THE SWIMMER: JOAKIM ZANDER

This novel, the first by Swedish Zander, is difficult to follow at first because it's told from a number of different points of view and jumps back in time quite often.  As a result, we are not always sure who is talking, in fact, we never know one of the CIA operatives names, only that he witnesses his wife and newly born daughter die in a terrorist car bomb attack on the first few pages.  Thirty years later he decides to find his  daughter and right some of the wrongs of his life, a number of them having to do with CIA operations gone wrong.  The epigram at the beginning of the book gives the reader a sense of what the writer's attitude is towards powers like the United States and their attempts to influence world affairs: "Around us, the madness of empires continues."  And if you look back at the US's history over the past 15 years, you might agree.  Much of our actions in retrospect appear mad!

Anyways, the story is confusing but it revolves around a rogue CIA agent who has a computer with Abu Ghraib like torture pictures, a result of a contractor commissioned and sanctioned by the CIA. The info eventually falls in the hands of Klara Waldeen, who works for a Swedish politician.  This happens because her former lover, Mammoud Shammosh, used to work for the Americans and is contacted by the rogue agent to meet him in Paris.  He meets him in Paris but the CIA is aware of the meeting, kills the rogue but Mammoud gets away.  Because he is in Paris, he has arranged to meet with Klara, his former girl friend.  She meets him, helps him flee from the CIA but he's eventually shot but has revealed to Klara where the computer with pictures was hidden.  Another character figures in the mix, George Loow, a lobbyist who is used by his employer to translate Swedish language emails between the various characters, in order to find out where the computer is located. He is virtually imprisoned by the CIA, realizes the illegality and killing that has taken place, and eventually he escapes and ends up saving  Klara's life.  She has been secluded on an island in Sweden where her CIA agent father eventually finds her, helps foil the CIA's plans just before he is killed by the CIA for being soft.

Eventually, Klara and George make a deal with the CIA.  They won't publicize the photographs if they are left alone.  If anything happens to either one of them, they will be immediately published. This compromise is not made easily because they are sickened by the torture and inhumanity that has been sanctioned by the CIA.  But they know, too, that their lives would be ruined if they made the photographs public.  They did not want to end up being an Edward Snowden.  So the novel ends with a whimper not a bang.