The Carrier
On sale
23rd May 2019
Price: £9.99
The man with the nuclear briefcase has gone rogue – Mission Impossible meets the Hunt for Red October
“What should a thriller do to rise above the ranks of the clichéd? It does no harm to demonstrate some intelligence and (if possible) an engagement with serious issues – but no polemics. Thankfully, Mattias Berg’s The Carrier hits those targets squarely” Barry Forshaw, Financial Times
“Enjoyable, ingenious . . . packed with fascinatingly arcane nuclear facts” Myles McWeeney, Irish Independent
Erasmus Levine has a job like no other
He travels with the President of the United States at all times, and holds in his hands the power to obliterate life as we know it. He is the man with the nuclear briefcase, part of a crack team of top-secret operatives established after 9/11, led by a man codenamed Edelweiss. But not even Edelweiss is party to the identity of their ultimate authority, known only as Alpha.
Erasmus Levine has a secret
For years he has been receiving cryptic messages from Alpha, an elaborate communication that began with the words we two against the world. Levine begins thinking of escape: his chance comes during an official visit to Sweden, when the alarm sounds in Stockholm’s Grand Hotel.
But Alpha has other plans
From their first meeting in a network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the city, Levine is drawn into a plan to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals. But is controlled demolition really the endgame? Could he be working towards a controlled apocalypse, a doomsday plot to wipe humanity from the face of the earth?
Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding
“What should a thriller do to rise above the ranks of the clichéd? It does no harm to demonstrate some intelligence and (if possible) an engagement with serious issues – but no polemics. Thankfully, Mattias Berg’s The Carrier hits those targets squarely” Barry Forshaw, Financial Times
“Enjoyable, ingenious . . . packed with fascinatingly arcane nuclear facts” Myles McWeeney, Irish Independent
Erasmus Levine has a job like no other
He travels with the President of the United States at all times, and holds in his hands the power to obliterate life as we know it. He is the man with the nuclear briefcase, part of a crack team of top-secret operatives established after 9/11, led by a man codenamed Edelweiss. But not even Edelweiss is party to the identity of their ultimate authority, known only as Alpha.
Erasmus Levine has a secret
For years he has been receiving cryptic messages from Alpha, an elaborate communication that began with the words we two against the world. Levine begins thinking of escape: his chance comes during an official visit to Sweden, when the alarm sounds in Stockholm’s Grand Hotel.
But Alpha has other plans
From their first meeting in a network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the city, Levine is drawn into a plan to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenals. But is controlled demolition really the endgame? Could he be working towards a controlled apocalypse, a doomsday plot to wipe humanity from the face of the earth?
Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding
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Reviews
The Carrier is a devilishly thrilling and alarming story, a doomsday-prophetic symphony over our time here and now... I don't think I have read such a philosophical, knowledge-studded and realistic adventure novel since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose... the entertainment factor, which sometimes makes me think of Mission Impossible and other action movies, never dims its grave political substance . . . History itself is present in each and every page in Mattias Berg's brilliant novel, where the end is everything else than excepted.
At the same time thriller and satire, nuclear physics and history of ideas . . . One of the most ambitious and spectacular debut novels I have read in Swedish.
A successful hybrid of a novel of ideas, historical depiction and the popular science thriller genre . . . an educative and in places very exciting story with a philosophical backdrop. Why have we created something so powerful, something that could destroy us all?
There are special trained super humans, amazingly transformed by surgery, quick-witted brains, codes and numerology, deceptions... But whilst other agent stories may only have this - spiced with some love in the sunset - The Carrier has more. Much more... Mattias Berg's knowledge in the scientific field is impressive, his storytelling skilled and well-balanced.
What should a thriller do to rise above the ranks of the clichéd? It does no harm to demonstrate some intelligence and (if possible) an engagement with serious issues - but no polemics. Thankfully, Mattias Berg's The Carrier hits those targets squarely.
An enjoyable, ingenious "nuclear noir" thriller, packed with fascinatingly arcane nuclear facts