I hunt translators

So how does one little country get to have so much talent for crime fiction, film, and music? (Banking, not so much . . .)

Sarah Weinman’s useful smatterings brought me to this review by Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir of a delicious-sounding Icelandic television series, based on a novel that has not been translated into English.

I Hunt Men (Icelandic title: Mannaveidar), directed by Björn B. Björnsson, follows two detectives as they attempt to track down a serial killer who has a penchant for murdering goose hunters. The four-episode murder mystery series (170 min.) is based on the popular novel Daybreak by Icelandic crime-writer Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson and was adapted for the screen by Sveinbjörn I. Baldvinsson.

At the center of I Hunt Men is a staple to the TV and film crime genre: the classically mismatched police partners. Much to his chagrin, the straight-laced and by-the-book detective Hinrik (played by Gísli Örn Gardarsson), is paired up with Gunnar, a disheveled looking detective who speaks his mind and gets the job done.

The partner match-up, or rather mismatch, may be predictable, but Ólafur Darri Ólafsson gives a great performance as Gunnar and seems to play the part with ease. As a result, Gunnar comes across as genuine, unapologetic and very likable.

Gunnar’s insatiable appetite for junk-food snacks and his permanently untucked (and crumb-laden) shirt contrasts Hinrik’s tailored black coats, fitted sweaters, and his reserved, often overly dramatic, demeanor. . . .

In terms of the look of the series, among the most visually stunning moments of the episodes are the juxtapositions of the wide-angle and aerial shots of both nature and cityscapes. The aerial shots of the city’s apartment buildings lined up row after row reveal hidden courtyards only fully visible from the air.

Reykjavík is seen in a new light, even in the dark of night. The yellow glow of the city lights against the black night sky fits well with the tone of the episodes.

Shots taken from the air outside of the city showcase the winding black highway cutting its way through the vivid orange, brown and green moss-covered landscape that stretches out to the horizon. Images like these play like tourism advertisements for Iceland.
The great outdoors even finds its way into many of the interior scenes as well. The camera is cleverly set up to capture the view from the oversized windows of most of the apartments ensuring that a mountain or ocean-view is always visible in one way or another. . . .

Because the series first aired in March of 2008—before the collapse of the Icelandic banking industry—there are a few instances that hit on strikingly relevant topics in the aftermath of the recent economic freefall in Iceland. One such example appears in the character of the wealthy banker who exudes haughtiness and under questioning behaves as slippery as his slicked back hair.

Gunnar’s defense for his “unconventional” interviewing tactics ring true for many in Iceland these days; “Should I talk to him differently just because he lives in a tower and makes more in a month than we do in a year?” Today this line so perfectly hits the mark that it’s enough to induce a wince from an Icelandic viewer.

six things

Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise, who got a “Best Observer of All Things Mysterious” award kindly bestowed the favor on me by giving me a “Caring about Scandinavian Crime Fiction Award” – and has tagged me in a meme.  My task is to name six values that are important to me, six qualities I can’t tolerate, and six bloggers who deserve awards. Even though memes have always seemed like some kind of benign Ponzi scheme, here goes – with a mysterious twist. I’ll focus on what I value and dislike in crime fiction.

Mysteries I value have:

• interesting observations about society,
• well-developed, fully-human characters,
• an interesting, well-paced plot that keeps me engaged,
• a vivid sense of place,
• a strong sense of justice that’s ruled by compassion,
• and writing that is graceful and expressive without being too self-conscious.

Things I can do without in mysteries:

• Serial killer stories in which women are stalked, tortured and killed in loving detail; we are not amused.
• Bad guys who are monsters; so far as I’m concerned, only human villains need apply.
• Bad guys who are insane; people who are mentally ill have enough problems, already.
• good guys who are beautiful/handsome, independently wealthy and drive really nice cars.
• books that seem too have been written while consulting a “how to write mysteries” book.
• books that pretend to delve into the heart of evil but are actually as fake as ketchup pretending to be blood

One of the reasons I find Scandinavian crime fiction so satisfying is that it seems anchored in real human emotions that play out in a genuine time and place. There’s no need to invent over-the-top monstrousness in a world where the ordinary cruelties we visit on one another are dramatic enough.

So here are my six awards:

• The “I’m Glad You Asked That” award goes to Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders
• The “Consistently High Quality Book Reviews” award goes to Ben at Material Witness
• The “Amazing Insights” award goes to Glenn Harper at International Noir Fiction
• The “Critical Perspicacity” award goes to Uriah at Crime Scraps
• The “Indispensable Source” award goes to BV Lawson of In Reference to Murder
• The “Friends who FriendFeed are Friends Indeed” award goes to Maxine of Petrona

Gott nytt År to all!

more on Mankell and Larsson and . . .

The Telegraph feeds the curiosity of those just meeting Wallander thanks to the new BBC version of the series with an article about “The Man Behind Wallander.” The authors of the piece seem bemused and even a bit puzzled that the Swedish detective is so popular.

Maxine Clarke reviews another Sjowall and Wahloo reiussue at Euro Crime and pronounces Murder at the Savoy up to the high standards of the series.

And continuing the runup to the release of the second volume of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, Ali Karim interviews Chrisopher MacLehose, UK publisher of Stieg Larsson, who reveals interesting details of its first English translation, rushed through for a film deal. He also predicts Lisabeth Salander on filmwill trump James Bond.

this and that

There’s a good review of the BBC Wallander series at Material Witness.  It helps that the lead actor is so talented.

Branagh utterly dominated the screen, making it all but impossible to look away. His unshaven face, stooped gait, and tired red eyes held a raging storm of conflicting emotion as well as an uplifting humanity. It was a moving, mesmeric performance, understated and yet dramatic, absolutely as good as anything I have ever seen on the small screen.

And the fact that it is being filmed on site in Sweden plays a role, too . . .

The canvas on which Branagh was painted was equally dramatic. There is a quality of light and space in Scandinavian countries in the summer that is quite different to anything I have experienced elsewhere. It is captured exquisitely by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. But despite the light and the space Wallander also captures that essential quality of Nordic gloom. It is quite something to pull this off.

Altogether, two thumbs way up. I should also mention that crimeficreader has a thoughtful and excellent recap of a documentary about Mankell that ran on BBC – John Harvey (John Harvey!!) talking to Mankell and others (including a hugely charming Jan Guillou). Do I lose all my Scandinavian crime fiction cred if I confess I like John Harvey’s books better than Mankell’s?

And finally – Ali is winding us up for the debut of the second volume in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy with an interview with Larsson’s bereaved father, who bought his son a typewriter for his thirteenth birthday, but then had to send him to the basement to use it because it was too noisy.

Glen Harper on Theorin

Over at International Noir Fiction, Glen Harper has a perceptive review of Johan Theorin’s Echoes from the Dead, which I am just finishing up myself. He points out that there’s a folktale element to the story in the way that the past and present stories are told.

Theorin is looking for an equivalent for the folk tale or ghost story within the framework of a realistic crime novel. The “troll” of the book is Nils Kant, a murderer who disappeared decades earlier but remains in the community’s memory as part ghost, part “boogey man,” and possible child murderer, with rumors that he is not actually buried in his coffin in the graveyard. Ghosts seem to occupy his deceased mother’s abandoned, decrepit house. The “alvar,” the grassy plain of the island, becomes a haunting character itself. The chapters of the book loosely alternate among the perspectives of the mother, the grandfather, and the troll. There are a number of references to second sight and other paranormal perceptions, but more as metaphor than as plot points. . . . Theorin’s tale is a complex intertwining of a straightforward story of loss, a rational investigation of the past, and a passage through the nightmare world of the old stories–it’s fascinating to watch the story twist and turn through all of its facets. Theorin is another in a seemingly bottomless pool of sophisticated and effective Scandinavian crime writers.

Exotic?

I guess it all depends on your perspective. Scandinavian crime fiction to me seems very solid, down-to-earth, and insightful about the everyday. But at least Joan Smith of the Times (London) thinks they’re good. In a round-up of five crime fiction novels set outside the UK, she includes Arnaldur Indridason, Henning Mankell, and Hakan Nesser. A sampling:

Iceland is famous for stunning scenery, collapsing banks and now a world-class crime writer called Arnaldur Indridason. His novels feature a detective who rivals Henning Mankell’s Inspector Wallander when it comes to gloomy introspection, but his plots and layering of past and present are hauntingly original. . . .

. . . The idea behind this collection of Wallander stories is brilliant but simple: it consists of Wallander’s earliest cases, beginning with a period in his life when he was still in uniform. . . . As well as filling in gaps in Wallander’s biography, the book reveals Mankell’s sense that something has gone wrong in Sweden’s model social democracy and identifies some of the causes of the malaise. . . .

The Mind’s Eye by Hakan Nesser (Macmillan £16.99, translated by Laurie Thompson) is a psychological thriller in a class of its own. . . . This stunning novel by one of Sweden’s foremost crime writers might have been written as a script for Alfred Hitchcock.

Also recommended: Teresa Solana’s A Not So Perfect Crime, Catherine Sampson’s The Slaughter Pavilion, Aly Monroe’s The Maze of Cadiz, and PJ Brooke’s Blood Wedding.

Wait, that’s more than five. So maybe five are exotic and . . . well, never mind. They all sound worth reading.

a smallish smorgasbord

Steph Davies of Wheredunnit is blogging these days, and has just published an appreciation of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo’s Martin Beck series, which she reports holds up amazingly well. Previously she commented on the BBC Wallander series and wished she could join the throngs touring Wallander’s Ystad.

Maxine at Petrona makes me renew my resolve to read all of the Martin Beck series as she talks about the way the “main character” in many ways is in the background to the social panarama that takes the front stage. I’m thinking this is actually a common characteristic of Scandinavian crime fiction. Have to mull this over more . . .

Karen Meek at Euro Crime points out that Arnaldur Indridason’s Voices is set at Christmas time – though it might not be the cheeriest of stories, involving the sordid murder of a hotel Santa Claus with a long-held secret.

And Uriah at Crime Scraps says “Just when I had learned to spell Indridason along comes another fine Icelandic crime writer.” But he’s willing to add another name to his spelling skills – Yrsa Sigurdardottir, author of Last Rituals, which he recommends. And which I hope I haven’t misspelled.

And if you haven’t joined the Crime and Mystery Fiction room at FriendFeed – what are you waiting for? What a handy way to share links.

More than Mankell

The UK is revelling in Wallander, thanks to the BBC version of the series launching with Sideswiped. Boyd Tonkin of The Independent calls attention to other Scandinavian writers who are worth a look. Stieg Larsson’s second book in the Millenium Trilogy is due in January, a new Mari Jungstedt is coming to bookstore shelves, and Tonkin points out books by Norwegians Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbo, Icelander Arnaldur Indridason, and Finland’s Matti Joensuu, who has just had a volume of his Timo Harjunpää series re-released. He also gives a shout-out to the gifted translators who are making these works accessible to English-speaking audiences.

No reader should mentally confine the writers of the North to a life of crime. All the same, many gifted novelists have chosen to adopt the form and push its boundaries. Social satire, historical investigation, the psychology of the killer or abuser, a recurrent concern with the fate of damaged youngsters betrayed by a mighty welfare state – most readers expect more from this region than cliffhanging plots in rugged terrain.

A sign of the times? The Wallander television episode attracted six million viewers; a Britney Spears program that aired the next evening was watched by a mere 400,000.

Carnival of the Criminal Minds, No. 27

After visiting the southern hemisphere, courtesy of Karen’s blog, it’s time to head north, to the part of the world where death-defying young female acrobats serve saffron rolls while singing and wearing lit candles on their heads – yes, it’s time to celebrate the Carnival in Scandinavia. (But kids – don’t try this at home. Your hair may catch fire.)

The rollercoaster economy has many of us wondering where the book business is going, (though some of us are more intrigued by what kind of plot Arnaldur Indridason will concoct out of the banking mess in Iceland). Many commentators were mulling over the significance of Google’s settlement in November, though how helpful their registry for orphaned books will be for crime fiction fans is unknown; the university libraries being digitized don’t tend to collect as much popular fiction as many of us would like. The puzzling news that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has halted acquisitions (sort of, maybe, unless they change their minds) sparked some commentary, including the head-scratcher that nobody told Otto Penzler, who apparently gets to keep blithely buying books. Unfortunately, that does not include the next Declan Burke title. Fans are certain that crime will pay for another publisher, and HMH will be kicking itself in the arse for being so myopic.

But meanwhile . . . many bloggers are doing their bit for the industry with a “buy books for Christmas” meme.  And while many bloggers are standing ready to recommend current books, some old favorites are being systematically and lovingly rediscovered every Friday thanks to Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Books project, avidly adopted by The Rap Sheet and others.

Spinning the coin a bit differently, Toni McGee Causey writes about why it’s important to tell stories in these difficult times.

The glorious thing is that the world is full of stories, and through crime fiction that we can discover the world in all its seamy, sordid glory.  Scandinavia is producing an astonishing output of fine crime fiction, celebrated at this blog. Norm (alias Uriah) is a bit peeved at the moment by the way British television reviewers are covering the release of BBC’s version of Wallander. Not only do they come up with headlines like “Inspector Morose” but they assign reviews to people who cheerfully confess “I must be honest, I hadn’t been optimistic about the prospect of a Swedish detective. My only knowledge of the country came from watching Bjorn Borg playing tennis at Wimbledon, and reading about Ulrika Jonsson’s latest baby/divorce/lover.” Given the collective knowledge base of the crime fiction blogging community, this insouciant ignorance is  . . . well, grounds for justifiable homicide?

Over at my place, Adrian Hyland kindly agreed to answer a flock of questions from students in a first term seminar course on international crime fiction. We had just read his marvelous book, Diamond Dove, retitled Moonlight Downs in the US. If you want to understand the Aboriginal perspective, through the extraordinary voice of a mixed-race heroine, give it a read. And for a slightly more risque interview, see what madman Stuart McBride tossed Adrian’s way over at Shots.

Peter Rozovsky’s Detectives Beyond Borders is a constant source of intelligent recommendations and commentary on the world of crime fiction. Admitted into evidence, Exhibit A: guest blogger Mike Nichol of Crime Beat South Africa who offers a marvelous capsule history of crime fiction in SA – including the impact Deon Meyer has had on the genre.

Despite the vibrancy of thriller and crime fiction elsewhere, not much has happened in SA crime fiction over the last five decades. Until recently that is. This isn’t exactly surprising as the cops have been more or less an invading army in the eyes of most of the citizenry since forever. Certainly, come the apartheid state in the late 1940s no self-respecting writer was going to set up with a cop as the main protagonist of a series. It was akin to sleeping with the enemy. . . . The 1990s, however, were to see a number of changes, not least the change in the country to a democracy with the 1994 general election that ended the apartheid state. Overnight, well, almost overnight, the cops became the good guys and our literature started taking on a different perspective. But it takes some time for a country to mature and give itself permission to write and read escapist books, especially as we’d been used to writing and reading as an act of protest. . . .

Interestingly, the first wave of new crime fiction focused primarily on what Nichol calls “crimes of deviancy” – serial killers and other departures from the norm were the subjects of choice for both English and Afrikaans writers, because they could be escapist.

Perhaps in this there was a desire to steer away from the political issues dominating a nation in transition, although this attitude is changing. Social and political concerns are back on the agenda, and the bad guys are now as likely to be politicians, business moguls, and figures of authority as perverts, drug dealers, serial killers and gangsters.

So, it seems these writers are giving murder “back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse” as Chandler so famously suggested in “The Simple Art of Murder.” As I’ve just finished reading an advanced copy of Roger Smith’s Mixed Blood and am halfway through Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak, I can serve as a witness – this stuff is good!

We’ll close with a gift from Ali Karim, who was moved in a fit of enthusiasm for Steig Larsson, to put into words “The Importance of Crime and Thriller Fiction.” I hope he’ll forgive me for quoting it at length.

Camus stated that “A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.” This line put some perspective into my thoughts, especially as Larsson’s journalism work was slanted toward revealing the evils of Neo-Nazism, as well the levels of brutality inflicted upon the most vulnerable in society, such as women, dispossessed, the marginalized, minorities and the underprivileged. Some of Larsson’s thoughts naturally found themselves into his novels as the line from Camus indicated. When looking at human beings we find that when we’re good, we can be truly remarkable, but when we’re bad, we can be horrifically evil. . . .

I guess I spend a lot of time contemplating life, death and society, from the mirror that is crime / thriller fiction; that’s why existential work strikes such a resonance in my psyche. I guess I am always looking for meaning, or purpose in the sheer randomness [or absurdity] of our existence. Every so often a line, a paragraph or perhaps a whole book has such insight. I consider as human beings, we are deeply flawed as I previous mentioned. Therefore crime / thriller fiction is a perfect art form to view [and reflect] the human condition; as crime novels link the good and bad within us all. The best fiction novels of crime offer the reader to take his/her own side of the moral compass. There are some novels that really help you understand the sheer comedy and tragedy of our existence. . . .

I guess I read so much; write so much; and observe life, trying to find out more about myself and the world that surrounds me. Every so often I discover something from the viewpoint of another person that makes me challenge my own thinking, and makes me look at the world in a different way. Larsson does that for me. He challenges me, and makes me see things from the prism of his mind, not mine. . . .

So what else could one ask for from one’s entertainment? And to add to my pretentious mood this morning I will quote Albert Camus again -

“After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”

That is why I spend so much time reading, and why I consider a life without books as meaningless, and why I get anxiety if not surrounded by books, and why crime thrillers reveal more about life than any other genre – In my very humble opinion [and I qualify that statement by making it clear that I do read widely, not just crime], in crime fiction I find all of life’s rich tapestry.

Thanks, Ali, for your enthusiasm and for your willingness to put it into words.

Next up – the Carnival will set up its tents at The Rap Sheet in a couple of weeks for a return visit. Meanwhile, you can find the carnival archives here.

photos courtesy of vovchechko & brewbooks

Hot News from a Cold Country

Norm (aka Uriah) of Crime Scraps reports that Johan Theorin  has won Sweden’s best crime novel of the year prize.

But our Australian friends will be unhappy that Peter Temple, nominated for best foreign crime novel, lost to Andrea Maria Schenkel.