 First edition (Swedish) | |
| Author | Liza Marklund & James Patterson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States & Sweden |
| Language | Swedish & English |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company, Piratförlaget |
Publication date | January 2010 |
Published in English | August 2010 |
| Media type | print (hardback) |
| Pages | 432 |
| ISBN | 0-316-08951-6 |
The Postcard Killers (2010) is a crime novel by Swedish writer Liza Marklund and American author James Patterson.
A young American couple is murdered while vacationing in Europe. The young woman's father, Jacob Kanon, is a New York City police investigator who travels to Europe to hunt down the murderer. Other young couples in France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have since then been killed and the evidence points in the same direction. Kanon joins up with Scandinavian journalist Dessie Larsson to find the murderer. Kanon and Larsson must work against time since every murder is preceded by a postcard to a regional daily.
The book was first published in Sweden in January 2010 and the English language edition was published in August the same year. At the end of August, it reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller List, making Liza Marklund the second Swedish author (the first one being Stieg Larsson with the Millennium series) ever to reach the number one spot. [1]
Patterson had read all of Marklund's books and contacted her asking if the two would write a thriller together. She had not planned to write any novel during 2009 and intended to spend the year studying Spanish. Marklund visited Patterson in his home in Florida where the two discussed ideas and concepts. Patterson later sketched out a foundation synopsis and sent it to her. Marklund went through it, added things she thought were missing and sent it back to Patterson, who in turn added more comments. The creation of this novel included a lot of e-mailing back and forth. Marklund wrote the first draft and Patterson the second draft. Both authors have co-written books in the past, but never across the language barrier. Marklund says she reads English just as fast as Swedish but she wrote in Swedish and then had her drafts translated into English before they were sent to Patterson. [2] [3]
Patterson told Swedish newspaper Expressen that Hollywood studios had shown an interest in the book. The paper listed Paul Greengrass ( The Bourne Supremacy , United 93 ) and Gavin O'Connor ( Miracle ) as possible directors. He also speculated that the fact that Marklund hails from the same nation as Stieg Larsson had fuelled the interest. [4]
After several years in development hell, the film adaptation, entitled The Postcard Killings , began production in March 2019, with Danis Tanović directing, [5] and starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Jacob Kanon [6] and Cush Jumbo as Dessie Larsson (renamed Dessie Leonard in the film). [7] Originally, Janusz Kamiński was hired to direct, [8] with Patrick Dempsey as Kanon, [9] and Dakota Fanning [10] and later Britt Robertson as Leonard. [11]
Famke Beumer Janssen is a Dutch actress. She played Xenia Onatopp in GoldenEye (1995), Jean Grey / Phoenix in the X-Men film series (2000–2014), and Lenore Mills in the Taken film trilogy (2008–2014). In 2008, she was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for Integrity by the United Nations. She made her directorial debut with Bringing Up Bobby in 2011. She is also known for her roles in the Netflix original series Hemlock Grove (2013–2015), FX's Nip/Tuck (2003–2010), and ABC's How to Get Away with Murder (2014–2020). Janssen starred in the 2017 NBC crime thriller The Blacklist: Redemption.
Eva Elisabeth "Liza" Marklund is a Swedish journalist and crime writer.
Rolf Åke Mikael Nyqvist was a Swedish actor. Educated at the School of Drama in Malmö, he became well known for playing police officer Banck in the 1997–1998 Martin Beck TV series and for his leading role in the 2002 film Grabben i graven bredvid. He was internationally recognized for his role as Mikael Blomkvist in the acclaimed Millennium series and as the lead villains in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and John Wick. In 2004, he played the leading role in As It Is in Heaven which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 77th Academy Awards. 2018, Posthumous release, ‘Hunter Killer” Captain Sergei Andropov
The Knutby murder refers to a murder in the village of Knutby east of Uppsala in Sweden, on January 10, 2004.
Catrine da Costa is a Swedish murder victim whose remains were found in Solna, north of Stockholm, in 1984. Da Costa had been dismembered, and parts of her body were found in plastic bags on 18 July and 7 August. The case is known as styckmordsrättegången. How da Costa died has not been established as her vital organs and head have never been found.
Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson was a Swedish writer, journalist, and activist. He is best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after he died of a sudden heart attack. The trilogy was adapted as three motion pictures in Sweden, and one in the U.S.. The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series, which has six novels as of September 2019. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a psychological thriller novel by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson (1954–2004). It was published posthumously in 2005, translated into English in 2008, and became an international bestseller.
Yellow Bird is a Swedish film and television production company. In 2003 Danish producer Ole Søndberg and Swedish author Henning Mankell started a collaboration on a series of television films based on Mankell’s famous fictional detective Kurt Wallander and Yellow Bird was born. The success of the initial Wallander films was followed by Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters, Liza Marklund’s Annika Bengtzon series as well as the British version of Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh.
Per Michael "Joe" Ljunggren was a Swedish outlaw biker and gangster who served as the first national president of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Sweden. Ljunggren was a central figure in the Nordic Biker War, in which the Bandidos feuded with the Hells Angels. He was shot dead while riding his motorcycle on the E4 motorway in Småland. The murder remains unsolved, but police believe members of the Hells Angels to be responsible.
Millennium is a series of Swedish crime novels, created by journalist Stieg Larsson. The two primary characters in the saga are Lisbeth Salander, an asocial computer hacker with a photographic memory, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium. Seven books in the series have been published, with the first three, known as the "Millennium Trilogy", written by Larsson.
Lisbeth Salander is a fictional character created by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson in his award-winning Millennium series. She first appeared in the 2005 novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as an antisocial computer hacker with a photographic memory who teams up with Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium. Salander reappears in The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (2007), sequels that Larsson had written before he died in 2004.
Nordic noir, also known as Scandinavian noir or Scandi noir, is a genre of crime fiction usually written from a police point of view and set in Scandinavia or Nordic countries. Plain language avoiding metaphor and set in bleak landscapes results in a dark and morally complex mood, depicting a tension between the apparently still and bland social surface and the murder, misogyny, misandry, rape, and racism it depicts as lying underneath. It contrasts with the whodunit style such as the English country house murder mystery.
Pär-Ola Jonas Jonasson is a Swedish journalist and writer, best known as the author of the best-seller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.
David Lagercrantz is a Swedish journalist and author, internationally known as the author of I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye and The Girl Who Lived Twice. The latter three of these works are the fourth, fifth and sixth instalments respectively in the Millennium series originated by Stieg Larsson. He is also a television presenter and a screenwriter.
Annika Bengtzon is a fictional character in a Scandinavian noir book and film series created by the Swedish journalist, publisher and crime writer Liza Marklund. With the Annika Bengtzon series, Marklund introduced a female tabloid journalist as the protagonist, in a genre where the main characters had often been men. Current events, like political scandals or women's issues, are often intertwined with the plot, or introduced in subplots.
Modus is a Swedish television psychological thriller series, directed by Lisa Siwe and Mani Maserrat, based upon the novel Frukta inte by Norwegian author and lawyer Anne Holt and adapted for television by Emmy Award winning writers Mai Brostrøm and Peter Thorsboe. The series follows the work of Inger Johanne Vik, a Swedish criminal psychologist and profiler, who has previously assisted both the Swedish police and the FBI in the United States.
Melissa Nordell was a Swedish fashion model, who was murdered when she was 22 years old. Her murder, by a disgruntled boyfriend, is said to have inspired Stieg Larsson to write the Millennium novels.
The Dragon Tattoo Stories film series consists of American films based on the Millennium novels, which were written by Stieg Larsson and David Lagercrantz. The plot centers around Lisbeth Salander, an asocial computer hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium, as they investigate criminal injustices.
The Postcard Killings is a 2020 American crime film directed by Danis Tanović, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Famke Janssen and Cush Jumbo, and based on the 2010 novel The Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Liza Marklund. The film was released on March 13, 2020, receiving negative reviews from critics.