Annika Bengtzon

Annika Bengtzon is a fictional character in a Scandinavian noir book and film series created by the Swedish journalist, publisher and crime writer Liza Marklund. With the Annika Bengtzon series, Marklund introduced a female tabloid journalist as the protagonist, in a genre where the main characters had often been men. Current events, like political scandals or women's issues, are often intertwined with the plot, or introduced in subplots.

Bengtzon works as a journalist for the fictional Swedish newspaper Kvällspressen ("The Evening News"). She hails from Hälleforsnäs in Södermanland but now lives on Kungsholmen island in . Alternately described as "courageous and compassionate" as well as "dark" and possessing a "destructive streak within her", she is a career woman juggling a husband and children while facing her employer's tough colleagues. Working as a crime reporter, Bengtzon stumbles into one dangerous situation after another. The character appears in the novels Sprängaren (The Bomber), Studio sex (Studio 69/Exposed), Paradiset (Paradise/Vanished), Prime time, Den röda vargen (The Red Wolf), Nobels testamente (Last Will), Livstid (Lifetime), and En plats i solen (The Long Shadow). She has obvious similarities to the author, with Liza Marklund herself pictured on the book covers. Bengtzon also appears briefly in Jan Guillou's book The Enemy Within. In the book Studio sex, Bengtzon's diary describes how she was beaten so badly by her first husband that she was forced to kill him in self-defense. The children, Kalle and Ellen, are figured in the novels and films, and Bengtzon becomes pregnant in Paradiset.

As of 2012, there were nine novels which featured the character Annika Bengtzon. The novels were not written in the chronological order of the events depicted in the heroine's life. Starting with Sprängaren, in which Annika is already a deft professional, the story then moves back in time several years, to the start of her career and the meeting with her future husband Thomas. By the fifth installment, Den röda vargen, the reader is back in the present. Books 6, 7 and 8—Nobels testamente, Livstid and En plats i solen—comprise a trilogy, with recurring characters and themes, and plots linked to each other.

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