Christoffer Carlsson Books In Order

Publication Order of Leo Junker Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Christoffer Carlsson
Christoffer Carlsson was born and grew up in Halmstad, on Sweden’s west coast. He earned his PhD in Criminology from the University of Stockholm where he’s a lecturer.

In the year 2012, he was awarded the International European Society of Criminologys Young Criminologist Award. “October is the Coldest Month” won the Best Crime Novel of the Year for Young Readers, Swedish Crime Writer’s Academy in 2016.

“October is the Coldest Month” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2017. The police come knocking on the door looking for the older brother of Vega Gillberg, age sixteen. She’s not heard from him in days now, however she’s got to find him before the police can. Jakob was involved in a horrible crime. What nobody knows is that Vega was also there.

In the rural Swedish community that the Gillbergs live, life’s tough, the people living there are even tougher, and old feuds never die. While Vega sets off to track her brother down, she has to survive this series of threatening encounters in a deadly landscape. And if that was not bad enough, she is dealing with the longing that she feels for this boy she’s sworn to just forget, and all the mixed-up feelings that she has for her brother’s best friend.

During this raw and damp week in October, the door to the adult world opens, and Vega realizes that once she’s crossed the threshold, there’s no going back.

“The Invisible Man From Salem” is the first novel in the “Leo Junker” series and was released in 2015. A young woman is shot dead in her own apartment, during the last days of summer. Three floors up, the blue lights of the cop cars awaken Leo Junker, a disgraced former officer. Even though he’s suspended from the force, he cannot keep away for too long. Bluffing his way into the scene, he examines the dead woman, seeing that she is grasping this cheap necklace, one that he immediately recognizes.

While Leo works on this rogue investigation to catch this killer, this series of frightening connections begin emerging, connecting the murder to his own troubled youth in Salem, this suburb of Stockholm where racial and social tensions run high. It forces him to confront this long ago incident which changed his life forever.

Now, in the backstreets and shadowed in alleyways, and the decaying suburbs that are ruled by Stockholm’s criminal underground, the search for this young lady’s killer, and the truth about Leo’s past, starts.

“The Falling Detective” is the second novel in the “Leo Junker” series and was released in 2016. Leo Junker has returned to the snake pit, aka the homicide unit, after this murder case where he was the intended victim. Still battling against his inner demons and abusing prescription drugs, he is doing his level best to appear fit for duty.

Then Thomas Heber, a sociologist, is discovered murdered. Only clues the cops have to work with are Heber’s rather cryptic research notes, which indicate that somebody else’s life is also currently under some kind of a threat. Whose?

Leo gets put on the Heber case with Gabriel Birck (his old nemesis), however when this case is abruptly reassigned to the Swedish Security Service, he realizes that this isn’t some ordinary street mugging. Pretty soon, he finds he’s entangled in this clash between one racist gang and their rivals, and enters into this war that’s being waged in the streets, in the shadows, and in the public eye.

“Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend” is the third novel in the “Leo Junker” series and was released in 2017. Detective Junker’s mentor, Charles Levin, who is the same man that betrayed him, is now dead.

Now Leo has to find out why. He has to follow the thread of the dead guy’s own tragedies, which is going to inexorably lead to the betrayal of Charles Levin’s own soul, and the soul of his whole nation.

Inspired by a series of murders and scandals which rocked Sweden during the 1980s, especially the killing of journalist Cats Falck, Christoffer tells a chilling version of his own about what happened during these dark days.

“Blaze Me a Sun” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 2023. February of 1986. The Halland cops get this call from a guy that claims he just attacked his first victim. He says that he’ll do it again, but then the line cuts out. By the time police officer Sven Jorgensson gets to the crime scene, the woman is taking her final breath. For Sven, this is going to prove to be a decisive moment for him. That same night, Sweden is plunged into a state of shock after the prime minister’s murder. Could there potentially be a connection?

While Sven gets obsessed with this case, two more are victim. Sven spends years being haunted by these murders he cannot solve, fearing that this murderer is going to strike again. Having failed to catch him, he retires from the force, passing the obsession on to his son, who just joined the force in order to be closer with his dad.

Then decades later, the case unexpectedly resurfaces when this novelist comes back home to Halland amid a sputtering career and a failed marriage. The writer befriends the retired cop, who helps out the novelist, and our narrator, unspool the various strands of this engrossing story about a community confronting its legacies and shames.

This is both a crime novel and a gripping study of how we struggle to understand our own lives. It’s a rare crime novel which has you turning the pages in suspense, while also almost moving readers to tears. Fans of the novel like how this is almost like a Russian doll of a mystery, you believe you know exactly where this book is going, but you don’t.

The book is profoundly poignant and thrilling, and thrums with this relentless tension which culminates in one of the most devastating yet satisfying conclusions readers have read in quite a long while.