John Ajvide Lindqvist - Let Me In

Praise for

Let Me In

One of the creepiest and most imaginative stories of the decade... echoes Stephen King at the height of his storytelling powers.

Sunday Herald-Sun (Australia)

Absolutely chilling. This page-turner grabs you from the onset and just wont let go. Vampires at their Anne Ricean best!

L. A. Banks, author of the Vampire Huntress series

Swedens Stephen King... A classic horror-romantic story. I love it. Could not stop reading. More please.

Amelia (Sweden)

A brilliant take on the vampire myth, and a roaring good story.

Kelley Armstrong, bestselling author of Haunted

Readers are familiar with modern Sweden through its distinctive crime fiction. Now John Ajvide Lindqvist is taking a Gothic look at the countrys dark side. Henning Mankells gloomy police procedurals were the first to become international bestsellers in the middle 1990s and spearheaded an explosion. But the latest publishing phenomenon to come out of Sweden seems to be plumping for a different genre. John Ajvide Lindqvist has become an overnight cult figure.

The Age (Australia)

[Let Me In], a Swedish book taking the publishing world by storm, is a different, surprising, and sometimes delightful reading experience. Delightful would not normally be the first word that springs to mind when describing a blood-soaked plot.... It is Lindqvists great skill that a strong thread of innocence continues alongside this horror.

The Sunday Telegraph (Australia)

It is easy to compare Lindqvist to Clive Barker or Neil Gaiman. When you reach the last page you are left only with that wonderful, tingling sensation that only comes with a brand new love affair or a really great book.

Dagens Nringsliv (Norway)

Impressive... can certainly compare with some of the best international authors... as learned as Anne Rice as far as the most updated vampire mythology is concerned.

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)

A vampire novel unlike any other... this dark and macabre story grips you from the start. The author deserves acclaim for his razor-sharp writing and his artful telling of a story of the supernatural that has you in little doubt of its plausibility.

The Mercury (South Africa)

John Ajvide Lindqvist

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
ST. MARTINS GRIFFIN
NEW YORK

To Mia, my Mia

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martins Press.

LET ME IN. Copyright 2004 by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Translation 2007 by Ebba Segerberg. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Lindqvist, John Ajvide.

[Lt den rtte komma in.]

Let me in / John Ajvide Lindqvist ; translated by Ebba Segerberg.1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-35528-9

I. Segerberg, Ebba. II. Title.

PT9877.22.I54L48 2007

839.73'8dc22

2007023510

ISBN 978-0-312-65649-2 (trade paperback)

First published in Sweden under the title Lt den rtte komma in by Ordfront

First St. Martins Griffin Edition: October 2008

Second St. Martins Griffin Edition: September 2010

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Blackeberg.

It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. A respectable life. You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes to mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That was why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.

It was not a place that developed organically, of course. Here everything was carefully planned from the outset. And people moved into what had been built for them. Earth-colored concrete buildings scattered about in the green fields.

When this story begins, Blackeberg the suburb had been in existence for thirty years. One could imagine that it had fostered a pioneer spirit. The Mayflower; an unknown land. Yes. One can imagine all those empty buildings waiting for their occupants.

And here they come!

Marching over the Traneberg Bridge with sunshine and the future in their eyes. The year is 1952. Mothers are carrying their little ones in their arms or pushing them in baby carriages, holding them by the hand. Fathers are not carrying picks and shovels but kitchen appliances and functional furniture. They are probably singing something. The Internationale, perhaps. Or We Come Unto Jerusalem, depending on their predilection.

It is big. It is new. It is modern.

But that wasnt the way it was.

They came on the subway. Or in cars, moving vans. One by one. Filtered into the finished apartments with their things. Sorted their possessions into the measured cubbies and shelves, placed the furniture in formation on the cork floor. Bought new things to fill the gaps.

When they were done, they lifted their eyes and gazed out onto this land that had been given unto them. Walked out of their doors and found that all land had already been claimed. Might as well adjust oneself to how things were.

There was a town center. There were spacious playgrounds allotted to children. Large green spaces around the corner. There were many pedestrian-only walking paths.

A good place; thats what people said to each other over the kitchen table a month or so after they had moved in.

Its a good place weve come to.

Only one thing was missing. A past. At school, the children didnt get to do any special projects about Blackebergs history because there wasnt one. That is to say, there was something about an old mill. A tobacco king. Some strange old buildings down by the water. But that was a long time ago and without any connection to the present.

Where the three-storied apartment buildings now stood there had been only forest before.

You were beyond the grasp of the mysteries of the past; there wasnt even a church. Nine thousand inhabitants and no church.

That tells you something about the modernity of the place, its rationality. It tells you something of how free they were from the ghosts of history and of terror.

It explains in part how unprepared they were.

No one saw them move in.

In December, when the police finally managed to track down the driver of the moving truck, he didnt have much to tell. In his records he had only noted 18 October. Norrkping-Blackeberg (Stockholm). He recalled that it was a father and daughter, a pretty girl.

Oh, and another thing. They had almost no furniture. A couch, an armchair, maybe a bed. An easy job, really. And that... yeah, they wanted it done at night. I said it would be more expensive, you know, with the overtime surcharge and that. But it was no problem. It just had to be done at night. That seemed real important. Has anything happened?

The driver was informed of the events, of whom he had had in his truck. His eyes widened, he looked down again at the letters on the page.

Ill be damned....

He grimaced as if he had developed a revulsion for his own handwriting.

18 October. Norrkping-Blackeberg (Stockholm).

He was the one who had moved them in. The man and his daughter.

He wasnt going to tell anyone about it, not for as long as he lived.