DENISE RUDBERG was born in 1971 and resides in Stockholm, her hometown, together with her husband and their four children. She has studied film and dramaturgy in New York and today works as a writer and columnist. She also makes regular appearances at national morning television shows and writes drama for Swedish Radio. 

Her series about prosecutor Marianne Jidhoff has sold over 1.5 million copies, and has established Elegant Crime as a new sub-genre to the well-established Swedish crime novel. 

Rudberg is also a successful writer of feel-good with a backlist of several titles such as Sthlmqueens and Jenny S and has also written several young adult novels, of which her first, Tillsammans, was awarded for being the bestselling YA novel of the year. 

In 2020, Rudberg celebrated twenty years as an author, and ten years of her Elegant Crime series, with the release of the tenth installment about Marianne Jidhoff. Her other current works include the historical series about female code breakers in Sweden during the Second World War with the first part THE FIRST CIPHER seeing its release in 2019, and the eagerly awaited sequel A SECOND ALLIANCE in 2020, with third installment YOUR THIRD MAN following in 2021, and the fourth, THE FOURTH DOCTRINE, in June 2022.

Her latest novel DANCING QUEEN marks the beginning of a new series. It is set against the backdrop of Stockholm in the summer of 1976, the city and the nation anticipate the grand royal wedding. Meanwhile people at the center of power fiercely guard their hidden activities. As police officers Karin and Agneta edge closer to the truth, without knowing it, they acquire more and more enemies who will do anything to stop them.  

‘Entertainment literature at its best: well-written, well-researched and with a lot of depth and pain.’
- M-magasin

‘Denise Rudberg's detective series is only getting better.’
- Lotta Olsson, Dagens Nyheter

‘You who have not yet started reading have something fantastic in front of you.’
- Barometern

Agent: Erik Larsson

PUBLISHED norstedts, november 2023
GENRE crime
PAGES 302

RIGHTS sold
danish: pEOPLE’S PRESS
FINNISH: GUMMERUS

REVIEWS

"Denise Rudberg just gets better and better. There have been many crime novels set in the recent past written in the last few years – seldom is it done as well as in Denise Rudberg's hands." – Lotta Olsson, Dagens Nyheter

In DANCING QUEEN, we are introduced to two police officers, the formidable Karin "Kaiser" Johansson, poised for a leadership role within the violent crimes division, and the young, struggling Agneta Thorén, who independently venture into a web of deceit, crime, and high-level establishment conspiracies. 

When a sex worker from a famous brothel turns up dead in the upper-class Östermalm neighborhood, Karin “Kaiser” takes on the case. Karin’s fellow police officer and closest friend in the force, Mollan, has been investigating a legendary brothel madame and is about to take the case to trial. Mollan seems to hold important information about the death, but curiously refuses to share it with Karin. Days later, Mollan jumps in front a train. But Karin can’t shake the impression that she saw someone on the platform push her, and that Mollan had no intention of committing suicide. Could it be that there is more to Mollan’s investigation than meets the eye? When a series of anonymous typewritten notes start appearing, Karin begins suspecting that someone wants to silence her. Could it be the same powerful forces that were threatened by Mollan’s investigation? 

Shortly after joining the force, Agneta sustains a hearing loss injury during a hostage drama at the West German Embassy, and gets relegated to desk duty deep down in the police archives. Life isn’t made easier by the challenges of being a single mother to her daughter and living at her parent’s farm. She catches a break when she secures a flat in the middle of Östermalm. During the course of her work at the archives, Agneta begins to notice a series of odd, small discrepancies in the police’s paperwork. Her findings point to a web of cover-ups that connect high-ups in the police force and the political establishment to a famous brothel on Östermalm. Soon, however, she begins receiving strange typewritten notes and starts to fear that a threatening figure from her past has come back to haunt her.