Bloodstorm · #1

The Writing in the Water

John Ajvide Lindqvist

7.4 / 10
7 ratings

In this sweeping and suspenseful start to the Bloodstorm series, an ex-cop turned crime writer teams up with a mysterious hacker to solve a murder—and uncovers corruption along the way.

Julia Malmros is thriving. A former police officer making her way in the world of crime fiction, she’s turning popularity into fame by writing the next book in a world-renowned suspense series.

To help her research, Julia connects with Kim Ribbing. More hacker than man, Kim bears a dark past that’s the very antithesis of the promising future she has planned for herself. They share an undeniable spark—yet it’s likely to implode.

That’s the least of Julia’s worries.

Hounded by publicity, Julia retreats to her cottage in the Stockholm archipelago. It’s there that she begins to reevaluate her life, reunite with Kim…and return to her investigative roots after tragedy unfolds on a nearby pier. The victim: a billionaire, her childhood friend.

Julia’s ex, Jonny, leads the official investigation, but Julia knows there’s no such thing as coincidence. And as she and Kim follow the trail of cash, corruption follows dangerously close behind.

Published
November 11, 2025
Original title
Skriften i vattnet
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Additional book details

Author

John Ajvide Lindqvist

John Ajvide Lindqvist has spent much of his career finding the human pulse inside monsters. Vampires, the returning dead, trolls and other impossible things inhabit his fiction, but the real unease often comes from somewhere closer to home: loneliness, cruelty, childhood vulnerability, grief, obsession, and the unsettling things ordinary people are capable of doing to one another. Born in Sweden in 1968, Lindqvist grew up in Blackeberg, a Stockholm suburb that would later become inseparable from his literary breakthrough. His route to writing horror was anything but conventional. Before publishing novels, he worked as a magician and spent…