Betrayal

Eva and Henrik have been living together for fifteen years and have a son together. Eva suddenly realizes that her husband is seeing another woman. In anger and desperation, she decides to seek revenge. At the same time, a young man has for the past two years been watching by a hospital bed where his girlfriend lies in a coma after an accident. But his year-ning for closeness is growing excruciating. She keeps letting him down by refusing to wake up. Deceit deals with how devastating it can be to be let down and how our destructive actions create consequences far beyond our control. The destiny of Jonas and Eva is the consequence of other people’s actions and it is by chance that the roads of these two people cross...

Winner of Goldpocket 2004.

Nominated for the premier crime writing award in Scandinavia - The Glass Key 2003.

Nominated for the Best Swedish Crime novel 2003.

In Sweden, a lot of marriages in my generation nowadays ends with a divorce. I started to wonder about why so many of these divorces becomes so destructive. People I know and always looked upon as sensible and wise, who lived together for many years and have children together, suddenly started to behave like maniacs. As if they were each others worst enemies.

Inside our human brains we have something called the Limbic system. It is one of the oldest part of our brain and it controls all our primary needs and we share it with the rest of the mammals on earth. But the human brain continued to evolve, and the evolution gifted us with an unique intelligence that expected us to separate from the rest of the animals. But in critical situations, when we get scared or feeling threatened, the Limbic system takes over and in an attempt to defend ourselves we react and behave exactly as the animals we once were. I am convinced that frightened people (just like animals) can be very dangerous.

Maybe our biggest fear of all is being abandoned and rejected. And if you add that fear with the threat of losing your entire existence, everything that you are used to, I venture to say that most people becomes very scared.

Five years ago I went through a divorce myself. Although "Betrayal" is not a personal documentary I did use my own experiences of the emotional turbulence I went through. The paradoxical benefits of a personal disaster of that magnitude is that it helped me discover some of my innermost fears. Without that experience I could not have written "Betrayal".

Actually I can summarize this book in a single sentence. There are no punishments and no rewards, there are only consequences.

Reviews

"Highest score for Alvtegen"
Kristianstadsbladet

"Once again Karin Alvtegen has succeeded in creating an exceptionally thrilling novel so gripping you cannot put it down."
"A strong reading experience that will most likely yield another award for the author."
Hallamdsposten

"Karin Alvtegen has once again shown that combining complicated emotions like guilt, regret and deceit with an intelligent and breathtaking plot, is an art she is the master of. In fact, she is telling about an event that occurs to many people every day, but Karin Alvtegen accentuates it and thereby she gives the reader another novel packed with suspense."
Nerikes Allehanda

"Sometimes the word thriller is a misleading label, but when it comes to Betrayal by Karin Alvtegen, it is an absolutely correct term. It is the kind of book that you keep on reading while the creeping uneasy threat keeps on growing and making your hair stand on end. Everybody who has read Missing - selected as the best Nordic crime novel three years ago - knows that Karin Alvtegen is great at telling thrilling stories. /…/ These two parallel stories are woven to form a whole and they belong to the best stories I read for a long time. /…/ As I wrote in the beginning, it is a novel to read at one sitting. Not only for the suspense, but as much for Karin Alvtegen's marvelous language and a plot that's just cut out for a really thrilling screen version. You have here one of this year's best books in the genre, if not the very best."
Gefle Dagblad

"A book where the pages turn themselves."
Tidningen Vi

"Her prose is extremely efficient and captivating. It is difficult to put down the book, partly because you are curious about the outcome for the protagonists, partly because the book never looses tempo, there are no boring passages. Inevitably Kerstin Ekman's Black Waters is brought to my mind. Without drawing any other parallels, both Betrayal and Black Waters can be read in two ways - either in a reflecting deep way, when literary allusions and ethical problems give you food for thoughts or as a tremendously good, well-written thriller that keeps you pinned to your arm chair till the last letter."
Länstidningen Södertälje

"Karin Alvtegen, a writer from Huskvarna, did it again! She has written a hair-raising psychological thriller in which the suspense accelerates towards the unexpected and very exquisite end. /…/ Here you have BOTH quality and excitement."
Jönköpings-Posten

"The new novel Betrayal is of the highest Nordic rank /…/ The unraveling is extremely clever, with unexpected turns and hair-raising suspense till the last page. Very clever and as far from the predictable as ever possible."
Piteå-Tidning

"Everything comes to those who wait. Karin Alvtegen has published her third novel eagerly awaited by many. /…/ her language is a delight, still the novel is very easy to read. Very cleverly, she builds up a dense story around the protagonists' lives. It's difficult to put the book down and when you reach the end, you start to long for the writer's next novel to come."
Jury