P.J. Coldren's Review: CELL 8

CELL 8
Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom
 9781402787157 384 Pages
Sterling Publishing Company
January 3, 2012 $24.95
US available as e-book, price unknown
P.J. Coldren
Fans of Swedish crime fiction can add another author to their list of “must reads”, although in this case it is really two authors. Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom have written two novels featuring Detective Superintendent Ewert Grens; CELL 8 is the second.
Cell 8 is a cell on Death Row in Ohio, the cell in which John Meyer died before the state could kill him. Vernon Eriksen was a guard in the prison 16 years ago, when John Meyer was sent there to await his sentence. Eriksen is still there. Meyer is not.
Meyer is, apparently, in Sweden. He is found because he was arrested for kicking a man in the face, aggravated assault. His wife had no idea he wasn’t John Schwarz, that he was from the United States, that he had ever been in prison. She is stunned when his past comes into their lives.
Grens is investigating the aggravated assault charge. When he learns that John Schwarz is really John Meyer, the higher-ups get involved. This is not a situation that Grens enjoys. He believes that Schwarz/Meyer should stand trial for the assault; Sweden doesn’t execute prisoners any more, so there is no reason to send him back to the US to be killed.
The US believes otherwise, from the father of the murdered girl to the governor of Ohio to the State Department. They insist, and Sweden does an end-run around the highly unpopular option of returning John to the US. They send him instead back to Russia, where he entered Sweden. Russia, of course, sends him back to the US. He is again on Death Row in Ohio, with Vernon Eriksen there.
CELL 8 is all that anyone could want in a mystery novel. The situation, while highly unlikely today, is certainly within the realm of possibility sixteen or seventeen years ago. The characters are believable. The ethical considerations surrounding the death penalty haven’t really changed in that time; people almost always feel very strongly about it, no matter which side of the issue they take.
The authors, while they kept my attention and made it difficult to put down CELL 8, also made me crazy. John keeps insisting that he is innocent of the original rape and murder. The evidence against him is strong, and still nobody makes any real attempt to find out whether his statement is true or not. Why not? The last few chapters give the reader the answer, but I think it is a serious flaw in CELL 8 that the authors never address this question. There certainly would seem to be a way to bring it up, shoot it down, and go on with the story. Because they don’t, the question never goes away and draws the reader away from the story.