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.

marketing mysteries in Scandinavia

Uriah picked up on the Earth Times story mentioned previously here on channel SCF. As I looked at his jacket art illustrations, it struck me that part of what might be going on is a shift in marketing practices. Not too long ago I suspect the hard sell of authors as celebrities that is so common these days would have appeared unseemly to Scandinavians.  (There are lingering traces of that in Minnesota culture, as my college’s PR folks can attest; we’re bashful about our strengths and hesitant to call attention to them.) Some portion of the old guard’s ire may be an inarticulate discomfort with American-style book marketing, not just with young and attractive women writers who write massively popular books.

And that made me wonder how Sjowall and Walloo, authors of the Martin Beck series, would have felt if their names were huge on the cover, with glamor pics of the two of them on the back. They were committed socialists, critical of the inroads that capitalism was making into Swedish society; I doubt they’d stand for it. So Uriah checked it out and provides two illustrative covers.  Yup. Very different marketing styles.

Which seem to endure. Fortuitously enough, a new review of their classic, The Laughing Policeman, has just been posted at Euro Crime. Maxine Clarke calls it “another example of the controlled brilliance of this superb set of novels.” Originally published in the 1960s, they are being reissued by HarperPerennial – with covers that have the focus on story and series character similar to the old days.

Compare that to this cover image of the original 1967 Swedish edition, found at Abebooks. In both cases, the authors’ names are relatively small; the title larger. They both have a period look, but the original has the painterly, dramatic and slightly pulp artwork typical of the times.

In comparison, most contemporary Swedish writers seem to have their names ever-so-slightly larger than titles on current publications – as seen in this teeny-tiny thumbnail of a massively popular book – by a male author.

In general, the covers found at this Scandinavian bookseller’s site seem positively modest by US standards.