Arne Dahl: Efterskalv

This episode of the crime drama has a bomb going off in the Stockholm subway, killing ten people. Initially it is suspected to be the work of ISIS terrorists, but following a spate of killings our indefatigable police officers are hot on the trail of a Dutch hit-person (Erik Madsen), while suspecting a member of the Swedish Secret Service (Philip Zandén) of complicity in the whole affair.

AFTERQUAKE is the weakest entry in the series so far, where budgetary restrictions actively undermine the plausibility of the plot. On at least one occasion Gunnar Nyberg (Magnus Samuelsson) tells us that a support team is "on the way" to provide back-up as the police visit lonely apartments during their investigations. Yet it seems that this support is particularly slow in coming, as Ida Jankowitz (Natalie Minnevik), Sara Svenhagen (Vera Vitali) and Kerstin Holm (Malin Arvidsson) regularly put themselves in danger by going to investigate on their own. If the hit-person is as ruthless as the story suggests, then they are risking almost certain death should they become involved in a shoot-out. At times it seems as if the "A-Team" are the only representatives of the Swedish police force, bravely going where no officer would dare to go.

The plot is full of implausibilities, with the two strands involving the hit-person and the Secret Service member failing to cohere. It's always a good indication of the weakness of any drama when the threads have to be tied up in deus ex machina fashion at the end. In this case it is a television broadcast that ostensibly explains what happened and why.

The drama itself ends with a clichéd image of Kerstin returning home to embrace her son while thanking her neighbor (Sofia Pekkari) for baby-sitting services. This coda looks just what it is - something tacked on to the end of a poorly constructed episode to prove how arduous Kerstin's job actually is, thereby taking her away from her family.