Forty-year-old Fanny has just separated from her partner and feels in some way relieved but is nevertheless without a place to live and in desperate need of a fresh start. At a family reunion, she meets her amiable and successful cousin Ulrika and her wealthy husband. When the couple invites Fanny to spend the summer with them, Fanny surprises herself by accepting.

The summer at the Onsala Peninsula looks promising with a lot of fun and social activities. But as the honeymoon-phase of their friendship turns into everyday trudges, the frictions come creeping. When a night out ends in desperate measures, Fanny soon finds herself caught in a triangle where she questions who Ulrika really is. What’s even worse: she starts questioning herself.

The Cousin is a dark, psychological thriller about trust, guilt, and self-deception. Klas Ekman skillfully depicts people in crucial moments of their lives and can masterfully describe the perception of ourselves in our own eyes as well as in others.

Today, Klas Ekman’s Capable People was officially announced the winner of the 2021 Crimetime Award in the category ‘Crime Debut of the Year.’

The award is bestowed annually to a new star on the sky of crime fiction. Capable People was first handpicked for the shortlist by a jury, and then voted the favorite by readers. The award was handed out on stage at the Gothenburg Book Fair, with the following motivation:

“For a multi-layered, original and very well-composed story with both darkness and humor. A fatal mistake is followed by a series of bad decisions, and we are glued to the pages as the seemingly ordinary characters step by step dig their own grave. It’s absurd, entertaining and terribly frightening. Just like in a laughing mirror where we see ourselves and our modern day in the distorted image, the laughter gets caught in our throats. The award goes to a complete debut in the genre of kitchen sink realism noir.”

Klas Ekman’s novel Capable People has been shortlisted for the 2021 Crimetime Award in the category ‘Crime Debut of the Year.’ The jury had the following motivation:

“Just like Max von Sydow played a game of chess with death in Bergman’s cult movie, the main characters in this debut play a game of dominoes with fate. A highly human slip turns into the catalyst for a series of events, and soon they’re trapped in a web of lies and schemes where only the adept can prevail. /…/ Social realism combines with wit in a thriller format we barely thought was possible, but is executed with elegance.”

The Crimetime Award was founded in 2015 by the crime festival Crimetime in Sweden. The winner will be revealed on 21 September. Click the “Read me” button below to vote before 19 September.

Klas Ekman is shortlisted for Bonnier’s Book Clubs’ Book of the Year Award 2021 with his debut novel Capable People.

The Book of the Year award, also known as the “People’s Choice Award,” is arranged by Bonnier’s Book Clubs, the home of Sweden’s five biggest book clubs. The voting period continues until September 12, and a winner will be announced in October.

The nominees for 2020’s Adlibris Awards have been announced. Adlibris is the leading book retailer in the Nordics and last year, the Adlibris Award was founded to celebrate the site’s most popular titles. 10 titles in 9 different categories are nominated by a jury of Adlibris employees, and all titles must have been published during 2020.

A new category added this year is the ‘Debutant’ one, in which Klas Ekman’s recently published Capable People can be found.

Amongst the nominated titles in the ‘Crime Fiction’ category are Stina Jackson’s The Last Snow, Hans Rosenfeldt’s When Crying Wolf, Jo Nesbø’s  The Kingdom and Lars Kepler’s The Mirror Man.

Fans have until December 8 to cast their votes in each respective category. The winners will be announced on January 25, 2021.

Click the “Read more” button below to cast your vote.

Johan and Anna, a pair of lovers in their mid-thirties, check into a small-town hotel in western Sweden. Johan has just left his wife for Anna and is now looking forward to a night of celebrating. But Anna has something different in mind: she has decided to call it quits. Her family is more important than her longing for happiness.

The weekend doesn’t turn out as either of them expected. A deadly mistake forces the pair to make a fateful decision then and there, and soon they are traveling down a nightmarish road that will change their lives – forever.

In Capable People, Klas Ekman weaves a lean, tight and incredibly gripping psychological thriller about ordinary people finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and how a fatal decision can lead to the downfall of one’s morals.

The author distinguishes himself by skillfully pulling the story through the darkest corners of the human psyche, displaying an expert touch for dialogue and multi-layered characters that together form a Hitchcockian page-turner that will stay with you long after reading.

Klas Ekman (b. 1975) is an author and journalist who has penned several lauded music biographies and worked at a number of Sweden’s largest magazines and newspapers. In addition to his writing, Ekman works as the editorial director of the prestigious Swedish publishing house Volante. Capable People is his debut novel.