A Mixed Bag of Mini-Reviews

Time to blow the dust off and post something here. I’ve been under the weather (hello, endocrine system! I didn’t even know you were there). I’ve been reading a lot – just not up for writing reviews. Rather than try and catch up with full-scale reviews while relieving ARC-guilt, I’ll simply share some quick impressions of some of the books I’ve read. It won’t do them justice, but otherwise I’ll never catch up. I’m putting a * by the ones I enjoyed the most and warning you that there’s a rant ahead.

Dark Branches by Nik Frobenius
This Norwegian novel of psychological suspense is narrated by a writer who has stretched himself to write an autobiographical novel that exposes aspects of his past that previously he’d kept hidden. As soon as the publicity for the new book begins, he gets a newspaper clipping in the mail, unsigned, about the school fire that inspired his novel. Then his daughter’s doll is mutilated and a strange voice on the phone tells his wife the author is having an affair. Things don’t improve from there. The story is moody and dark; the narrator is not a sympathetic character, which makes it even darker, as the past he’s used for material comes back to haunt him. This nicely produced Sandstone Press book was translated by Frank Stewart.

*Open Grave by Kjell Eriksson
This claustrophobic character study may not be the best choice for readers who like action and puzzle-solving, but if you take the time to savor it, it’s very good. An elderly man living in a prestigious neighborhood has just received news that he’s going to receive the Nobel Prize for medicine. We soon learn that he may not actually deserve it, and in any case he’s a mean, demanding, self-important tyrant of his own home. The demands he puts on his loyal elderly housekeeper, the third woman in her family to work for this wealthy family, is reaching the end of her tether. In some ways this is an inside-out mystery. The series detective, Ann Lindell, appears late in the book, and so does the crime. What’s fascinating is to watch this highly traditional household slowly unravel. Translated by Paul Norlen.

The Intruder by Hȧkan Östlund
Though Swedish crime fiction is typically associated with social criticism, there’s quite a lot of it that situates fairly outlandish crimes arising out of family secrets or tortured relationships in picturesque tourist destinations. Sometimes they’re very good – Johann Theorin has written some cracking stories. But often they’re not particularly realistic or insightful and the setting feels very far from contemporary Sweden, a kind of golden age Sweden with home-grown monsters to slay. This second book in a series set in Gotland (after The Viper) involves a family living on an isolated island off Gotland that begins receiving threatening anonymous letters. The investigation exposes a marriage that isn’t ideal. I couldn’t find much to recommend this novel and it relies on breaking faith with the reader in a way that I can’t describe without a spoiler, but it’s been on every “rules for mysteries” list since S. S. Van Dine. I don’t blame the translator, Paul Norlen. He did his job perfectly well.

The Drowning by Camilla Läckberg
As much as I was underwhelmed by the previous book in this list, I actively detested this one. Family secrets and a horrible crime on a scenic island populated by Swedes who lack the diversity and complexity of contemporary Sweden – we’re in the heart of don’t-pay-attention-to-social-issues Swedish crime, which is enormously popular. Every irritating gimmick this author uses is turned on full blast. The backstory told to readers at length, but not known to police. Nearly every terrible thing a human being might do can be traced to bad mothers. Highly traditional gender roles between an earnest copper and his I-just-can’t-help-myself amateur sleuth wife, who has traded post-natal depression for being pregnant with twins. I know, next time let’s go for triplets! The amateur female lead withholds information from her cop husband, both of them withhold information from the reader, and a solution to the mystery is ripped from a 1970s soap opera. For dessert, may we offer you a completely manipulative cliffhanger that has nothing to do with what went before but is a teaser for buying the next book? It may come as no surprise that I won’t be reading any more in this hot mess of a series. To be fair, millions of readers worldwide love this stuff. I just found this overlong book (476 pages) had everything I don’t like about this series on display and nothing that I could praise other than the better-than-it-deserves translation by the talented Tiina Nunnally.

*The Treacherous Net by Helene Tursten
Now we’re back on solid ground. This latest in a reliable police procedural series combines a realistically grounded and competent female detective, Irene Huss, working on realistically sordid crimes in Sweden’s second-largest city, Göteborg. In this entry, a young girl who appears to have been lured into the sex trade through internet-based grooming has been murdered, and this murder is the tip of the iceberg. As if that’s not enough to keep the homicide detectives busy, a mummified body is uncovered as a building is being demolished. The two investigations are nicely laid out and we catch up on what’s going on in Irene’s life at home and in the workplace. I enjoy the low-key way this series addresses social issues without too much drama and a non-angsty, non-alcoholic protagonist who resolutely believes that things can be put right by good people doing their jobs well. If Swedish crime has a crowd of gloomy detectives in one corner and a bunch of unlikely crimes in picturesque settings in the other, Tursten plants her flag in the middle: in a place where most of us live. Translator Marlaine Delargy does justice to this author’s straightforward prose style.

*The Drowned Boy by Karin Fossum
A family in a small Norwegian community experiences a tragedy when their toddler son wonders out of house when his mother’s back is turned and drowns in a nearby pond. As usual, Inspector Sejer investigates the incident with his quiet combination of compassion and penetrating skepticism. For someone who usually finds out that terrible things lurk under Norwegians’ smiling exteriors, he is both relentlessly just and deeply kind. In this case, the question is whether a parent may have wished the boy, who has Down Syndrome, out of their lives. This book doesn’t have the strong ironic fabulism of many of the recent books in this series and it has more of a focus on the often gnomic detective’s feelings than usual, both of which struck me as good things. Fine translation by Kari Dickson.

The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen
I’ve enjoyed earlier books in this series, even though the plots involve rather implausibly complicated ways to commit crimes, but this one didn’t hold together at all. A policeman on the island of Bornholm, obsessed by a cold case, uses his retirement party as a stage for his suicide. The familiar Department Q team go to the remote island to solve the case, but the story never comes alive and nobody seems too interested in the girl who is found hanging most implausibly in a tree. There’s over 500 pages of it, too. I don’t see a translator on this advanced reader copy, but I don’t envy him or her the job.

**The Girl and the Bomb by Jari Järvelä
This book was a great find, and I had never heard of this author until he asked if I would care to read an advanced copy. I’m so glad he did. Though Amazon Crossing is producing a lot of translations, they don’t always get a lot of attention. In this case, the book certainly deserves it. The chapters alternate the point of view of a young black woman who feels alienated in the small port city of Kotka, Finland. Her best mate, a gifted street artist with whom she scales heights and spray-paints (aka bombs) the ugly parts of the city, is killed when a group of security guards go after them both. Metro (the somewhat feral girl of the title and a great character) decides to go after the guard who she thinks is responsible. His point of view is provided in the other chapters, and he’s the least guilty of the guards, the one most disturbed by what happened. As time goes on and Metro finds ways to call out the injustice, the small flicker of remorse and shame he feels is replace by resentment and anger. It’s both a psychological study of a man whose moral fiber is disintegrating and a character sketch of an artistically talented but marginalized teen who feels she owes it to her friend to seek justice her own way. The ending is great. It looks as if there will be a trilogy about Metro, if my Google-foo is working, and a film is being made of this one. I’ll be looking for them. Kristian London can take a bow for her his translation.

Three days ago Amazon announced they’ll be spending $10 million on translations in this imprint over the next five years. Heartening news for those of us who want more.

 

 

review roundup

At Crime Scraps, Norm reviews Liza Marklund’s latest Annika Bengtzon thriller, Borderline which involves international intrigue and a hostage situation. Does it make me a bad person to be pleased that Annika’s annoying ex is a hostage? It sounds very good (and not just because Thomas is in trouble.)

At Petrona Remembered, there’s a fascinating email exchange/converation between Neil Smith and Liza Marklund about The Long Shadow and its translation and possible reception by English readers. Fascinating! And it ends on a cliffhanger . . .

The Guardian credits the popularity of Scandinavian crime for a boom in translated fiction in the UK.

Crime Fiction Lover provides a lovely tribute and overview of the Martin Beck Series written by Jeremy McGraw

At Crime Review, Tracy Johnson reviews Aren Dahl’s To the Top of the Mountain, who feels the humanity of the characters adds to their appeal.

At Reviewing the Evidence, Yvonne Klein unpacks the multiple plot strands and global locations for Jussi Alder-Olsen’s latest entry in the Carl Mørckseries, The Marco Effect, making it sound very well worth reading.

She makes a reference to an interview with the author in the Huffington Post, which is also worth a read. The author mentions that in addition to a Danish film version of the first in the series, there’s talk of a U.S. television adaptation of the characters, possibly s Hmm…

Ms. Wordopolis reviews an earlier book in Arnaldur Indridason’s Erlendur series, Voices. She finds it’s not the best in the bunch, but it’s still a favorite series. “It’s a reminder to me to spend less time on new releases and catch up on older books.” I’m so glad you feel that way!

Ms. Wordopolis also thinks the second volume of the Minnesota Trilogy, Vidar Sundstol’s Only the Dead, is a much tighter, very different sort of book from the first. I agree with her that it will be interesting to see what the third and final volume is like.

Laura Root also reviews the book at Euro Crime, finding it both unexpected and gripping. (Ditto.)

Staci Alesi (“the Book Bitch”) also reviews that book for Booklist and says though it is short – almost a novella – it’s dark, beautifully written, and suspenseful.

Jose Ignacio Esrcribano reviews (in two languages!) Arnaldur Indridason’s Strange Shores, which finishes the Erlunder series (chronologically, at least). He enjoyed it very much, as did I.

At International Noir Fiction, Glenn Harper reviews Jo Nesbo’s Police, in which Harry Hole is off stage for a good bit of the action, and speculates whether the end is really the end – or not.

Sarah Ward reviews Black Noise by Pekka Hiltunen at Crimepieces and wonders whether it qualifies as Scaninavian crime, given it’s set in London. She finds it has a promising story about social media that unfortunately goes awry, becoming quite implausible. She hopes for better next time.

She also reviews Elsebeth Egholm’s Three Dog Night, a Danish novel about a recently-released convict who moves to a remote community only to meet a prison mate who is, unfortunately, dead. She says it has a well-constructed plot with a good ending though some of the characters in the fraying community can be hard to keep straight. She’s looking forward to the sequel, coming out in the UK soon.

Karen Meek reports on hearing two Danish authors interviewed by Peter Guttridge – Elsebeth Eghholm, Lene Kaaberbol, at the Manchester Literature Festival. Lots of insight into the authors and being translated, here.

Mrs. Peabody investigates a French thriller set in Norway, Olivier Truc’s Forty Days Without Shadow, likening it to M. J.McGrath’s Edie Kiglatuk series set in the Canadian artic. It’s a “cracking debut” that illuminates nomadic Sami culture in a world with borders.  It sounds like a strong nominee for the Petrona Award. Mrs. P. links to an interesting  interview with the author.

Gary Jacobson reviews Karin Fossum’s I Can See in the Dark and finds it creepy, chilling, and effective at portraying the inner life of a very unpleasant man who is guilty of many crimes except for the one he’s accused of.

At Euro Crime, Lynn Harvey reviews Jan Costin Wagner’s Light in a Dark House, the fourth in the Finland-set series, but the first she read.  She says it stands on its own, but she’s ready to go back and read the rest. She concludes, “if you love the mystery of character as much as the mystery of crime – set in a wintry Scandinavian landscape – then I think you will savour [it] as much as I did.

New Publishing Player: Stockholm Text

Responding to the same passion for Scandinavian mysteries that animated this blog (which has gotten a bit dusty, lately – sorry for the infrequent posts) and to the new potential offered by short-run printing and ebook distribution, a new venture has been launched with four crime fiction titles translated from Swedish in the past month. Stockholm Text (which has an attractive website featuring moving parts and paper-like cutouts – and Pippi – and dragons) is aimed at reaching a global audience “without technical or geographical borders,” according to the publisher. “Packaged for the future, we deliver the books wherever you are.” What that means is printing through short run or print on demand companies and selling the books in print and electronically wherever readers are. What a refreshing change from the usual regional restrictions.

Stockholm Text kindly sent me copies of their first crime fiction offerings. They are attractively packaged with covers that carry just enough branding to be distinctive. The books are by different authors, only one of whom has been published in English before, with different translators. I hope to have reviews up here in due course. Another intriguing aspect of this publishing house is that they aren’t concerned about spacing books out traditionally; we’ll have more books by Carin Gerhardsen and Mari Jungstedt in just a few more months.  In addition to crime fiction, Stockholm Text has other works on their list, including non-fiction.

But these are the titles that will interest crime fiction fans:

Mari Jungstedt’s The Dead of Summer – in a familiar series to Scandinavian crime fans, this entry features the murder of a man on an isolated island where he has been camping with his family. As Anders Knutas is on holiday himself, Karin Jacobsen investigates, with reporter Johan Berg covering the news.The translation is by Tiina Nunnally.

Anna Jansson’s Killer’s Island – more islands! In this case, a legend from Gotland’s past intersects with a present-day murder. Jansson has written over a dozen crime novels (including  one nominated for a Glass Key award and made into a television drama) and several children’s books and works part time as a nurse because she evidently likes to be busy (!) The translator is Enar Henning Koch.

Karin Wahlberg’s Death of a Carpet Dealer – involves a Swede who has traveled to Turkey to buy carpets and is murdered there. It’s one of series of (so far) eight books featuring Chief Inspector Claes Claesson and his physician wife. The author is an obstetrician. (These are some very busy writers.) The translator is Neil Betteridge

Carin Gerhardsen’s The Gingerbread House – part of a police procedural series set in south Stockholm in which bullying that occurs in a primary school has long-term consequences. Gerhardsen wrote the first three volumes of the Hammarby series before submitting them all at once for publication. The translator is Paul Norlen.

I just got word that the publisher has a nice offer for readers at the moment. Purchase a paperback or e-book from any retailer, send the order confirmation to  ebba.bandh@stockholmtext.com – you will be sent a free copy of another of one of the publisher’s crime novels.

I’m excited to have more authors, especially women authors, being translated into English.  I’m intrigued by the publisher’s embrace of new technology. And I’m really happy that a publisher and the authors they work with are thinking beyond borders.

What We’ve Been Reading

In the Washington Post, Richard Lipez reviews Kaaberbol and Friis’s The Boy in the Suitcase, and finds the interwoven tales of two mothers, both intent on a boy who is drugged and shipped to Denmark in a suitcase, “another winning entry in the emotionally lacerating Scandinavian mystery sweepstakes.”

At Petrona, Maxine reviews the book, finding many of the characters well-drawn, but herself not particularly drawn to Nina Borg. Despite a disappointing denouement, Maxine found the book “exciting and involving” as it sheds light on issues of social injustice.

Ms. Wordopolis thought it was the best of the Scandinavian crime she has read lately, with complex characters and a riveting story that never becomes manipulative.

At Eurocrime, Lynn Harvey reviews the new translation of Liza Marklund’s The Bomber,  which she found a fast-paced thriller with an appealingly strong heroine.

The Daily Beast interviews the authors about the choices they made in the book, including the portrayal of men who carry out violent acts. They find crime fiction that dwells on violence is too often about how crime is committed, not who committed it or why.

At International Crime Fiction, Glenn Harper reviews Johan Theorin’s The Quarry, writing that Theorin continues to combine an interesting plot structure, lots of the flavor of daily life for the characters, including the recurring figure of Gerlof, an elderly resident of the island of Oland, and a folkloric supernatural element – continuing the arc of a series that he feels is about as far from the style of Stieg Larsson as it is possible to get.

He also reviews Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds and compares it to the previously-filmed Swedish television version of the story. He praises Tursten for telling an interesting story with just the right amount of domestic backstory – and Soho Press for restarting their publishing of this seires, which was one of the earliest Swedish translations into English among crime fiction titles.

Jose Egnacio reviews Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst, and recommends the Norwegian police procedural highly.  While still in Norway (at least in a literary sense) he offers his comments on K. O. Dahl’s Lethal Investments, which he found enjoyable. Crossing the border into Sweden, he reviews Sjowall and Wahloo’s Cop Killer, a late entry into the Martin Beck series which he finds thought-provoking, with “a fine sense of humour.”

At Eurocrime, Laura Root also reviews Lethal Investments, concluding that plot is less the author’s strength than character and being able to poke society with a sharp, satirical stick.

Mrs. Peabody investigates Jan Costin Wagner’s The Winter of the Lions, another entry in a series she admires, writing “the value of the series lies less for me in the plot or investigative process and more in the novels’ use of the crime genre to explore human reactions to death, trauma and loss. Melancholy and beguiling, these novels are a wintry treat of the highest order.” (As an aside – are there many reviewers in the media who write mystery reviews as good as this?)

Sarah at Crimepieces also reviews it, noting that it has a slightly bizarre but not implausible plot, praising the author’s writing and ability to create intriguing characters.

At Petrona, Maxine has mixed feelings about Kristina Ohlsson’s Unwanted. She found it a quick, entertaining read, but short on emotional depth and rather predictable, though the writing was good enough that she hasn’t written off the author yet.

For the Sisters in Crime 25th Anniversary Challenge, Maxine (who has completed two levels of the challenge and is well on her way to completing the expert level) profiles Inger Frimansson and includes Camilla Ceder and Karin Alvtegen among her “writers a bit like Frimansson” list.

Michelle Peckham enjoyed Mons Kallentoft’s Midwinter Sacrifice, finding it a slow-burning story with an intriguing lead character.

Beth sums up her thoughts about the Millennium Trilogy as David Fincher’s new film version hits theatres. She writes, “the real genius of the Millennium Trilogy is that Lisbeth Salander is no less an unforgettable character on the page as she is on the screen.”She also reviews Anne Holt’s 1222 which she found atmospheric and evocative. This novel recently made new in the US as it was just nominated for an Edgar “best novel of 2011” award

Keishon raises some excellent questions about “the commercialization of Scandinavian crime fiction” – in particular wondering if the trajectory of the Harry Hole series has been influenced by the demands of the American market for more violence done by armies of serial killers. The comment thread resulting is also well worth a read. She also reviews Asa Larsson’s The Black Path which she found an uneven entry in a strong series – making up for it in Until Thy Wrath Be Past, which she found “unputdownable,” full of strong scenes and unforgettable characters. 

Norm also gives Until Thy Wrath Be Past high marks – “refreshingly different and thought-provoking.”

Shadepoint names Leif G. W. Persson’s Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End the best book of 2011, which was challenging in its scope but in the end memorable and significant.

Kerrie in Paradise finds Jo Nesbo’s standalone Headhunters quite clever and advises readers to stick with it through its slow start.

If you’d like to browse a list of excellent reviews, you’ll find it at Reactions to Reading, where Bernadette lists the books she read for the Nordic Book Challenge of 2011. (She nearly reached Valhalla – as do I, reading her insightful comments on books.)

Some interesting feature articles to add to the review round-up:

Publishing Perspectives profiles Victoria Cribb, who translates Icelandic works into English and scrambles to keep up with Icelandic neologisms that are based on Icelandic roots rather than being merely imported from other languages. (Go, Iceland!) This small country, which publishes more books per capita than any other, was highlighted at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Dennis O’Donnell, book geek, reviews Barry Forshaw’s Death in a Cold Climate.  Forshaw himself blogs at Shots about covering the Scandinavian crime beat – and offers aspiring novelists a checklist of how to write a Nordic bestseller, among the tips changing your name to something like Børge Forshawsen.

Dorte contributes a wonderful survey of Danish crime fiction to Martin Edwards’ blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name? including writers who are just becoming familiar to English-speaking readers as well as some we haven’t met (yet).

On the “in other news” front, Nick Cohen challenges Stieg Larsson’s claim to feminism, criticizing his (not translated) co-authored book on honor killings which Cohen says suffers from a left-wing abandonment of feminism when race enters the picture, using the issue to accuse leftists in general of waffling on women’s rights when it comes to immigrants.  The smoke is still rising from the comments.

Nothing but the Truth by Jarkko Sipila – a review

Ice Cold Crime, a small publisher in Minnesota, has added another title to the their list of Finnish translations, a 2006 entry in Jarkko Sipila’s Helsinki Homicide series. (These do not need to be read in order, a good thing as they have followed the tradition of being translated out of order.)

In Nothing but the Truth, Mari Lehtonen, a single mother, witnesses a gangland murder and decides, after some inner struggle, to heed the requests being broadcast by the police for witnesses to come forward. Though this seems to be the way people ought to behave, she soon realizes the gangsters whose dispute was settled with a bullet see it as a shocking breach of thug etiquette, the police are surprised (but pleased), and she has put her daughter’s life in danger. When the killers tries to shut her up, the police move the woman and her daughter to a safe house, but she is outraged by the fact that her act of good citizenship has made her a prisoner – while the criminals remain free.

There’s not much that Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamaki can do, other than counsel patience and offer protection until her testimony is given. There’s not even a guarantee of a conviction, given that  the criminal organization can afford good lawyers. While Takamaki and his police team try to keep their witness under wraps, Suhonen, an undercover cop who seems equally at home in the squad room and among the subjects of his investigations, breaks the news to the victim’s father, a career criminal himself who has his own ideas about the course of justice.

This is a fascinating story about the various players involved in crime – the police and the criminals who understand the rules of engagement and an ordinary citizen who doesn’t care about those rules, but believes she shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing. One of the criminal characters describes the ongoing battle between him and the police as a war, one that only accidentally catches up civilians as collateral damage; another criminal describes the situation as maintaining the “balance of terror, just like in Soviet times.” Only Mari Lehtonen seems to have a clear view of right and wrong, and this seemingly mousey woman turns out to have a firm spine and stubborn courage.

Sipila’s world is gritty, but not cynical, and he tells a lively, well-paced story without favoring outsized dramatic situations  or moral dilemmas over human-sized conflicts. In other words, he doesn’t write the kind of emotion-laden morality plays that seem so popular in the US thriller market. That’s one reason why this story feels fresh.

In an effort to explain to undergraduates who haven’t read a lot of crime fiction how varied the genre is, I have this diagram I sketch out on the board,  with an axis that represents the spectrum from light to dark and another one that runs from realistic to mythic. Some dark thrillers are no more realistic than the fluffiest of craft cozies; some light mysteries do a good job of representing the incursion of violence into an otherwise ordinary situation, which is more real to most of us than, oh, serial killers or ninja assassins or heroic cops on a mission from God. I’m not sure this is the best way to diagram variations on the mystery, but it’s what I’ve come up with.

Sipila’s police procedurals edge into the darker end of the spectrum, without being gruesome or stylishly nihilistic in the noir tradition. On the realism – mythic axis, however, they are firmly at the realistic end of the scale. The bad guys can be really bad, but they’re human. The cops are good, but human, too, and their limitations are disillusioning to Mari Lehtonen, whose refusal to be a casualty in the war between cops and crooks is quietly heroic.

A great deal of my pleasure in reading this story is owed to Peter Ylitalo Leppa, whose translation is once again superb. Translators are in the unenviable position of being most successful when we don’t notice them. Leppa has perfected invisibility and deserves high praise for it. Other works he has translated include

• Against the Wall (Jarkko Sipila)
• Vengeance (Jarkko Sipila)
• Raid and the Blackest Sheep (Harri Nykanen)

Kiitos to the publisher for providing me with a review copy.

so many books…

Norm (aka Uriah) reviews Red Wolf by Liza Marklund, a follow-up to The Bomber that has finally been translated. He thinks, like Maxine, that if anyone deserves the “next” nod following the Larsson success, it’s Marklund.

Norm also turns to the Martin Beck series for a pick-me-up and describes the pleasure of reading Murder at the Savoy. A quote he provides to illustrate the rule that one needs a good plot, a solid cast, and descriptions of food is making me very hungry.

Glenn Harper reviews Camilla Lackberg’s The Stonecutter and concludes that, though she is not his favorite Swedish writer, it’s well constructed, with a nice contrast between the “cozy” setting and the dark storyline.

Jose Ignacio wonders which of his Scandinavian crime fiction books to read next. The general consensus seems to be “read them all.”

Maxine reviews Harri Nykanen’s Raid and the Blackest Sheep which is now available in the UK as a Kindle e-book. She enjoyed it very much, particularly the police side of the story, though Raid is a trifle superhuman (yet still likeable).

Bev Vincent reviews the extra volume tucked into the Millennium Trilogy boxed set coming out from Knopf in time for Christmas, which appears to have some interesting material from his publisher, an editor (including e-mail exchanges between Larsson and her), and a friend and co-worker who knew him well. Only 96 pages, but worth a read. Apparently Larsson took well to being edited, only insisting on keeping the original title for the first volume, Men Who Hate Women.

In an interview with the director of the Swedish films of the trilogy, Niels Arden Oplev discusses the appeal of Lisbeth Salander.

When we screened it for the first time, during the scene where Lisbeth gets raped, you could hear a pin drop in the theater. Then when she goes and rapes him back, I swear to God it was like being in the stadium when Denmark scored in the World Cup. I didn’t know that many women could whistle like that. It was a war cry.

Mary Bor, one of the Curious Book Fans, raves about Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom, writing “neither fine writing nor solid characterisation have been sacrificed to make room for hard-hitting authenticity. The action is at times painful but always compelling; the sense of drama is superb.”

Maxine Clarke enjoyed K.O. Dahl’s The Man in the Window, which like many Norwegian novels revisits Norway’s past under German occupation. She gives the translator, Don Bartlett, high marks, too.

Translator K. E. Semmel interviews Ake Edwardson for “Art and Literature,” a blog associated with Raleigh’s Metro Magazine. It’s a good interview, which includes this:

You know, there is not any genre but crime fiction where anybody anywhere can stand up and generalize and say anything, “crime fiction is this, crime fiction is that”… Everything put into the same mass grave. A lack of nuanced perspective.

Having said that, I do believe there are a lot of bad and cynical crime writers out there who are only in it for the money. To hell with them. I have written 20 books of fiction, roughly half of them crime novels, and I will say that writing a good crime novel is about the hardest thing. It’s not in the first place the plot, though a crime novel is about the last epic still standing in contemporary fiction. No, the challenge is about the attitude of the writer: Why am I writing this, why am I writing about crime, how am I writing? You know, if the writer doesn’t put in a sound of empathy and humanism in the story, then it will only become cynical and cold entertainment . . . the simple way of the absolute and excessive evil, where the writer doesn’t take any responsibility for the writing . . . I have spent all my writing years contemplating evil, and one thing I do know is that it isn’t something in its own, like a “thing.” It is very complex behavior, and it always has to do with humans, with people. Nuances. The overall “truth” of my crime novels is that you can never escape the shadows of your past; they will track you down wherever you hide. And it’s all about human behavior.

Right now there is a kind of Klondyke-like flood of crime writing and novels around, especially from Scandinavia, and I can only hope that readers will find the good stuff and that the bad stuff will fall to the ground and turn to dust and blow away in the wind.

un-Finnish-ed business

Peter would like the Finnish writing community to get a bit more proactive about promoting their writers so we can get more English translations. He mentions the small publisher, Ice Cold Crime, but thinks there’s a lot of good stuff that we’re overlooking. Peter also recently reviewed Matti Joensuu’s To Steal Her Love, which he think is terrific and very Finnish.

James Thompson introduces a Finnish – uh, or maybe not Finnish, a citizen of the world – Joel Kuntonen who has traveled nearly everywhere on a Finnish passport but hates snow.  Jim also points out that Stieg Larsson is dead; get over it already, and writes a love song to Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page while under the influence of painkillers, a root canal, and a migraine. It has touches of Dan Brown. Just don’t piss off his lawyer.

As we are on the subject of Finland, I must give a shout-out to Pulpetti, “short reviews and articles on pulps and paperbacks, adventure, sleaze, hardboiled, noir, you name it. Peppered with some comments on everyday life of a writer and politics (mainly in Finland) and also some very, very high-brow literature.” The author publishes, among many, many other things, the crime fic magazine Isku, not to be confused with Iskra, Lenin’s little Communist Manifesto fanzine.

And whilst I’m at it – aw shucks – sometimes in the next month or two my book, Pyhimysmurha, will be published by Nemo, translated by Pekka Makkonen. Extremely loud “kiitos” to Pekka for pulling this off. The title appears to mean “Saint Homicide.” (The original idiomatic English title, In the Wind, didn’t work.) I like this one, though I am not sure how to pronounce it. PEEhimmisMURha? I will have to light a candle to this patron saint of murder.

photo of sticker art in Tampere, Finland courtesy of katutaide; photo of the altar de muertos courtesy of uteart-traveling.

my Scandinavian challenge

There’s a challenge on thanks to The Black Sheep Dances to read Scandinavian fiction in translation, and I ought to be participating. But right now my Scandinavian challenge seems to be keeping up with this blog, and in fact with life in general. I can’t blame spring, though it has sprung splendidly here in Minnesota. See proof, attached. I’ve just been experiencing a silly combination of a heavy workload and general ineptitude. So here is a backlog of news and reviews about Scandinavian crime fiction.

Minnesota Public Radio chats with Gary Schultz (Once Upon a Crime) and some others about the popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction. Gary offers some offhand characterizations about snow and gloom that may annoy some fans. For the record, Gary lives in Minnesota and knows all about snow and gloom; besides, he is a god of all things mysterious, and his wife, Pat, is the goddess. Just sayin’. There’s also a bit about  local small press Graywolf acquiring Out Stealing Horses, having no idea they had a bestseller on their hands. They just like to publish good books. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer press.

Salon reprints a Barnes & Noble Review essay by Brooke Allen on “The Therapeutic Value of the Mystery,” in which she focuses on titles from Felony & Mayhem press, “founded by Maggie Topkis in 2005 in response to a problem she perceived in the book industry. Mass consolidations of publishing houses had forced many classic titles out of print, and Topkis conceived the idea of getting the rights to a number of these titles and printing them in attractive but inexpensive editions.” One of the titles Allen reviews is Karen Alvtegen’s Missing.

Probably the most interesting category at Felony & Mayhem is the Foreign section, which publishes authors highly esteemed in their own countries yet hardly known over here. . . . Alvtegen alternates remembered scenes of Sybilla’s traumatic, long-ago childhood with her suspenseful search for the true serial killer, making for a book that succeeds in being a real novel as well as a thriller. I am looking forward to reading “Shame,” another Alvtegen book published by Felony & Mayhem.”

Good for them!

In other news, Karen reports that there is a new English translation of a novel by John Costin Wagner forcoming. Like his previous Ice Moon, this book – titled Silence – is set in Finland. There’s also a US book deal for two more Erik Winter books by Ake Edwardson.

Maxine reviews The Unit by Ninni Homqvist – not a mystery, exactly, but not science fiction, either. “The events take place in some slightly futuristic or alternative reality, but if the reader accepts these terms of engagement, the novel is an Orwellian story about people, events and feelings, containing no artificial tricksiness and having far more in common with Karin Fossum than with Isaac Asimov.” She also reviews K.O. Dahl’s The Fix – “easily as good as one of the Kurt Wallander novels of Henning Mankell.” And – let’s not give her any rest, shall we? – she also reviews Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman. (I so want to read this book!)

Norm (aka Uriah) points out it snows there. He also reads Karin Fossum’s The Water’s Edge for the Scandinavian Challenge. He’s also read Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman – “one of the most exciting, stimulating, brain teasing crime novels I have ever read with a great plot, fascinating characters and a brilliant climax.” Also for the challenge, Jose Ignacio Escribano reads Sjowall and Wahloo’s The Fire Engine that Disappeared, while Terry Halligan reviews The Locked Room for Euro Crime.

Bill Ott presents Booklists’ top ten mysteries of the year, along with another ten best debuts. The list includes The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin,  Stieg Larssson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire, and Jim Thompson’s Snow Angels.

As it happens, J. Sydney Jones interviews Jim Thompson at his blog, Scene of the Crime.

Bernadette reacts to Arnaldur Indridason’s Hypothermia and says “I can’t seem to explain why I found a book in which there’s not a great deal of action as quite as compelling and moving as I did.” I know exactly what she means.

Peter has been nimbler than I in reviewing Jarkko  Sipila’s Vengeance – which is next up on my review stack. He calls it “suspenseful, exciting, fast paced, and written in a crisp style, full of cynicism and dark humor.”

Henning Mankell’s The Man from Beijing is reviewed in January Magazine – “a brilliant work that’s both challenging and extraordinarily satisfying.”  A reviewer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer opens his review with “Birgitta Roslin is no Lisbeth Salander.” As it happens, that’ not a bad thing in his book. He gives Mankell’s triller a thumbs up and hopes Birgitta will return. Yvonne Klein agrees that Birgitta is a character worth meeting, but finds the translation seriously wanting and is both impressed and deeply frustrated by the book. She is (as always) worth quoting, even though she claims she doesn’t know how to approach this book:

The linkage Mankell makes between Sweden and the atrocities of 19th century racism is certainly an interesting one. Brigitta Roslin, the judge, though muted and rather sad, is still an attractive figure and the book would have been stronger had she played a larger and more central role. But the novel sags badly whenever Mankell is intent on making an ideological point. Worse, where we hope for an epic sweep through geographical and historical time and space, we get mere sprawl.

The strengths of this novel are where Mankell has always been strong – the opening scene in the tiny, terrible village, the baffled, blocked relationships among the Swedish characters, and the landscape of Sweden itself. But when Mankell ventures into Africa, even though he has been living there, off and on, for many years, it all seems to become abstract.

Nancy O reviews Arnaldur Indridason’s Arctic Chill and recommends it. “One of the themes prevalent in this novel is that of the problems of immigration in Iceland . . . Indridason shows the feelings on both sides of the issue, treating the subject with a great deal of fairness toward each.” I very much agree – a measured and thoughtful treatment.

Yrsa Sigurdardottir is quite tired of the ash raining down on Iceland from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

There’s an interview of Camilla Lackberg at Next Reads.

An American software developer who is learning Icelandic reports that fictional murder victims now outnumber the population of Iceland.

The newish blog, Nordic Noir, examines the impact of Olof Palme’s murder on Scandinavian fiction.

Hakan Nesser was on hand to kick off “Swedish Crime Fiction Week” in Mumbai.

At Forbes, an editor blogs about how publishing translated work in the US is worrying. I think she, like too many people in the business, take oral tradition too seriously. She says sales are often poor – but then, 7 of 10 books generally in the US fail to recoup costs. I’m not sure translation has much to do with it.

Fire and Ice

Yrsa Sigurdardóttir chats with Sydney Jones at his blog devoted to crime fiction’s relationship to settings, Scene of the Crime. She gives some coordinates for her next book to be translated into English, Ashes to Dust:

It takes place in a small fishing village on the Westmann Islands off the south coast of Iceland, an island on which a volcano erupted with much ado in 1973. Being pretty used to lava and seascapes it was an archeological dig called Pompeii of the North that intrigued me the most. The dig involves excavating houses from underneath massive layers of ash to showcase them in situ, while my story adds a fictional twist when something other than broken roof beams and rusted iron is unearthed. On every visit to the dig I was just as impressed as the first time I laid eyes on the huge, deep canal, as the blackness of the all-encompassing ash and the effect it had on sounds was intimidating, not to mention the graphic reminder of nature’s not so gentle treatment of the houses we intend to keep us safe from the elements.

For more from Yrsa about Iceland and volcanoes, see her most recent post at Murder is Everywhere, a joint blog of several authors who set mysteries outside the US.

In the Going Backward Department, the Salomonsson Agency’s newsletter reports that the first of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series, titled The Bat Man, will be published in English in 2012, after The Leopard, which is number eight in the series. Will we get the second in the series eventually? Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, Glenn Harper at International Noir Fiction gives us a preview of his experience reading Nesbø’s The Snowman.

Nesbø writes beautifully, with a style that seems simple but is interlaced with humor, metaphor, character, and menace. Though many readers will figure out who the killer is long before Detective Harry Hole does, the fun in reading the book really comes in reading the prose and watching the plot twist and turn through numerous red herrings and false leads until it reaches its inevitable conclusion.

Ali Karim reports thoroughly from the evening at the Swedish Embassy in London where distinguished guests were invited to discuss “Crimes of the Millennium.” One interesting tidbit: about half of the 44 (!) translations of what is called in English The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo used a literal translation of the original title: Men Who Hate Women. Ali’s report is followed by a short essay written by Barry Forshaw, author of the forthcoming biography of Stieg Larsson, The Man Who Left Too Soon.

Maxine, who picked up a copy of Swedish Book Review at the big do, reports on a preview published there of Henning Mankell’s The Troubled Man written by its translator, Laurie Thompson, and reminds Maxine that she much prefers the books to any of the television adaptations. The final Wallander novel will be published in the UK in 2011.

cold off the press – Roslund and Hellstrom win best Swedish crime novel

Nordic Bookblog and Crime Scraps both are reporting that Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström’s Tre sekunder (Three seconds) has won the 2009 award for best Swedish crime novel of the year. Norm had presented the nominees earlier this month with a little translation help from Dorte.

Steve and Tiina have been taking a few pictures and picking up lots of books. “This trip should result in some hot new crime novels for you in the next couple of years, as well as some excellent new mainstream fiction,” according to Stieg Larsson’s translator.

Very little note is taken, generally, of Maria Lang, a Swedish crime writer who was very popular in her day, publishing some 40-50 mysteries between the 1950s and 1990s, but Dorte has a nice appreciation of her work and, in particular, No More Murders. Lang’s books are traditional puzzle mysteries some of which feature an intelligent academic woman. (Photo courtesy of the Swedish Wikipedia.)