By Leslie Utsunomiya
Coquitlam Public Library
The recent popularity of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been phenomenal at local public libraries, and reserve lists are incredibly long Luckily, the genre of Scandinavian mystery fiction is generally very strong, with many writers in the field, so while you are waiting to get your hands on a copy of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, try some of the mystery series by authors discussed here.
Henning Mankell has been writing his Kurt Wallander series for many years, sparking both a Swedish language television series and a BBC version starring Kenneth Branagh as Wallander. More than a dozen volumes long, Mankell’s series paints a portrait of a very human policeman, with a love of opera and great empathy for both victims and perpetrators of crime. A good place to start is with The Pyramid, a set of linked stories that detail Wallander’s career from his first case as a patrolman through his early years as a detective. As well as the series about Wallander, Mankell has even branched out, telling the tale of Wallander’s daughter Linda, during her rookie year on the Ystad police force, in Before the Frost.
Mankell is quite the Renaissance man. In addition to writing mysteries, he has worked in theatre, participated in political rallies and protests of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and lived for years in Mozambique. He comes from a family of judges and composers and is married to Eva Bergman, theatre director and daughter of Ingmar Bergman. Mankell is a great critic of Western attitudes to African poverty and AIDS issues and often works with the United Nations. A master of suspense, he has also written many plays, books for children and teens and general psychological fiction.
Norway is home to Jo Nesbo, an Edgar Award nominated writer and musician. With a degree in economics, Nesbo began his career as a freelance journalist and stockbroker, before settling into mystery writing. In his spare time, he’s the vocalist and songwriter for a rock band called Di Derre!
Nesbo’s detective is Harry Hole, a veteran of the Oslo crime scene, who is constantly in trouble with the police force establishment. In The Redbreast, Hole has been assigned to surveillance duties as punishment for causing the department great embarrassment. He soon finds himself caught up in smuggled rifles and murdered Nazi sympathizers, in what appears to be a fifty-year-old search for justice. Nesbo’s style has an almost CSI feel, with chapter headings that detail locations and/or dates for their settings.
In a genre usually highlighted by men, the “Norwegian Queen of Crime”, Karin Fossum, stands out for her masterful handling of psychological suspense. Although initially a poet, she has gained international attention for her Inspector Sejer crime novels. In He Who Fears the Wolf, Sejer and his colleague Jacob Skarre are faced with two crimes that seem completely unrelated. What possible connection could there be between a purse snatching on the beach and a young delinquent who has vanished?
Iceland’s most popular writer of late is Arnaldur Indridason, a native of Reykjavik. A journalist, an occupation he shares with many of these authors, Arnaldur has been creating the investigations of Detective Erlendur for more than ten years now. One of the series, Jar City, was made into a movie and submitted as Iceland’s contender for the 2008 Best Foreign Film award at the Oscars. Erlandur is called to investigate the murder of a man so solitary that he has only two known friends, one of whom is in prison and the other who has been missing for more than twenty-five years. It appears that vengeance may be the motive, since the victim was accused, but never convicted, of a rape forty years before.
One of the younger Swedish writers to achieve international acclaim, Camilla Lackberg writes crime fiction based in or around her small seaside town of Fjallbacka. In The Ice Princess, writer Erica Falck has already experienced enough emotional turmoil when she returns to Fjallbacka after many years, to clean out the family home. Then, while on a quiet walk, she responds to a local’s panicked cry for help, only to discover her childhood best friend dead of an apparent suicide in her bathtub. It quickly becomes apparent that there’s more to Alex’s death, and Erica finds herself working with Detective Hedstrom to solve the crime.
A breath of cold wintry air from one of these northern crime novels may be just the thing to cool you off during the heat of our BC summer. The Northern Lights have never shone so bright!
