“so damn Swedish, it makes your heart sing”

The Times has a meditation on Swedish crime fiction and the particular place Henning Mankell holds in it as a new television drama of Sidetracked from the BBC starring Kenneth Branagh as Wallander nears its November release and as Pyramid, a short story collection, reaches bookstore shelves.

The article includes an interview with Mankell that reveals a lot about what underpins his writing – and what he says can actually be extrapolated to much of Scaninavian crime fiction.

The Stockholm-born Henning Mankell writes Wallander as so damn Swedish, it makes your heart sing. Strindberg or Bergman could have created this man with ease. Yet he’s a huge global hit, selling about 30m books in 100 countries, translated into 40 languages. Perhaps it’s because his mission is the greatest a literary sleuth can accept: to explore the dark heart of society and, in his case, the collapse of the liberal Swedish dream. When I meet Mankell, who was a successful author before he created his gloomy gumshoe, he explains that Wallander was born in May 1989, out of a need to talk about the creeping xenophobia [Mankell] was witnessing in his home country. The first book examines the anti-immigration sentiments that boil over when an elderly couple are presumed murdered by “foreigners”.

“I had no idea this would be the start of a long journey,” Mankell says. “I was writing the first novel out of anger at what was happening in Sweden. And, since xenophobia is a crime, I needed a police officer. So the story came first, then the character. Then I realised I was creating a tool that could be used to tell stories about the situation in Sweden — and Europe — in the 1990s. The best use of that tool was to say ‘What story shall I tell?’, then put him in it.” . . .

“People see how essential the relationship between democracy and the system of justice is,” he argues. “We know that if the system of justice doesn’t work, democracy is doomed. Wallander is worried about that, and so are many people in democracies. Maybe that’s why he is so popular. I am a very radical person — as radical as when I was younger. So my books all have in common my search for understanding of the terrible world we are living in and ways to change it.”

This interest in social problems – and what it takes to confront and overcome them – infuses Scandinavian crime fiction. How intriguing that this radicalism has found such an international audience.

via Sarah Weinman.

Uriah on Arctic Chill

Arnaldur Indridason gets another nod over at Crime Scraps – in a review that includes some commentary on the current economic meltdown that has destroyed Iceland’s go-go financial markets.

It reminds me that, two years ago when I spoke to the author, he commented that until recently Iceland was a very poor country. The new wealth was causing some upheaval in the culture, with more urbanization and the risk that the Icelandic language and traditions might get diluted as the island nation’s isolation ended. (Erlendur’s preference for traditional Icelandic cuisine and irritation when the language is misused is a kind of protest against change.) When I asked Arnaldur what accounted for the new wealth, he said it was had to do with banking, but that nobody really knew what it was all about or how it made so much money. Apparently neither did the bankers!

Uriah comments -

If Iceland’s banking system and financiers have proved unreliable, that cannot be said for their crime writers.

I have just finished reading Arnaldur Indridason’s  police procedural Arctic Chill in which Erlendur, Sigurdur Oli and Elinborg investigate the death of a young Thai-Icelandic boy, whose Thai half brother has gone missing.

This superb novel gives us an account of the investigation while identifying the tensions that exist  between new immigrants from Asia and the small Icelandic indigenous population. Many of the Icelanders feel that their culture will be destroyed by the incomers who themselves find it hard to cope with the language and the harsh weather. Other issues are introduced with the possible presence in the vicinity of a paedophile, marital infidelity,  and the death of Erlendur’s old boss Marion Briem. . . .

This is crime fiction at its best . . .

Oh, go ahead – read the whole thing. And then place your order for Arctic Chill. I’m particularly interested in comparing its themes with those in Karin Fossum’s The Indian Bride, which I’m finally reading.

if you’re in New York . . .

. . . on October 14th, drop by Scandinavia House for a panel discussion of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy. It will be moderated by blogger and reviewer extraordinaire Sarah Weinman and will feature Scottish writer Val McDermid, Jeffrey Frank, author and senior editor at the New Yorker, and Vintage/Anchor editor Edward Kastenmeier.

chilly reception

Maxine Clark has high praise for Arnaldur Indridason’s Arctic Chill.

Is there such a thing as a perfect crime-fiction novel? Probably not, but if there were, this would surely be a strong contender. Arnaldur Indridason’s latest novel in the Inspector Erlendur series continues the upward trend in quality, confidence and storytelling that I have come to hope for, even dare to expect, with each new outing.

Meanwhile, the Icelandic film of Jar City is getting warm reviews in the UK. Uriah calls it “superb cinema with atmospheric Icelandic choir music, beautiful cinematography of the bleak scenery and compelling acting.” Those attending Bouchercon in Baltimore have a treat in store – Jar City will be getting a screening there.

Michiko Kakutani, a reviewer for The New York Times has a chillier reception for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. While she loves the lead detective team – “but their peculiar chemistry is what fuels this novel, particularly as Mr. Larsson loses control of his messy, increasingly implausible plot.” She goes on to say:

In fact, it’s clear as the story progresses that Mr. Larsson has no idea how to create a credible villain, for the two people most responsible for Harriet’s disappearance turn out to be patched-together bad guys with none of the malevolent originality of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter or the manipulative perversion of Catherine Tramell in “Basic Instinct.”

It’s the detectives who are the stars of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” and the reader can only hope that Salander and Blomkvist put in return appearances in the two other novels Mr. Larsson completed before his death.