Lost Colony: The Hennepin Island Murders

Written by Steve Berg

Narrated by Hopper Stone

Nordic Noir Comes to America

Thirty years after the shocking and never-solved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme on a snowy street in Stockholm, an activist priest is found gruesomely sacrificed on the altar of a Swedish-American church in Minneapolis. The church’s immigrant janitor is also slain, execution style.

The crime shocks Hennepin Island, the church’s time-forgotten riverfront neighborhood, where Span Lokken, a demoralized newspaperman, and his improbable partner, Maggie Lindberg, the murdered clergyman’s stylish young assistant, join forces to search for the killers. 

The trail leads to the castle fortress of the island’s reclusive kingpin, Jonas Kron, whose “lost colony” delusions hide a gripping international mystery that brings the story full circle. Along the way, the curious bond between the unlikely detectives — Span and Maggie — only deepens as they seek to fill the empty spaces in their own lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evets Publishing LLC
• Release date: Oct 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988363736

Steve Berg

Steve Berg's primary background is in journalism. After five years at the Raleigh News and Observer, he worked for 30 years as a feature writer, political correspondent and editorialist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, both in the Twin Cities and in Washington, D.C. Later, he wrote the Cityscape column for Minnpost and served as an urban design consultant.Steve is the author of two architecture books, "Target Field: The New Home of the Minnesota Twins" (2010) and "U.S. Bank Stadium: The New Home of the Minnesota Vikings" (2016). His work also includes "Intersections: The Downtown Minneapolis 2025 Plan" (2014).The grandson of Norwegian immigrants, Steve grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. His educational credits include the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and Stanford University. Tennis, swimming, cooking and classic movies (especially film noir} are his favorite pastimes. "Lost Colony: The Hennepin Island Murders" (2023) is his first novel. Steve and his wife have two children and two grandchildren. They live in Asheville, North Carolina.