Jørn Lier Horst’s Dry Land, the 17th installment in his Wisting series, stays put at No. 1 on the bestselling list for hardcovers. Meanwhile, Operation Tractor, the latest installment in Jørn and Hans Jørgen Sandnes’ Detective Agency No. 2 series, climbs to No. 2 on the children’s list.

Jørn Lier Horst’s newly published Dry Land, the 17th installment in his Wisting series, sails straight to No. 1 on the bestselling list for hardcovers and e-books. Meanwhile, Operation Tractor, the latest installment in Jørn and Hans Jørgen Sandnes’ Detective Agency No. 2 series, lands the No. 5 spot in the children’s category.

A harsh winter caused significant damage to the dam gates in Farrisvannet, and before summer, the water was drained for repairs. In the intense summer heat, the remaining water level drops rapidly, and the idyllic lake transforms into a barren wasteland.

A young man who has been missing for eight years is found with his hand taped to the handlebars of a motorcycle. On the other side of the lake, retiree Evert Harting examines the dry lakebed with a metal detector and discovers the belongings of a girl who disappeared without a trace from a campsite in Sweden four years ago. Wisting handles both cases, and more secrets come to light—in a landscape that will soon return to its natural state.

Dry Land is the seventeenth installment in Jørn Lier Horst’s William Wisting series.

The Petrona Award’s jury has just presented its longlist for the 2024 Petrona Award for ‘Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.’

Among the 10 nominees are Jørn Lier Horst & Thomas Enger with Stigma, Jørn Lier Horst with Snowfall, and Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s The Prey. 

The shortlist will be announced on 10 October 2024.

Moa Herngren’s bestselling title The Divorce is No. 2 in Finland across all formats this week, and No. 1 in the audiobook and e-book for translated fiction category. Meanwhile, Jørn Lier Horst’s When It Grows Dark comes in at No. 1 in the category for printed, translated books.

Jo Nesbø’s second installment in The Kingdom series, Blood Ties, shoots to No.1 on the official bestseller list for hardcovers and e-books. Meanwhile, on the children’s list, Jørn Lier Horst & Hans Jørgen Sandnes’ The Search for the Troll Eye, the twelfth activity book in the Detective Agency No. 2 series, comes in at No. 3.

Jørn Lier Horst and Hans Jørgen Sandnes’ Operation Eeny Meeny is celebrating its 10^th consecutive week on the Norwegian bestseller list. Operation Eeny Meeny is the latest installment in the beloved Detective Agency No. 2 series, immensely popular among children and frequently featured on bestseller lists.

The fourth season of the successful crime drama Wisting, based on Jørn Lier Horst’s bestselling books about police inspector William Wisting, premiered on Viaplay Norway, among other Nordic countries, on March 24.

Sven Nordin returns as the main character, William Wisting, and Rupert Evans, known from Charmed, Bridgerton, and The Man in the High Castle, joins the cast. The fifth season is set to air in Scandinavia later this year and will star Bridgerton actor Shelley Conn.

For the third consecutive week, the twenty-sixth Detective Agency No. 2 title, Operation Eeny Meeny, is No. 3 on the Norwegian bestseller list for children’s books.

Jo Nesbø tops the list of most streamed titles of 2023 in Norway, coming in at No. 1 with Killing Moon. Jørn Lier Horst is a close No. 2 with The Traitor, also making an appearance at No. 5 together with Thomas Enger and Stigma. All in all, Horst appears five times in the top twenty most streamed titles of the year.

2024’s winner of the Finnish Whodunnit Society’s Honorary Award for foreign crime fiction is none other than Jørn Lier Horst. An annual honorary award, the winner is selected by the Board of the Whodunnit Society in consultation with the editor-in-chief of the magazine Ruumiin kulttuuri (Body Culture). More than twenty international authors – among them Colin Dexter, Patricia Highsmith, P. D. James, Håkan Nesser, Henning Mankell, Fred Vargas, Keigo Higashino, and Pierre Lemaitre – have received the award since 1993.

The jury motivates their choice thusly:

“Norwegian Jørn Lier Horst is known to crime and suspense fiction fans for his police novel series William Wisting. Because of his police background, the Wisting books have a realistic portrayal of police investigations. In the Wisting series, Horst successfully combines past and present. His style is clear and recognizable, with philosophical reflections on the nature of evil and a fast-paced plot that draws the reader in. The characters are easy to get attached to and to care about.

The Finnish Whodunnit Society would like to use this recognition to draw attention to Horst’s other side as a writer and to thank him for this as well. Horst has written dozens of children’s and young adult detective stories, which have also been translated into Finnish. The children’s detective series Detective Agency No. 2 /…/ and the youth detective series Clue are very popular, for example in the children’s sections of Finnish libraries.”

The voting is now open for this year’s Norwegian Storytel Awards, which pay particular respect to the audio book narrators working on the nominated titles.

Among those whose works have been nominated in the category Crime & Suspense are Anders de la Motte with The Mountain King, Anders Roslund with Sweet Dreams, Jørn Lier Horst with The Traitor, Jo Nesbø with Killing Moon, and Lars Kepler with The Spider.

Thomas Seltzer’s American Karmageddon is nominated in the category Narrated by Author.