Clinch

Author/Guide: Martin Holmén

Why a Booktrail?

1930s: A boxer in Stockholm is about to face his biggest fight yet – and this one’s not in the ring.

ISBN: 978-1782271925
Translator: Henning Koch
Genre: Crime, Thriller

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What you need to know before your trail

The writing’s on the wall for Harry Kvist. Once a notorious boxer, he now spends his days drinking, and his nights chasing debts amongst the pimps, prostitutes and petty thieves of 1930s Stockholm. When women can’t satisfy him, men can. But one biting winter’s night he pays a threatening visit to a debtor named Zetterberg, and when the man is found dead shortly afterwards, all eyes are on Kvist.

Determined to avoid yet another stint in prison, Kvist sets out to track down the only person who can clear his name. His hunt will lead him from the city’s slums, gangster hideouts and gambling dens to its most opulent hotels and elite nightclubs. It will bring him face to face with bootleggers and whores, aristocrats and murderers. It will be the biggest fight of his life.

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Travel Guide

Stockholm

1930s Stockholm was a very dark place indeed. Homosexuality is illegal in the 1930s in Sweden and so Harry is interviewed since he is known to the police regarding his sexual appetites. This is not the Stockholm with the pretty yellow and pastel buildings on the harbour front postcards you see in the tourist boards. This is the visceral, ugly, seedy Stockholm where your search for someone who could clear your name in a murder charge is not going to be easy let alone even possible.

This is a Stockholm buried by snow and slush – struggling to breathe through the poverty and the onset of war. The rumblings of war are getting louder by the day and although Hitler is a just a story in the newspapers at the moment, it’s quite clear what is going on outside of Sweden but in countries very close by.

The book has a lot of detail about the streets of the city and the way Harry navigates the corners and the trams. Where the doorways are where it’s best to hide in order to see who might be following him. Or to turn a blind eye as someone is beaten up in an alleyway. There’s also the thrill of Langholmen prison where Harry spent a few years which is now a hostel you can stay in for real.

Even the nice sides to Stockholm take on a tinge of danger and intrigue – Kronobergen Park and Bellevue park are where incidents occur which will make you shiver and where “TheGoons” seem to have their horrific HQ.