Annika Bengtzon is a crime reporter at the Stockholm tabloid Kvällspressen. When the series opens in The Bomber, she is a young journalist covering the explosion of a sports arena, and the case launches both her career and a pattern that will repeat across eleven books: Annika gets close to a story, gets closer than she should, and the personal cost adds up.
Liza Marklund based Annika partly on her own experience in Swedish journalism. Annika has the instincts and stubbornness of a good reporter, but the series is as much about her private life as her investigations. Her marriage to Thomas, a government press officer, runs through the books as a troubled thread. She raises two children while working hours that no family schedule can survive, and the tension between ambition and domesticity drives much of the series’ emotional weight.
Over the course of the eleven novels, Annika covers terrorism, honor killings, arms trafficking, organized crime, and government corruption. She rises through the newsroom ranks, but each success comes with damage. The final book, The Final Word (2017), brings her story to a close after nearly two decades.
Reading Order
See the complete Annika Bengtzon reading order for all books in the series.