This is a truth universally to be acknowledged. It is also a truth arrived at a little less than half way into Roslund and Hellstrom's Box 21, which the Library Journal claims is "bound to please readers of Steig Larsson." Larsson's books and Roslund and Hellstrom's have plenty of similarities that will, indeed, please. Most important, both have female protagonists who live on the fringe of Swedish society--in Larsson's case a young woman condemned to guardianship, and in Roslund and Hellstrom's a Eastern European prostitute who doesn't speak Swedish but seems to know an awful lot about plastic explosives.
It is also a truth universally to be acknowleged that the Swedish psyche--at least the Swedish crime writing psyche--has an unhealthy fixation on human trafficking, sexual enslavement, and anal rape...at least to the outside observer. It's hard to think of an author who hasn't dealt with the subject. (To be fair, even the most casual observer of shows like CSI, Law and Order, and Criminal Minds would see that the American psyche is itself just as obsessed with serial killers and rapists.) The interesting thing about this Swedish obsession is that it is a vice not of the masses but of the ruling class: in Larsson's books Lisbeth Salander is oppressed by a network of high-ranking lawyers and intelligence officials. Box 21 suggests much the same: Lydia's clients are detectives and doctors and (one assumes) politicians. When she lands in the hospital after her pimp nearly beats her to death, the very people who are supposed to help her turn out to be those who've been imprisoning her all along. Hence the very quick resort to plastic explosives and a hostage situation.
I don't know where the novel is going next, but I do know that it has the potential to function much the way Larsson's did to expose some of Swedish society's dirtier secrets.
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