Writer sacked for faking book review

A book reviewer who slated a book that had never been written has been fired.Kristian Lundberg, an author and poet, wrote book reviews for the Helsingborgs Dagblad newspaper.

"The foundation of all journalism is credibility. This is also true of culture journalism. We have therefore decided that Kristian Lundberg will no longer review books for Helsingborgs Dagblad," said the paper's culture editor Gunnar Bergdahl.

The paper had published an article by Lundberg late last week in which he said that Britt Marie Mattsson's book 'Fruktans Makt' (The Power of Fear), had a "predictable" plot and one-dimensional characters. But despite having appeared in publisher Piratförlaget's autumn catalogue, Mattsson had never got round to writing the novel.

While ruling that Lundberg will no longer write reviews for the paper, Bergdahl said he might still commission creative pieces from the writer.
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