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During the Second World War, Stockholm stood outside the front lines, but never outside the war. In hotels, restaurants and legations, people who worked for foreign powers met one another, while the Swedish authorities tried to understand what was going on and to keep the country out of a war that was drawing ever closer.
Through the middle of this city moved Karin Lannby.
In the intelligence reports her code name was "Annette".
The surviving series comprises 570 intelligence reports, spread across more than 1,500 pages covering the years 1939 to 1945. For the first time, the full series carries the story, in the order in which the reports were written. That makes it possible to see how a brief note later opens up a link between different intelligence services, and how the individual reports form parts of the picture, but only together reveal the whole network.
Karin is the way in, but Stockholm is the book's real protagonist. More than 20,000 pages of archive material and historical literature have been pieced together to trace what she reported through Sweden's intelligence apparatus. Stories that have previously been told only separately are now bound together, revealing the secret city that no one could see while the war lasted.
The book also challenges the simplified picture of neutral Sweden's collaboration with Germany. Karin's reports show a militarily weak and economically exposed country that was forced into concessions, but that could also use some of them to create an advantage.
Karin did not have the benefit of hindsight, and neither did those who read her reports.
Across nearly 500 pages, the secret city emerges day by day. Only at that scale can a name in November acquire its meaning in April, and a seemingly insignificant address turn out to lead into a spy ring.
Annettes lista is the story of Stockholm as the Casablanca of the North, and of the people who saw, kept silent, reported and betrayed while the war could still end in more ways than one.
Johan Öhgren is an intelligence historian and author focusing on Swedish espionage history. Since 2015 he has run a project to establish a museum of intelligence history in Sweden, and he gives talks, leads city walks and hosts an international podcast on the subject.