?

A feast of racist tropes. A cowboy cop, who can't follow a single rule or law goes to Sweden to save the day since small town cops can't. Not much of a story but entertaining.