I am a lawyer and a writer. But the literary world is pretty new for me. A few years ago, I was still just a lawyer. I vividly remember what ignited the spark. Why I began to write.

The trial had been going on for four days. Three guys had broken into an apartment and assaulted and robbed several people inside. We had reached the final segment (before the closing arguments), which we in Sweden call personalia. This is when the defendants’ background, education, psychological status, social circumstances, etc., are brought to the attention of the court in order to help the judge apply an appropriate sentence.

The defendants were young—just eighteen years old. In trials involving young people, this particular judge always asked the same question: “Where do you see yourself in five years? Who are you in five years?”

She wanted to extend a hand, offer them the chance to explain that they at least had good ambitions and intentions for the future. Usually, the responses she got were along the lines of: I am going to make something of my life, get a job or an education.

But not that day.

That day, the opposite happened.

I recall how the guys stood up and started screaming. You must understand that the mere act of standing up is sensational in a Swedish courtroom. In Sweden, no one stands during a trial; not the prosecutor, not the witnesses, not even the defense attorneys. A Swedish trial is a very calm and civilized affair, even when it is dealing with horrendous events.

And they didn’t just stand there hollering—they screamed at the judge. “You don’t get it, you don’t understand the reality we live in, you don’t understand that it’s natural for us to do what we do!”

When I came home that night I turned my computer on and wrote my first lines of fiction. Those lines grew into a short story about an assault and robbery in an apartment.

But I didn’t write from the perspective of the police officer who arrives at the crime scene and begins to investigate the crime. And I didn’t write from the perspective of a victim, either. I wrote my story as seen through the eyes of a young perpetrator, a criminal.

This is what I thought: If, in Sweden today, there are people for whom it is natural to commit crimes, for whom crime is a lifestyle, then it was important to depict crimes from their perspective.

The Swedish crime genre has not exactly been known for its realism. Most often, the format has drawn inspiration from the British whodunit novels, where an investigator’s investigation of a murder is central to the plot.

I decided to change that.

In Never Fuck Up, there is a moment when one of the book’s protagonists, Mahmoud al Askori, robs and assaults a number of people in an apartment. I allowed my very first short story to flow into the novel.

It is a tale derived from the real Sweden.

My job and my writing are intricately connected. I am a lawyer—every day, I meet people who are accused of committing crimes, many of them guilty. And it is from those experiences that I draw my inspiration.

—A Necessary Action
by Per Wahlöö

—Aftershock
by Andrew Vachss

As a writer and as a reader, I am a sucker for atmospherics. My idea of the best possible fictional journey is to be taken deep into a forbidden world, accompanied by interesting characters alert to their surroundings. Drop me off anywhere—a safe house, a war zone, the slums of a benighted city—and I’ll be happy for the duration, as long as you unravel the social dynamics and translate all of the sights, noises and smells.

Martin Cruz Smith did that for me in Polar Star, way back in 1989. As a reader, I was enthralled. As a writer, I never forgot the lesson.

It was his second novel to feature Russian detective Arkady Renko, a mordant fellow with an independent streak operating within a Soviet system that demanded obedience. The first Renko novel, Gorky Park, was a revelation in its own right, with its peek inside life in Soviet Moscow.

But in Polar Star, Smith went far deeper. He penetrated the closed society of a Soviet factory ship afloat on the Bering Sea, where hundreds of workers were employed below decks, gutting and processing fish hauled from arctic waters. Renko, banished to obscurity for his previous misdeeds, is laboring on the “slime line” with all the other seaborne serfs until the body of a crew member turns up in a net with the daily catch. The ship’s captain, aware of Renko’s background, asks him to solve the crime even as the political officer begins pushing for a quick verdict of suicide.

Those ingredients alone would make for a fine read. But Smith gives us further layers of this shipboard world. Among the crew there is even a gang culture with its own bullying pecking order. Add all those knives from the slime line and, well, a man too interested in seeking the truth could end up as gutted as a haddock, especially when his curiosity begins to endanger the crew’s one big perk—a promised stopover for hard-currency shopping at a U.S. outpost in the Aleutian Islands. Given the choice between blue jeans and VCRs or the satisfactory conclusion to a murder case, these workers of the world would rather unite in favor of the shopping spree.

And, so, there you are alongside Renko, breathing the same briny air, wiping sweat from your brow as you slit yet another fish while your toes go numb and mistrust steals into your thoughts. Read this in bed on a muggy summer night, and by the time you fall asleep you’ll be worrying about frostbite. But be forewarned: After this journey, sketchy treatment of exotic locales will no longer be sufficient. Polar Star does that rare thing. It forever raises your standards.

It all begins with a shot: a Salvation Army singer is killed, mid-performance, on a crowded Oslo street. Inspector Harry Hole has little to work with. There’s no suspect, no weapon, and no motive. As the search closes in and the killer grows more desperate, Harry’s chase takes him from Oslo to the most forbidden corners of the former Yugoslavia and back home again—to face the true darkness that lives on his own doorstep.

So, where does someone get the inspiration to write a book as ruthless and suspenseful as this? In this clip from a video interview with Nesbø, he recounts a meeting he had in the Balkans that led him to write The Redeemer:

Of course, there’s more to a great thriller than the plot. The Redeemer is cinematic in its scope and structure, a quality Nesbø attributes to his love of movies. In the clip below, find out why he feels crime films are a bigger influence on his writing than crime novels.

For more about The Redeemer and on the Harry Hole series, head over to Nesbø’s official website.

Ingeniously, the mysteries of Inferno begin before you even open the book. The cover itself has secrets—secrets that can only be unlocked with the official Inferno app. Download the app from Apple or Google, then hold it over the book cover (or an image of the book cover) to see what’s hidden inside.

Plus, the app gives you direct access to the #InfernoSymbols Contest. Find, photograph, and share all seven Inferno symbols on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #InfernoSymbols, and you’ll be entered for your chance to win one of seven hardcover copies of Inferno autographed by Dan Brown.

Get a preview of the app below (click to enlarge):

Ready to unravel the mysteries of Inferno? We’ll give you a head start. Below are three videos, each one representing one of the seven deadly sins. Seven sins, seven symbols–what could it mean? Better start reading now.

Wrath:

Pride:

Lust:

Read on for “A Piece of the City,” an exclusive story from the collection in which Vachss takes us straight to the heart of a conflict between street gangs.

—Fireproof
by Alex Kava

Directed by Kimberly Peirce from a screenplay by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the film looks to be a real chiller. Watch the trailer below—preferably in broad daylight. With the lights on.

Want more Carrie? Visit the official movie site for updates and to read an excerpt from Stephen King’s book.

Barred from rejoining the police force, Harry takes on a solitary, increasingly dangerous investigation that takes him deep into the world of the most virulent drug to ever hit the streets of Oslo. Phantom is a twisting page-turner of a thriller, as clever and dark as Harry himself.

In this exclusive Weekly Lizard excerpt, Harry make his return to the city he once called home.