a lovely photo and some links

Bookwich has some wonderful portraits of a great many authors including (just scroll down a bit) a good one of Henning Mankell and a very dashing one of Klas Östergren. Her account of the conversation with Mankell is charming.  And in a previous post she has a lovely photo of him:

In fact, her entire blog is so good, I don’t know why you’re not reading it right now instead of this one.

Maxine reviews Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room which she believes deserves wide acclaim:

… the author himself is a wonderful storyteller; one becomes totally immersed in his Oland world and in the lives and personalities of the superbly well-observed characters, major and minor. He is also a great plotter – the main stories as well as the minor ones weave in and out of each other: apparently small details in one story turn out to be highly relevant in another. He also has fun with the ghost-story concept, keeping the reader guessing as to whether he’ll pull a supernatural solution out of the hat or whether he can possibly create a down-to-earth explanation for all the disparate events. There is so much that could be said about this excellent novel, packed full of subtleties and stories, but my main advice is to read it and experience it for yourself.

Karen Meek makes me eager to see the film version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which has trimmed the slow bits and made the most of the suspenseful ones. It will be released in the UK in the spring. Meanwhile, Norm, aka Uriah, who has a review of a Wallander TV episode, The Container Lorry,  has found a club in Malmo that doesn’t allow women with visible tattoos. It doesn’t sound like Lisbeth’s scene, anyway.

Finally, Reg, aka Steven, translator of Stieg Larsson and many other authors, points to a possible precursor to Lisbeth Salander.

remember the Battle of Maldon!

Mike Ripley, who faults Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room for its unsympathetic characters and “sheer bloody glumness” also makes time to criticize publishers for jumping aboard the bandwagon and readers of the “chattering classes” who embrace translations-  and translators who don’t embrace the genre they’re translating. Not one to hide his feelings, he also admits to being still a bit sore about the Battle or Maldon (back in 991 – how time flies). But now Maxine, bristling at the one-two punch of criticism of Euro Crime’s editing (not censoring) of a previous Ripster review and that “chattering classes” tag, strikes back in an open letter at Petrona.

I confess that I am one of those who in recent years have discovered novels by authors such as Maj Sjowall/Per Wahloo, Johan Theorin, Helene Tursten, Liza Marklund, Asa Larsson, Stieg Larsson, Anne Holt, Kjell Ericksson, Yrsa Sigurdadottir, Ake Edwardson, Inger Frimansson, Camilla Lackberg, Karin Fossum, Hakan Nesser, Arnaldur Indridason, Jo Nesbo and others from the Scandinavian region. Before then, I had thought these countries’ entire crime-fiction output was written by Henning Mankell. While many (but not all) of these books are admittedly not primarily exciting, action-packed thrillers, most are either variants on the traditional police-procedural, or rely on a combination of character dynamics, atmosphere and a sense of place to hold reader interest. Some are even funny.

She goes on to describe how much she enjoys crime fiction from other parts of the world – including the US and UK – and defends her own independence as a reader: “I’m a reasonably well-read, old and broadly educated person, so while my enthusiasm for Nordic noir may certainly be considered strange, it isn’t copy-cat, vacuous or jejune.” Though as she signs off as “Confessed reading addict – with a confessed current bias towards Scandinavia” and “Confessed admirer of Mike Ripley” it’s a good bet that those maces and pikes with which they’re going at it are tipped with a coating of irritable humor.

Norm (aka Uriah) reviews Theorin’s The Darkest Room and doesn’t not find it glum.

This brilliant novel is part ghost story, part detective story, and a really gripping thriller. The book reads as if written in English so translator Marlaine Delargy has done a very good job. The human characters are all well drawn but the island of Oland and its folklore are the dominating characters . . . This is a beautifully constructed story with all the various threads and layers interwoven so cleverly, but as with most good crime fiction nothing is quite as it seems and there are some unseen and unexpected twists at the end. This is without doubt one of the best crime fiction books I have read in 2009.

Margaret Cannon reviews The Girl Who Played With Fire for the Globe and Mail, adding to the enthusiasm.

Tim Cornwell in The Scotsman interviews Henning Mankell who is in Edinburgh to talk about Italian Shoes (which isn’t a mystery) but he’s much more interested in the upcoming publication of The Troubled Man, billed as the final Wallander mystery.

More on Wallander on the Tube – Glenn Harper at International Crime Fiction discusses The Tricksters (far from perfect but “enjoyable enough TV-crime-show fare”) and Norm reviews The Photographer and hopes we see other television as well, such as the Irene Huss series. (Yes, please!)

And Norm also has a nice tribute to humor as it is used in Scandinavian crime.

reviews and comparisons

Marilyn Stasio provides reviews of The Girl Who Played With Fire and Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge. She advises impatient readers to cut to the chase and skip the first 124 pages of Girl, when the story really starts, and admires Fossum’s ability to examine every character touched by a crime with humanity in this “exceptionally fine story.”

At Euro Crime, Maxine reviews Ake Edwardson’s Frozen Tracks, the third Erik Winter novel to be translated though it is the sixth in the series. (The first will be published in a couple of months.) This is a very long book – over 500 pages – but she finds it overall a satisfying procedural involving two seemingly unrelated sets of events.

I managed to miss an interesting review posted last month by crimeficreader of Yrsa Sigurdarsdottir’s second novel, My Soul To Take. She thinks there hasn’t been much accomplished in the character development department from the first in the series, but finds it the plotting and tone to be very successful:

There are so many red herrings it’s like being asked to locate the one whitebait in a fish market.  Sigurðardóttir doesn’t just wrong foot the reader, she has you in the wrong footwear to deal with the terrain.  We again have the dark balanced with the light, pulled off in a rather unique and skilful way.  Watch out for a sex therapist and her tools of the trade as this element covers both those aspects.

If that isn’t a hook, I don’t know what is.

And finally – Seamus Scanlon, a guest on Declan Burke’s Crime Always Pays blog, offers an overview of the “Story of Crime” – an overarching title for the Martin Beck series by Maj Swowall and Per Wahloo. The ten books are “all written with aplomb and honesty and set the standard for all police procedurals that followed.” The Swedish series is able to write about crime and society in a way that reflects the authors’ Marxist views without becoming overly didactic.

Scanlon mentions a debt owed to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series; in fact, the athors translated McBain into Swedish, but weren’t yet familiar with his work when they started writing about Martin Beck and his colleagues. This seems more like a Liebnitz/Newton moment, when people in two countries working with similar materials happened to invent something very similar – calculus and the Hogarthian police procedural that reflects the urban experinece in all its grimy glory – at roughly the same time. (McBain started his series nearly a decade before Roseanna was published.)

Scanlon also points out the ways in which Mankell and those who followed him into the crime writing trenches owe a debt to Sjowall and Wahloo. “Mankell’s Inspector Wallander, an existential warrior battling crime and his own melancholia, closely resembles Beck.” But that suggests a tonal similarity that, I think, is not entirely true. Martin Beck would probably be taken aback to be called a “warrior” and while he has a dose of melancholia (as well as frequent colds) the books themselves are hardly gloomy – they’re shot through with humor and irony. Which is another way in which they resemble McBain more than Mankell.

This photo from Flickr’s Creative Commons pool was taken by Jickel, who comments “The tape seems to be the kind the police use to mark out crime scenes.”

post-vacation review round-up

Martin Edwards has a lovely quote from Hakan Nesser on the essence of crime fiction, at his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name? Go read it.

Bernadette finds much to like about Camilla Lackberg’s Ice Princess.

I reviewed Inger Frimansson’s Island of the Naked Women for Reviewing the Evidence. The author delves deep into psychological suspense in a hardscrabble setting. The title sounds like a hedonistic ClubMed destination but shows a different side of traditional Scandinavian attitudes toward sex: in the old days, unmarried women who became pregnant or otherwise offended public morals were abandoned there to die of exposure.

Euro Crime finds an interesting trend – many first books in series are getting published (though maddeningly out of order) and this time it’s Ake Edwardsson’s Erik Winter series.

Crimeficreader reads Johan Theorin’s The Darkest Room. Though she isn’t planning a winter visit to Oland anytime soon, she thought the book was original and compelling.

The wonderfully original aspect of The Darkest Room is that the suspense comes from finding out what really happened from a myriad of obscure routes, with the reader not fully comprehending the extent of issues to be resolved at the outset.  The wonderfully brilliant aspect of reading The Darkest Room is the feeling of satisfaction on reaching the end and the sense of time well-spent with an author who knows how to entertain, whilst exploring the darker recesses of the mind; for The Darkest Room in Theorin’s novel is in the mind.

Rob Kitchen reviews Yrsa Sigurdarsdottir’s Last Rituals and, after weighing its strengths and weaknesses concludes it’s a “mildly enjoyable first novel, but nothing startling.”

Bookwitch takes a look at Jo Nesbo’s writing for children which sounds rather fun but nothing like the Harry Hole books.

And of course The Girl (which scored #1 on the New York Times bestseller list)  is getting a lot of attention. Here are some of the reviews:

• January Magazine – “oddly epic love story, ultra-violent crime thriller and classic buddy novel all at once”
• Entertainment Weekly – “another gripping, stay-up-all-night read, but it’s also a bit sloppy”
• Philly Enquirer – “What Larsson has done is akin to enlisting two huge, enticing stars, then keeping them separated for much of the action, united only through e-mail.”
• San Francisco Chronicle (Alan Cheuse) – “The books are so good, in fact, that I have to keep reminding myself that they are genre novels, not mainstream fiction” (ouch!)
• Seattle Times – “The troubled, brilliant Lisbeth is unforgettable.”
• USA Today – “Larsson makes the reader love and worry about his heroine as though she were real.”
• Washington Post – “Here is a writer with two skills useful in entertaining readers royally: creating characters who are complex, believable and appealing even when they act against their own best interest; and parceling out information in a consistently enthralling way.”

The Seattle Times also reviews Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge -

The book has several sterling qualities, including a concise, crisp translation and a terrifying portrait of the fragmenting couple that discovers the body — especially the husband and his creepy fixation with the case.

AND – for bonus points – interview Reg Keeland, the Girl’s translator, who explains how “Reg” was born and how he keeps up with current Swedish slang.

two reviews – and a contest (!!!!!)

Glenn Harper of International Crime Fiction reviews Johann Theorin’s second book, The Darkest Room, which follows on his debut,  Echoes from the Dead, and won the Glass Key award. Deservingly, it sounds, based on his assessment. It’s a complex story with elements of folklore/ghost stories, mystery, and thriller with mulitple characters and some historical vignettes.

The novel is interesting from the beginning, naturalistic but spooky as well as well written, but as the threads of the tale begin to converge, along with the Christmas blizzard of the original Swedish title, the pace picks up to that of a thriller (and the translator, Marlaine Delargy, deserves a lot of credit for maintaining that pace in lucid English)—you’ll find yourself ripping through the almost 400 pages . . . And where a number of Scandinavian novels have dealt with the new immigtion problems, Theorin looks toward a different kind of “intruder” into the calm, uniform surface of Swedish life: the continuing presence of those who are gone but not quite forgotten.

Sounds excellent. I’m impatient to read it.

Dorte reviews Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge, saying “This thriller is two stories in one: the solution of the crime, but also the story about the ripples which are caused by little Jonas´ death: the reactions of his relatives, friends and the couple who found him.” I agree – and this is typical of Fossum, it’s all about the people around the crime and how they are implicated or are affected. I thought very highly of this book.

win this book!

And finally -

A CONTEST!

Knopf, Stieg Larsson’s US publisher, may have made us wait too long to get our hands on the books that everyone else in the world has already read, but they have been kind enough to send me a copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire, which I reviewed here earlier. (And no, I’m not palming you off with a used copy; this is a pristine copy that has never been read.) If you would like to put your name in the hat, send an e-mail message to fister @ gac.edu with the subject line CONTEST. In the message, please answer this question: Which international (non-US) crime fiction author do you think deserves a wider audience – and why? Be sure also to include your name and mailing address. I’ll put all the names in a hat and draw one winner. And if you don’t mind, I will also post a list of some of your responses so that all of us can discover yet more books to read. You know how terrified we are that we might run out.

I’m afraid I’m going to limit this contest to people living in the Western hemisphere – US, Canada, Mexico, and points south (at least until you bump into Antarctica). I would normally be open to a world-wide competition, but hey, we were the last kids on the block to get this translation, so nanner nanner nanner.

Update: I forgot to mention, I will not keep your addresses after the drawing, and I won’t use them for any other purpose.

here on earth and on the blogs

Peter Rozovsky, the keeper of the Detectives Beyond Borders blog (and possessor of a brain the size of a planet), provides an expert tour of international crime fiction, as does Hirsh Sawhney, the editor of Akashik’s new anthology, Dehli Noir. A number of Scandinavian writers are mentioned among the multicultural melange, starting with Steig Larsson’s popularity and finishing with the lineage of Mankell and company going back to Sjowall and Wahloo. As a side note, I’m amazed that the moderator managed to quote from two articles that drove me bonkers because they were so off base but were published in widely-read venues. Sigh.

Meanwhile, Cathy Skye has a review of The Girl Who Played With Fire. And for her (as for many of us) there’s one key reason why these books are addictive.

Once again, the person at the center of it all– Lisbeth Salander– is the most fascinating. As a young girl locked away in a psychiatric hospital, she was asked Why won’t you talk to the doctors? To which Salander replied Because they don’t listen to what I say. If you don’t listen to what this young woman says, she’s not going to bother with you. At all. You won’t even be a blip on her radar. When I turned the page to see Part IV: Terminator Mode, I didn’t bother to hide my grin. This could only mean that Salander was kicking into high gear. I loved seeing how Larsson tied the expose of the sex-trafficking industry and the double murder into Salander’s own background, for this book does give insight into what makes Salander tick.

If you want to get to know one of the most fascinating characters in modern fiction, read Larsson’s books. Lisbeth Salander will enter your bloodstream like the strongest of narcotics.

Glenn Harper at International Noir Fiction reviews Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge and adds three covers. It’s interesting to see how different the Norwegian one is from the US and UK cover art.  He describes how the narrative delves into multiple perspectives, including those of the couple who discover the child’s body:

The result of the combination of the more meditative, interior monologues and the dialogues between the cops and the glimpses of the married couple’s daily life is a splintered image, a kaleidoscope or jigsaw puzzle that in the end emphasizes the daily tragedies of normal life as much or more than the awful crimes.

Fossum’s ending (really there are plural endings, as each thread of the plot ends separately) emphasizes both the awfulness of the ordinary and what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, carrying forward the dark, brooding story beyond the end of the novel and into the reader’s life–a most effective ending for a noir crime novel.

Effective, but very different from the more common “resolution” offered by many mysteries. I loved it, but it does not promise that order is restored. Another thing that amazes me about this book is how much it accomplishes in only 240 pages.

And Dorte reviews a Danish thriller that hasn’t been translated into English, and it sounds as if that’s just as well.

http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

a conversation and some reviews

The CBC’s “Writers and Company” has a conversation with four interesting writers from different parts of the globe – from Italy, Gianrico Carofiglio; from Sweden, Asa Larsson; from Scotland, Louise Welsh; and closer to home, Canadian author Giles Blunt. It’s a podcast worth listening to as they bounce ideas off one another. Louise Welsh in particular does a good job of considering what makes crime fiction work.

Kerrie is kindly reposting reviews she wrote for Murder and Mayhem – including this one of Karin Fossum’s Black Seconds. As a bonus, she offers mini-reviews of several other books. And Glenn Harper takes note of Girl by the Lake, an Italian film version of Don’t Look Back, which looks awfully good. It was an excellent book, too – discussed at 4_mystery_addicts where the ambiguous bits gave us plenty to talk about. Fossum has a knack for  ending her books not with a bang, but a frisson. Rather than tie up all the ends neatly, in the last page or two she pulls one knot loose and leaves us wondering. And Glenn also leaves me thinking with this insightful comment in his analysis.

[There is] an essential, almost metafictional quality of the police procedural as a genre: storytelling is the subject and the medium of the form. Everyone in Girl by the Lake is telling a different story, and the police keep adapting their own version of the story as facts become known. The viewer (or reader) becomes tangled in all the stories, straight through to a final resolution (or approximation of a resolution).

That seems to touch a very fundamental piece of what happens as a mystery is solved. Stories are told, interpreted, unraveled, reworked . . . stories about stories, but also, thankfully, about interesting people and exciting events, since what is the use of metafiction without any people or events? to paraphrase Alice.

Dorte reviews Johann Theorin’s The Darkest Room and says he isn’t letting us down. Whew! That’s a relief. It’s also a relief to hear that the ghost story included does not cross its wires with the mystery; the author doesn’t take a shortcut with a supernatural solution .

And Peter reviews The Island of the Naked Women by Inger Frimansson which, despite its title, is not about hedonism. It’s a study of family dynamics, isolation, and psychological torment. He recommends it as a dark, suspenseful book with “strange dynamics and lots of tension.”

more authors to watch for

Tonica, our Scandinavian talent scout, profiles two more favorite writers who have not yet been published in English.

Leena Lehtolainen is a Finnish mystery writer, who writes about female cop Maria Kallio. Maria is married and has a little daughter (and a cat), but sometimes glances at other men . . . Finland is in many ways like Sweden, but in other ways different and it’s those differences that fascinate me. [Note: me too!]

Anna Jansson is a nurse who turned to writing mysteries. Her books are set on the island of Gotland. The setting is one reason I find these books so interesting. Gotland is a very special place, with a fascinating history. Her heroine is female cop Maria Wern. She seems quite intelligent, but not particulary tough, not like the tv version, played by Eva Röse, who is an excellent Swedish actress.

Thanks again for the heads up on books we’d like to read if only we read Swedish (or Finnish).

Reg takes a break from translating to give us the backstory on Stieg Larsson’s titles.

Meanwhile, John Dugdale rounds up summer “thrillers” in the Times (UK) and is disappointed in Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge.

Fossum is usually ranked with the best of the Scandinavian crime invaders, but here it’s a little hard to see what the fuss is about. Sejer is almost parodically colourless, the writing is merely functional, and The Water’s Edge is only half-heartedly a whodunnit. But if you’re in search of an ­antidote to the in-your-face energy of ­American crime fiction, this quiet, ­slender, bracingly bleak tale could well be it.

Er, well, that’s actually the point. It’s about the most shocking and hot-button issue, the ultimate crime, pedophilia. But rather than indulge in Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare or putting us Face to Face with Pure Evil, this book is about ordinary people and the way that evil isn’t pure at all. I take issue with the claim that “the writing is merely functional.” It’s understated on purpose in contrast to the usual “let’s throw more fuel on.” There’s a place for expressive prose and in-depth character analysis, but not if you’re telling this story, this way.  It’s an artful choice, and it’s carried off skillfully.

books we wish we could read

Here’s an interesting profile of some lesser known Scandinavian writers – totally unknown to me (except in one case by reputation) because they haven’t been translated into English. Into lots of other languages, yes, but not English. Sigh. While the world has gone overboard for Mankell, Nesser, and Lackberg (who this blogger finds seriously underwhelming) she wonders why we’re neglecting some of her favorites:

Emma Vall. She’s really three persons using the same pen name. They’re reporters, and so is their main character Amanda Rönn. She investigates crimes in the northern town Sundsvall. Emma Vall also writes mysteries for kids, about a girl named Svala (she’s originally from Iceland, hence the unusual name). . . . All their books are well written and definitely worth reading.

Arne Dahl. Pen name for a man named Jan Arnald. In addition to writing mysteries he’s also a short story writer, editor and critic. His mysteries are about a fictitious group investigating serious crime – the A group. The group employs quite a few people, so chances are you’ll find a main character you’ll like. . . .

Thomas Kanger. He’s a reporter too, just like the women behind Emma Vall. His main character is young cop Elina Wiik who works in Västerås in eastern Sweden. Just like most cops, she’s single and trying to find time to date in the midst of her busy professional life. However, in The Borderland (Gränslandet) he just gets too fanciful for my taste. . . .

Åsa Nilsonne. She’s actually a psychiatrist and medical doctor, but also writes excellent mysteries about the cop Monika Pedersen, working in Stockholm. Monika Pedersen is single (is there any cop who isn’t either single or divorced?), but has a close male friend, who is gay. Most of the cases are investigated in central Stockholm, but in the last book Monika goes to Ethiopia to follow up on a lead.

Now I hope the blogger will go on to tell us about some of her Finnish favorites. We can dream.

The Girl Who Played With Fire – a review

When I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I enjoyed it but did find myself wondering what all the fuss was about. Now I agree with Norm – I found this book to be a much stronger, more focused, more engaging book all around than the first in the series.

In the second of the Millennium Trilogy (I always feel a little awkward saying that since it was not planned as a trilogy, but rather as a 10-book series), we switch between the perspectives of many characters but in every case they revolve around two: ‘Kalle’ Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander. Salander has gone on a long trip around the world (covered in the first section of the book) and returns to Sweden to set up a carefully isolated life, supported by her extraordinary skills for subterfuge and a fortune that she acquired in the first book. She has cut off relations with Blomqvist, unwilling to be hurt by him, and instead resumes a low-stakes friendship with Mimmi, who helps her concealment by living in her apartment and forwarding her mail. Millenium, the muckraking publication where Blomqvist works, is preparing a bombshell issue, to be followed by a book, on sex trafficking, naming many prominent politicians, businessmen, and even police as patrons of an organized industry that exploits women. When soon before publication the two principle authors are murdered and Salander’s scumbag guardian is shot with the same gun, one with Salander’s prints on it, she becomes the prime suspect.

The sections where we see the story from Salander’s perspective were the most compelling for me. Not only is she an interesting character (with admittedly larger-than-life characteristics), the story has more verve and energy when she’s on the page. I was disappointed when she disappears from the story and the focus switches to the hunt for the supposedly insane and violent killer. But that, too, grew on me, particularly as the police involved begin to realize that the two pictures they have of their suspect – that she’s an unbalanced, illiterate, and extremely violent psychotic who spent much of her childhood confined in a mental hospital versus a competent, principled, and brilliant professional – are incompatible and that throws a major wrench into their investigation.

One reason I thought this book was an improvement was the focus and pacing. With the exception of the introductory section (Salander’s travels) the book drills down into one issue: who killed the journalists and the guardian, and how is Salander involved? The fist book seemed uncertain whether to present a locked room mystery, a financial thriller, or an all-out shocker; the parts of the plot seemed to be struggling to cohere, and the tone was wobbly. Second, the shocking reality behind the crimes in Fire, once exposed, is not as outlandish and overblown as in the first book; it’s more motivated and believable, and therefore packs more punch. Finally, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ended less with a bang and more in a dwindling away of energy. That’s certainly not the case here. The auxiliary characters are better developed, and I found myself much more interested in and compelled by Salander in this book. She still has the super-woman characteristics that make her slightly cartoonish, but the backstory we learn in this book is much more believable, with less shock factor and more nuance.

For me, she is becoming human, and that makes her far more interesting.