What happens to a world where God seems to have abandoned his people, leaving love as their last hope?
Young Elissar has fled Egypt, finding herself on the cold, unforgiving streets of Stockholm. She spends her days begging for money in order to survive, while desperately searching for her biological father. In this bleak existence, the only person she confides in is her friend Johan. When Elissar finds Johan brutally murdered in his apartment, her fragile world shatters.
Shaken and in a haze of panic, Elissar anonymously calls the police, drawing criminal investigator Leo Madvig into the case. The evidence points to a ritualistic killing, but the leads begin dwindling, which makes an exhausted and overwhelmed Leo escape to Tokyo. As Leo tries to distract himself from the unanswered questions, he unexpectedly encounters a local homicide detective who is investigating a case eerily similar to Leo’s case back in Stockholm. Have they stumbled upon an international serial killer?
Through a connection at Interpol, Leo learns of another uncannily similar murder in Paris. With the help of local detective Nadia Delon, Leo begins to see a pattern that stretches across borders and hastily returns to Stockholm to enlist the help of his close friends Lulu and the brilliant yet terminally ill Vic. The band of underdogs is back together again, but as Vic’s health begins to deteriorate and the threat of more murders hovers above them, a race against time begins. Who is this killer, who moves between countries like smoke in the wind, and who will fall into their merciless clutches next?
Love You Long Time is the exhilarating second installment of Mons Kallentoft’s Underdogs series. With unforgettable characters living on the margins of society, Kallentoft weaves a compelling narrative of greed and invisibility, along with the ultimate question: how far are we willing to go to please the higher powers?
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Reviews
“With Love You Long Time, Kallentoft gives us a strong continuation of the Underdogs series. The story is told with a distinctive tone and a suggestive contemporary feel, with palpably dark undercurrents.”
– BTJ, 4/5 Stars (SE)
“Mons Kallentoft is undoubtedly the right man to play with style with his new Underdogs series. […] The prose is unique to Kallentoft, but the themes and settings are straight out of a classic noir novel: the darkness of the big city, characters who live on the fringes of society and a dialogue that aches with loneliness. [It’s] even better than the first book in the series, The Algorithm of Love.”
– Östgöta Correspondenten (SE)
“Mons Kallentoft is a skillful writer who knows how to build up suspense.”
– Ölandsbladet (SE)
“In our time, with growing chasms and societies at their breaking points; there are those who have and those who don’t, centre and periphery, greed and lack of resources, visibility and invisibility, and it’s the people at the fringes that Kallentoft is interested by. […] There’s a lot to like in this book; aside from the brilliant prose, there are the unique and complex characters, as well as the strong commitment for people at the edge of society. With the Underdogs series, Kallentoft has created his own special, unique and original world that readers long to return to.”
– Kapprakt (SE)