PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS

Gang warfare erupts in Göteborg, catching DI Irene Huss (Who Watcheth, 2016, etc.), her family, and her Violent Crimes Unit in the crossfire.

There’s never been any love lost between Gothia MC and the Gangster Lions, but the new round of outrages kicked off when Gothia member Patrik Karlsson is doused with gasoline and set afire inside a former Gothia stronghold seems more horrifying than ever. Maybe that’s because it’s not such a new round after all. Shortly after Jan-Erik Månsson, the old friend whose gambling debts forced him to sell Glady’s restaurant to Irene’s husband, Krister, disappears and Anton Fritzell, Glady’s hardworking new fish chef, is nearly killed by a car bomb clearly intended for Krister, the forensics team identifies the explosive as the same stuff that blew up Soran Siljac, a refugee from the former Yugoslavia and restaurant worker who refused to pay the gangs for protection last year. After a pregnant and extended silence between Irene and her husband, he acknowledges that he’s been approached by a pair of Gothia members who insist that with the purchase of Glady’s comes the responsibility for assuming Jan-Erik’s unpaid debts. Irene announces her terms for dealing with the situation: “They had to vanish without a trace.” Krister and their twin daughters leave town and go into hiding; Irene goes to ground uninvited in Superintendent Tommy Persson’s home so that she can continue to work the case. You have to wonder how safe she is even there, though, once evidence mounts that at least one of the gangs has infiltrated the Violent Crimes Unit itself.

Middling, professional work notable for its high body count, its number of guilty parties, and its understandable and contagious lack of interest in arousing much curiosity about which gang members killed exactly which others.