lovely desperation

Fleegan has been on a Scandinavian crime fiction tear lately, offering off-the-cuff reviews of Nemesis by Jo Nesbo and Kjell Eriksson’s Princess of Burundi. Fleegan is either a a mythical creature that loves breakfast cereal or a librarian. She complains (after a conversation with a patron about Nancy Drew) that she is “the blackhole of cool” but that is obviously untrue because she has good taste in books and a fun way of talking about them, vis . . .

Now, if you’re like me, when you read the title you too were all, “Oh hey, is this crime fic? Written by a Swede? About an African princess? Right on!” Well, let me quench your curiosity and go ahead and tell you that there are no African princesses in this story. The Princess of Burundi is a kind of fancy fish. . . .

This is a book in the Inspector Ann Lindell series. In this particular book she’s on maternity leave so she’s actually not in it very much except towards the end. The thing I was most impressed with in this book is that the whole book has a mood and it is desolate. The scenery, the characters, the crimes. Everything seems to be motivated out of desolation/desperation. Even the things that would happen that were supposed to be happy or positive seemed thin and see-through and just out of reach. It was so interesting to read.

Obviously it wasn’t a “feel good” murder mystery. heh.

I was just amazed at how everyone’s lives seemed to be bereft of something, from the detectives to the criminals and the victims. And all of this is played off the winter season of an old industrial section of some Swedish town I can’t remember or spell (was it Uppsala? or is that the one I’m reading about now? hmmmm.) and it was just all so lovely in it’s desperation and isolation and whatever other -ation. I know that sounds strange and impossible, but that’s how it was, and that’s probably why it won an award.

news and reviews

Peter of Scandinavian Books discusses the phenomenon of the Millennium Trilogy, saying the author had originally planned a ten-book series; he had got as far as drafting the fourth before his untimely death. Peter also links to a brief notice from the Norwegian newspaper Daglbladet saying the family had decided not to have the fourth book, of which about 200 pages had been drafted, finished by another writer. That sounds to me like a very good idea, since the author was not one to come close to completing a book in 200 pages.

Nekkidblogger reviews Mari Jungstedt’s Unspoken and says it’s a “great police procedural . . . crisp prose, steady suspense, and flesh-and-blood characters, as well as powerful descriptions of the dark Swedish winter. The narrative is engaging and twisty, and will fool even the most attentive reader.”

Maxine was deeply impressed by Karin Alvtegen’s The Shadow – “a brilliant and rich book, which has had a tremendous impact on me. I urge you to read it as soon as you can.”

Steph was less taken with it, finding the characters unlikeable and one aspect of the ending a bit of a cliche, but she thinks Jan Costin Wagner’s Ice Moon is great, and gives readers an informative illustrated geographical and historical tour of its Finnish setting. She also gives her review one of the most poetic titles in memory: “a strange and haunting story, cracked through with grief.”

Thanks to Mack, I now have a better grasp of the peculiar take on the world offered by Tim Davys in Amberville.

Let me say upfront that I enjoyed this book but it is also one of the oddest I’ve read in a while. It isn’t a book that you can read literally. Amberville refers to one of four districts in Mollisan Town which is populated by living stuffed animals that have the bodily functions you attribute to living creatures. There is no attempt to relate the world of Amberville with our world, it just is.

I first thought that Amberville was going to be a crime story that used stuffed animals in place of humans. While it has noir and criminal element it turned out to be something very different. . . .

Do not think that stuffed animals = children’s book. This is most definitely not a book for children. It is an allegory that uses the Death List to critically examine religious belief and faith and duplicity within organized religion. Related themes include morality, loyalty, and what it means to be family. Viewed as an allegory, the reader can relate Amberville to our world without stumbling over the cast of stuffed animal characters.

But I’m still left wondering . . . why stuffed animals? Maybe there’s a metaphysical answer in there, somewhere, but I doubt it has anything to do with the Velveteen Rabbit.

glum, Professor Plum?

“Professor Plum” of Crime Critics discovers crime fiction of the Scandinavian variety when confronted by a reader who specializes in it, and samples some himself: specifically, Hakan Nesser’s Woman With Birthmark, to be released in the US in April.I’m not sure I’d ever use the descriptor “glum” with Nesser, myself, but Professor Plum thinks it fits, and goes on to say . . .

As much as I love a good cozy for what they provide, this is the anti-cozy.  A style of book that drips with the morbid nature of death and dying without the sensationalized gore common to American literature.  Nesser peels his characters back way beyond the flesh and blood and focuses on the primitive core of our brains that makes the rest possible.  The result is a book that will not give you goosebumps, but rather will make the intake of each breath feel strenuous.

As good as Nesser is at crafting a story and filling it with his culture’s angst, credit also needs to be given to Laurie Thompson, the books translator.  As impossible as writing a great novel seems to me, the idea of translating one from Swedish to English is even more difficult to fathom.  And not just because I can’t read a lick of Swedish.  There are so many cultural sayings that have to be converted, and the breadth of vocabulary needed to capture everything the author is conveying just boggles my brain.  But the winning praise here is that you can’t tell this has been translated.  Bravo to both for pulling this off.

WOMAN WITH BIRTHMARK broke me down emotionally during the final pages.  I adore any work of art that can make me feel this deeply.  Nesser created a murderer that I wasn’t sure I wanted stopped, a group of men that perhaps deserve something worse than death, and a police force that I pulled for, but perhaps not too much.  The uniqueness of these conflicts created a pool of emotions in me before the dam finally blew in the final pages.  It was one helluva ride.  I may have gotten on board late, but I’m glad I’m here.  And there is room for you guys as well.

He also points out this YouTube video interview with Nesser.

survey – do your part for a grad student

Found via Euro Crime – “I am doing a project for my MA in Creative Writing at Brunel University in West London. This will examine the recent upsurge in popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction.”

Take the survey here. It’s short and sweet.

review round-up

Scandlit reviews posts information about Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s My Soul to Take and gives it two thumbs up.* The Bibliophile reports that Last Rituals is handy in the plotting department.

Maxine is a great fan of Karin Alvtegen as she explains at Petrona. Her newly translated book, The Shadow, only confirms it.  Reg Keeland also thinks highly of her work.

Kerrie thinks Kjell Eriksson’s The Cruel Stars of Night is a “good solid read” with interesting subplots.

DJ reviews Mari Jungstedt’s The Inner Circle (apa Unknown) and says it’s quite a lot like Läckberg- and the two authors, apparently, are close friends.

Exiled at the Beach thinks The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is pretty nifty.

Glenn Harper has no doubts: Redeemer is Jo Nesbo’s finest novel yet. And DJ agrees that it’s “a first class crime novel.”

* My mistake – this isn’t a review, actually, it is information from the publisher, who naturally gives it two thumbs up. And it says so, right there on the site: these aren’t reviews. Note to self: read the fine print!

Plush noir

Mark Athitakis has some interesting comments on Tim Davys’s Amberville at the Chicago Sun-Times. This is the improbable story of stuffed animals told in hardboiled noir form as they are engaged in political dissent as fluffy colleagues are placed on a death list. Published in Sweden in 2007, it offers a satiric take on the post 9/11 world – an Orwellian approach that owes more to Animal Farm than 1984.

Tim Davys constructs an entire noirish city out of teddy bears and other stuffed animals. Perhaps the harsh realities of terrorism and rendition are too much for some authors to face — a suspect who gets the stuffing beaten out of him is easier to take if it’s just stuffing. . . . The pulpy, heist-film setup soon gives way to a more Orwellian satire, and Davys’ chief target is religion: As Eric’s research reveals how much control Amberville’s religious authority has over stuffed animals’ fates, the society appears increasingly corroded. “Without an end to a stuffed animal’s life,” Eric thinks, “the church would not exist.” And Eric receives plenty of evidence about how arbitrarily those lives end, “disappeared” in mysterious red pickup trucks. Though the final chapters of the novel largely turn on Eric’s existential despair and epiphanies about the string-pullers in his society, Davys keeps the plot moving by employing a few tools from the noir playbook — a vision of Emma Rabbit’s double-crossing nature comes straight from Chandler. And true identities constantly shift in this world — lovers might be enemies, priests can be evil, and stuffed animals, given the depth and intellect that Davys gives them, may as well be human.

What a peculiar-sounding book. Is the title a play on Jean-Luc Godard’s SF/noir fusion film, Alphaville?

Redeemer reviewed

Marcel Berlins says good things about Jo Nesbo’s The Redeemer in The Times. “The Norwegian Jo Nesbo has been gradually climbing up the competitive league of Nordic crime writers. With The Redeemer he’s touching the summit, and his hero, the stubborn, insubordinate Oslo detective Harry Hole, has become my favourite copper from those parts. . . . Terrific shocks, tension and atmosphere.”

In The Independent, Jane Jakeman says of The Redeemer, “I will never feel happy confronting my vacuum cleaner now that Jo Nesbo has revealed its sinister possibilities.” She  finds it a complex and disturbing book, but too long and digressive for her tastes.

But Margaret Cannon of the Globe and Mail says it’s a “tour de force. Nesbo has a plot here that is so tightly constructed and compelling that it’s impossible to put the book down.”  She concludes,

What’s clever is just how the clues are dug up in a seemingly impenetrable case. There is no connection between the killer and the victim, no weapon and, of course, no discernible motive. How Hole uncovers the links in a chain of death is what keeps the story moving, and Nesbo never lets up on the truly gripping suspense. Absolutely Nesbo’s best translated into English so far, and, I expect, one of the year’s best.

Note to self: stop drooling on the keyboard . . .

Friday linkout

La Trashionista does not usually read crime fiction, much less Scandinavian crime, but she quite liked Karin Alvtegen’s Shadow. She concludes, “the journey through the characters’ motivations is as rewarding as the results of their decisions.”

Robaroundbooks is also a fan of Karin Alvtegen’s books since reading The Shadow – and he points out a handy list for those who want to sample Scandinavian crime fiction – written by none other than Camilla Lackberg.  Her list of ten books includes Mind’s Eye by Hakan Nesser, Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman, Missing and Shame by Karin Alvtegen, Sun Storm by Asa Larsson, Johan Theorin’s Echoes from the Dead – and more. Most intriguing is Midvinterblod by Mons Kallentoft – “As well as a terrific plot, this book also has one of the best-realised female heroines I’ve read by a male writer. It’s not yet translated into English, but it really should be.”

DJ takes note of K.O. Dahl’s The Fourth Man and finds it doesn’t quite work. “Men and masculinity play a large part in this crime story with slightly cynical lone rangers who neglect the rules, ´solve´ problems by means of cigarettes, alcohol and time off – or by watching aquarium fish. . . . this is a world in which men and women do not enter into equal relationships, and where they never really try to communicate with each other.”

Book Brunch notes that Stieg Larsson’s publisher, along with his brother and father, are establishing an award for a person or organization that exemplifies the same passion for social justice that Larsson did with his journalism. They also note that the film is doing great boxoffice business.

Which brings us to the trailer . . .

review round-up

Margaret Cannon reviews Actic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason in the Globe and Mail and likes it so much she reads it twice.

Everyone at Euro Crime wants to read Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Last Rituals! Now it’s Michelle Peckham’s turn. (She recommends it.)

Mack captures Helene Tursten and reviews the first of the Irene Huss series. He found it slow to start, but satisfying in the end.

And English-only readers, eat your hearts out – the Bibliophile behind the (Another) 52 Books blog reviews Arnaldur Indridason’s Myrka, a work not yet translated. Apparently Erlendur leaves the case in Elínborg’s hands this time. The Bibliophile thinks the backstory is a bit overdone, but I can’t wait.

quick, hand me a calendar …

. . .  is it April 1st already?

Postscript: I think Sarah Weinmann has finally figured out what line of work James Patterson is actually in.