“When a loved one went missing time changed nothing.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  (FEB 23, 2014)

Arnaldur Indridason’s most recent novel available in English, Strange Shores, is the most thoughtful, subtle and sympathetic portrait of Reykjavik Police Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson I have read. The author shines an intimate searching light on the seasoned, somewhat curmudgeon, Erlendur, and a tragedy in his past that “convinced [him] there and then that he would never be a happy man.” On vacation in the village of his childhood, situated in a remote part of the eastern region of Iceland, Erlendur cannot escape the long lost or suppressed memories of two disappearances that of his young brother in one of the sudden vicious storms and of a young woman in another.

Erlendur’s father was a sheep farmer until tragedy made the family move away to the capital Reykjavik. Their old farmhouse stands in ruin and, ever so often in recent years, Erlendur has returned, camping out among the remnants of the house and wandering into the nearby mountain range, reliving that tragic day. It is like a pilgrimage for him, a journey that he feels compelled to take, still searching for clues or signs.

“Admittedly, [time] dulled the pain, but by the same token the loss became a lifelong companion for those who survived, making the grief keener and deeper in a way he couldn’t explain.”

Pain for Erlendur is fused with survivor guilt for his lost younger brother. For related and different reasons the disappearance of the young woman Matthildur has been occupying the police inspector’s mind for many years. Rumours kept alive among the locals as to whether she really was lost in the storm or some other fate had befallen her. A chance encounter with an old local hunter rekindles Erlendur’s passion to solve long lost mysterious disappearances. But, can there any hope to find clues, if not answers, after so many years?

The questions surrounding the two disappearances, separate and nonetheless linked in the mind of Erlendur, stand at the centre of Arnaldur’s captivating narrative. The author shows his usual insight into his protagonist’s motivations, yet, here he goes deeper into discovering the hidden facts that surrounded the disappearance of Matthildur. Surviving family members are reluctant to open up old wounds. By following the inspector’s various leads, we gain considerable insight into one of these remote communities, the complicated intimate relationships and strongly held ties to the past. Secrets that have been hidden can be pried open only if handled with great care and sensitivity. Erlendur himself experiences a wide range of emotions, provoked not only by the recurring memories from the past, but also made palpable through vivid dreams, nightmares possibly, that capture the depth of pain and loss and the wish to search for evidence that could heal the wounds. Reliving his own past gives him the determination, obstinacy to some, to find the evidence that lay hidden from sight regarding the young woman’s disappearance.

Arnaldur’s understanding and empathy with the witnesses of the past events, their personalities and individual behaviour is exquisitely rendered. His understated evocation of the landscape reflects its stark beauty as well as its many hidden dangers. I found this to be one of his most engaging books yet, at least of those that I have read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 33 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harvill Secker (September 16, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Arnaldur Indridason
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Fifth Woman by Henning Menkell

Bibliography:

Reykjavik Police Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson series:

• Jar City (aka Tainted Blood) (2000; 2005 in US)
• Silence of the Grave (2001; 2006 in US)
• Voices (2003; 2007 in US)
• The Draining Lake (2004; 2008 in US)
• Arctic Chill (2005; 2009 in US)
• Hypothermia (2007; 2011 in US)
• Outrage (2008; 2012 in US)
• Black Skies (2009; September 2013)
• Strange Shores (2010; September 2013 in US)

Stand-alone thrillers:

• Operation Napoleon (1999; 2011 in US)

“It was time it happened, the determination that this should never be allowed to repeat itself, the hatred and the bitterness of not being able to decide whether to thrust a knife in her or start to weep so that she could console me like a second Linda, for I was no child any more and yet I was, and I wanted to be neither, but someone else, again.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (SEP 28, 2011)

Navigating that shaky bridge between childhood and adulthood is never easy, particularly in 1961 – a time when “men became boys and housewives women,” a year when Yuri Gargarin is poised to conquer space and when the world is on the cusp of change.

Into this moment of time, Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen shines a laser light on young Finn and his mother Gerd, who live in the projects of Oslo. Fate has not been kind to them: Gerd’s husband, a crane operator, divorced her and then died in an accident, leaving the family in a financially precarious position. To make ends meet, she works in a shoe store and runs an ad for a lodger for extra money.

To complicate the situation, Finn’s father’s second wife – a now-widowed drug addict – views the ad and unloads on the family Finn’s half-sister, Linda – a young girl who appears to have mysterious problems that are only gradually revealed. Figuratively, this “poor mite got off the Grorud bus one dark November day with an atomic bomb in a small light blue suitcase and turned our lives upside down.”

Linda becomes the mirror in which Gerd, Finn, and others (including the lodger Kristian) eventually define themselves. Gerd, who identifies strongly with Linda, is transported back to an abusive childhood and views herself in the little girl. Finn — who is the first-person narrator — battles jealousy, bewilderment, and eventually, stirrings of love as he defends Linda from the Norwegian educational system and the school bullies. He reminisces: “Linda was not of this world, one day I would come to understand this – she was a Martian come down to earth to speak in tongues to heathens, to speak French to Norwegians and Russian to Americans. She was destiny, beauty and a catastrophe. A bit of everything. Mother’s mirror and Mother’s childhood. All over again.”

Not unlike his regional compatriot, Per Petterson, Roy Jacobsen is (as one publication stated about the latter), “a master at writing the spaces between people.” He succinctly and beautifully captures the incomprehension of a young boy who is trying to make sense of the adult world and his place within it. The increasing bond between the boy and his accidental sister is explored painstakingly and is exquisitely poignant. The portrayal of Linda’s evolution to her new family is genuinely heartrendering.

A pedestrian and at times downright awkward translation does not serve the stream of consciousness sections well. In the best translations (such as the talented Ann Born’s translation of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses), the reader loses sight that the book is a translation. It takes a little while to get into the cadence and the rhythm.

But the authenticity of Roy Jacobsen’s vision wins out with its universal themes: how others become gifts in our lives, unveiling us, and the lengths we go to preserve relationships with those we love. Or, in the words of the author, “Something happens to you when someone spots you – you see yourself from the outside, your own peculiar strangeness, that which is only you and moves in only you, but which nonetheless you have not known…” This quiet book is a hopeful testimony to transformative change.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 21 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (September 27, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Roy Jacobsen
EXTRAS:	Blog with all sorts of Roy Jacobsen info
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersen

Partial Bibliography (translated):

• The New Water (1987; 1997 in English)
• The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles (2005; 2009 in English)
• Child Wonder (2009; September 2011 in English)

“Have you thought about the question? Why we’re keeping you in a cage like an animal? Why you have to be put through all of this? Have you come up with a solution, Merete, or do we need to punish you again? What’s it going to be? A birthday present or a punishment?”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (SEP 10, 2011)

Danish Detective Carl Morck is a walking tormented shell of his former self. Recently returned to work, he is living with post-traumatic stress disorder following an incident that ended with the shooting death of one of his colleagues and a shot that paralyzed his friend, Detective Hardy. Morck was also injured by a shot to the head. So far the perpetrators have not been found and Morck lives with survivor’s guilt. He is difficult to get along with, often late to work, and no longer has his heart in his work.

To deal with his attitude, his supervisor, Superintendent Jacobsen, assigns Carl to head Department Q, a newly funded police department, and he stations it in the basement so that Carl is out of eyesight from his colleagues who are sick of his negativity and attitude. Department Q has been funded by parliament in order to solve dead cases, especially those that involve persons of interest or famous victims. Carl’s idea of a perfect work-day is to lounge around with his feet on his desk, napping or watching television. “In his end of the basement there were no people, there was no daylight, air, or anything else that might distinguish the place from the Gulag Archipelago. Nothing was more natural than to compare his domain with the fourth circle of hell.”

It’s not long until Carl realizes that Department Q has been funded to the tune of five million kroner. The money is all being channeled to the homicide division and hardly any of it is going to Department Q. Carl approaches Jacobsen and requests his own car and an assistant, letting him know that he is wise to the side-channeling of his funding. He gets what he wants.

As the book opens in 2007, we find out that Merete Lynggaard, a once promising Danish politician, has been kidnapped and held in captivity since 2002. She has no idea why she has been kidnapped. She only knows that she is in an empty concrete cell with two buckets given to her each day – one for her waste products and the other with barely edible food. Each year, on her birthday, the atmospheric pressure in her chamber is cranked up two notches. This will happen every year until she is able to answer her captors’ question: “Why are you here?” Of course, Merete has no idea.

There is a case file for Merete on Carl’s desk and the theory is that she jumped or was pushed overboard on a ferry while on vacation with her brother Uffe. However, no body was ever found and no reason for her to commit suicide was ever ascertained. Uffe, who was disabled in a car crash that killed their parents, is very close with Merete and she cares for him with a deep and abiding love. She is also a rising star in her political party.

Meanwhile, Carl is assigned an assistant named Assad. He is a man of many abilities, strange though they may be. He makes strong coffee, drives like a maniac, can take a lock apart in a second, knows people who can decipher encrypted words and numbers and is a mystery to Carl. He is Syrian and ostensibly is hired to clean Department Q and keep it neat. Carl makes the mistake of giving Assad a book on police procedure – Handbook for Crime Technicians. Assad reads the book and then gets antsy for Carl to start working on cases. He prompts Carl to start working on the Merete Lynggaard case and together they get a start on it.

Carl tries to find out more about Assad but he keeps his past close to his chest, alluding to difficult and bad times. He keeps a prayer rug in his office and kneels to pray to Allah during the day. He also plays Arabic CD’s and has only a passing knowledge of spoken Danish. He gradually becomes Carl’s partner, leaving his cleaning duties in the background.

The novel is noir, filled with great characterizations and action, and also comedic at times. Carl’s wife, Vigga, from whom he is separated, has gotten Carl to help subsidize a gallery that she is starting with one of her many young lovers. Carl is also raising Vigga’s son from another relationship. Vigga doesn’t believe in getting another divorce so Carl is stuck with her. Vigga has the uncanny act of calling Carl’s cell phone at the most inopportune times. Carl also has a boarder who pays him rent and is like a housewife to him. His name is Morton and he collects play animals and is a great cook.

Carl suffers from physical symptoms of his Post-traumatic stress disorder including chest pains, anxiety and panic attacks. He is attracted to his department’s psychologist and sees her for treatment. However, he spends most of the time trying to pick her up and she’s wise to him, telling him to come back when he can be honest with her.

This is a book filled with great writing, telling a page-turning story. I could not put it down. It has everything I’ve come to expect from the very best Scandinavian writers – an angst-driven hero, dark situations that confound the mind, characterizations that are stunning, and action-packed scenes. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen is definitely one of the ten best books I’ve read this year and certainly the best Scandinavian mystery I’ve read, bar none. It is excellently translated by Lisa Hartford.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 381 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult (August 23, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jussi Adler-Olsen
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbø The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Bibliography:

Q series:

• The Keeper of Lost Causes (2007; 2011 in US) (originally called The Woman in the Cage)
• The Absent One (2008; 2012 in US) (originally called The Pheasant Killers)
• The Conspiracy of Faith (2010; May 2013 in US) (originally called Message in a Bottle)
• The Purity of Vengeance (2009; December 2013 in US)

“How quickly it can change, the life we think has been marked out for us. We start the journey with good intentions, the gift our parents bequeathed us. And then, someone snaps their fingers and we find ourselves sidetracked; we end up in a foreign country.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky AUG 10, 2011)

Karin Fossum’s Bad Intentions is about three friends, now in their twenties, who have known each other since they were six. On the surface, Axel Frimann is by far the most successful. He is well-spoken, good-looking, nicely dressed, and drives a Mercedes; his job at an advertising agency pays well. Philip Reilly, on the other hand, is disheveled, has long, stringy hair (“he looked like a troll from a fairy tale”), and spends a portion of his small salary as a hospital porter getting high. The third member of the trio is Jon Moreno.

As the story opens, Jon is with his two buddies at a cabin near a lake ominously called “Dead Water.” Reilly and Frimann have taken Jon out of the hospital ward where he is being treated for depression and anxiety; the doctors hope that the change of scenery will speed Jon’s recovery.

The three men share a dark secret, one that would land them in deep trouble if it came to light. Their transgression preys on Reilly and Moreno, while Frimann’s chief concern is how to keep his pals from blabbing and ruining his life. The dynamics of control—self-control and the control of others—drives the story. Some men are leaders and others are followers. For certain individuals, it is easier to let someone else make the decisions than it is to take a stand. Fossum is keenly aware that any of us, in certain circumstances, can do something that we will forever regret. Certain people rationalize their actions and blithely carry on as if nothing has happened, while those who possess a sense of morality may become mired in guilt. They can escape only when they unburden themselves and try to atone.

Inspector Konrad Sejer and Jakob Skarre are called in when one of the men goes missing. Sejer interviews the victim’s family and acquaintances, but although he has his suspicions, he has little hard evidence to go on. The inspector thinks, “I’ve developed a profound skepticism and it follows me everywhere. I don’t trust anyone.” When another body turns up, Sejer’s suspicions deepen, and soon matters come to a head in an unexpected manner.

Karin Fossum demonstrates that justice comes in many forms and is often meted out in unlikely ways. In addition, she poignantly touches on how two grieving mothers find a measure of consolation after they lose their beloved children. Bad Intentions, translated capably from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund, is a subtle and heartbreaking tale of psychological suspense in which Fossum explores not only the nature of good and evil, but also the power of guilt to insidiously destroy a person from within.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 36 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (August 9, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Karin Fossum
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Indian Bride When the Devil Holds the Candle Who Fears the Wolf Don’t Look Back

Bibliography:

The Inspector Sejer & Inspector Jakob Skarre Series:

• Eve’s Eye (1995)
• Don’t Look Back (1996; 2004 in US)
• He Who Fears the Wolf (1997; 2005 in US)
• When the Devil Holds the Candle (1998; 2006 in US)
• The Indian Bride (2000; July 2007 in US)
• Black Seconds (2008)
• The Water’s Edge (2009)
• Bad Intentions (August 2011)

Other:

• The House of the Insane (1999)
• The Nightmare of November 4th (2004)
• Broken (2006; August 2010 in US)
• The House of Fools (2008)

“We’re nearly ready, we’re always almost ready and it takes only a little time for the vessels to flush and fill with memory, and then we can open our eyes, lift our heads, sit up in our beds, and turn to meet your gaze. We’ll tell you what we remember.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (JUL 15, 2011)

Nestled in the pristine Finnish woods is a sanatorium for women. It’s the 1920s and medicine and its accompanying attitudes towards women’s health is moving from Victorian ideas to more modern methods of treatment, but those shifts have not yet reached the women’s hospital at Suvanto. This vast multistoried building is still part spa for the wealthy wives of the male employees for the local timber company, and part hospital for the poor. This is a building with sharp physical and mental divisions between staff and patients and also between the patients themselves. The poor patients–those who are considered “really” ill are kept on the bottom floors, while the convalescing wives of the timber employees, called the “up-patients” lodge on the 5th floor.

American nurse, Sunny Taylor, arrives at Suvanto hoping to leave the memories of her mother’s protracted illness behind. Upon arrival, she’s assigned to administer to the up-patients on the top floor. Most of these women are not seriously ill–although they may suffer from a number of hysterical illnesses, age-related problems or perhaps just ennui–the result of the delicate, protected and largely synthetic lives they lead. Into this stifling atmosphere of hospital pajamas, organized games and medications, arrives Julia Dey, a former tango teacher dumped on the hospital by her husband.
There are hints that Julia may suffer from some sort of venereal disease, but she also suffers–as many middle-aged women do at Suvanto–from a “woman’s ailment.” In Julia’s case, she suffers from a prolapsed uterus. Sunny begins to find that she identifies with the patients rather than the rest of the nursing staff, and she’s particularly sympathetic to Julia.

Unlike Julia, who had no say in the fact she was sent to Suvanto, some of the women have chosen to stay at Suvanto and welcome the time as a break from their husbands. Indeed, some of the wealthy wives are regulars who return each year. These wives lead protected, hothouse lives, so Julia is a totally different being. For one thing she’s worked for a living and she’s led an exotic life. She’s also not an easy patient, and Julia’s refusal to cooperate causes the latent cruelty of the nurses to surface. Pearl Weber, one of the more popular women, is considered by her frustrated husband to be suffering from neurosis and actively making herself ill. The perfumed, powdered and cosseted Pearl becomes Julia’s unlikely friend.

Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto is an incredibly creepy, disturbing novel, and throughout the story there’s a sense of malevolence and gathering menace. The hospital’s stagnant atmosphere shifts with the arrival of a male doctor who’s experimenting with some new surgical techniques, and the building is detailed in such a way that it becomes a vivid part of this story. The hospital exudes a sterility in which death, depression and hopelessness linger. Its intricate architecture includes soundproofing, passages and locked rooms–all things that echo the ideas of secrecy, separation and impenetrability. Yet oddly, most of the up-patients look forward to their rest at Suvanto. What does that say about their everyday lives?

Author Chapman cleverly allows the narrative to shift from third-person to first person plural, and this technique underscores the idea that while the hospital operates on a bland day-to-day-level, there’s an underlying culture between the female patients that’s largely impenetrable by the staff:

“We cared only for ourselves. We had large windows, and we watched the sky thicken with snow. We pulled open the metal door to the roof and positioned ourselves along the curving promenade, scraping our lounge chairs over the concrete, turning to absorb the winter sunlight through fur-lined hats and soft, generous coats. From the promenade you can see the cornerstone; we discovered this by carefully leaning out over the railing, into the air, looking down to where the building meets the ground. Pictures were taken, and we’d like to see them now, because we were beautiful then. We’d like to be beautiful again, and in memory we will be, and then we’ll tell you all about that winter, including the early deaths, some say preventable, some say one, some say three, that happened at Suvanto. We’re nearly ready, we’re always almost ready and it takes only a little time for the vessels to flush and fill with memory, and then we can open our eyes, lift our heads, sit up in our beds, and turn to meet your gaze. We’ll tell you what we remember.”

There’s a quote at the beginning of the book from The Bacchae, and it’s a quote that fits both the novel’s action and the relationships between the up-patients–women who are largely kept like expensive pets by their husbands, and when these women begin to suffer mentally from the shallowness of their caged lives, they’re shipped off to Suvanto for repair. The women may appear to be docile dolls with expensive habits, but there’s a rage and violence lurking beneath the text that Chapman captures perfectly. The hospital is a strictly hierarchal institution, and yet the up-patients operate, eventually, outside of that hierarchy as they challenge and then destroy it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto is primarily a women’s novel for its exploration of women’s health (real and imagined) and that includes a number of female-specific issues and its strong feminist subtext.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (May 24, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Maile Chapman
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of:  The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett

Bibliography:

• Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto (March 2010)

“Not much had been said during the meeting, no new progress had been made. They were now working from the theory that the killing spree was over and that the deficit for the Swedish business world was going to stop at three and only three entries: Kuno Daggfeldt, Bernhard Strand-Julen, and Nils-Emil Carlberger.

They were wrong.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 13, 2011)

Misterioso by Arne Dahl is a unique and wonderful book. It is part mystery, part police procedural, part existential philosophy and part comedy. There is something so distinctive about this book that it resists categorization. On the surface, it is a mystery but so much of the novel lies below the surface, getting into the characters’ minds and thoughts as they live their lives and work at trying to catch a serial killer.

The title of the book comes from a piece of music composed by Thelonius Monk, a famous American jazz pianist and composer, now deceased. There is a serial killer on the loose in Sweden who is killing very rich and powerful men. The killer waits for his prey in the victim’s living room listening to Monk’s Misterioso on the stereo and when the victim arrives he is shot in the head two times. The killer views the music as “a pantomime, a peculiar dance of death.” The Swedish police put together what they call an A-Team to find this killer.

Paul Hjelm is one of those chosen for this select group. It is ironic for him as on the afternoon he was picked, he expected to be fired. He was with his colleagues that morning and there was a hostage situation in a building near police headquarters. An Estonian immigrant, here illegally, was holding a group of people in the immigration office hostage. Paul decides to take matters into his own hands and he goes into the office and shoots the man holding the others hostage. Paul feels very badly about doing this and expects Internal Affairs to fire him for his impulsive action. He acted on his own without waiting for back-up. Instead of being fired, he becomes a national hero.

The group gathered to form the A-Team is very original. There is a singer – a man who used to be Mr. Sweden when he took steroids; there is a Chilean who is called black-head because he is not blonde like most Swedes; there is a woman who also sings and likes to masturbate in her office; there is a Finn who has a secrets from his past life prior to coming to Sweden; there is a pedantic idealist who loves to give his political views. The reader sees how the team interacts and gets to know one another. Hultin, the team leader, always enters the room through a mysterious door that no one knows about. Where it comes from and where it leads to is a mystery.

As the team works together, there are four victims dead. The A-Team checks out all kinds of leads including the Russian and Estonian mafia, the victims’ businesses and personal lives, and they find out a lot of information. One of the victims is a pedophile, together the three of them tried to rape a woman who later committed suicide, and some of their businesses are involved in mafia corruption. “An amphetamine-babbling proprietor of a video store with private viewing booths in Norrmalm had cheerfully offered them some child porn films with Russian subtitles, even though they had shown him their police ID. He was arrested.”

Paul is in the midst of a marital crisis, an existential aloneness where he and his wife of many years, Cilla, can no longer communicate and find themselves totally separate. Paul has this “dreadful, unbearable feeling that we can never really reach anyone else. Never ever, not even those closest to us. The horrifying sensation of absolute existential aloneness. And now he saw this same emotion in Cilla’s eyes.”

We learn about the Palme murder that is a huge deal in Sweden. It is mentioned several times in this novel. Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden, was assassinated in 1986 and the murderer was never found. The A-Group does not want to be seen as ineffective like the investigation of the Palme murder turned out to be. It is very much in the back of their minds as they search for the serial killer. When they do not have luck finding the murderer after a month “either they were doing something fundamentally wrong, or else they were dealing with another Palme murder.”

We also learn about the prevalence of xenophobia in Sweden. The term black-head refers to anyone who doesn’t have blond hair as do most of the Swedes. There is a great deal of prejudice against immigrants and looking like a Swede is considered very important.

“The more they got to know each other, the harder it becames to understand each other. As always.” This background of existential ennui reminded me of Sartre and Camus, especially Sartre’s book Nausea. Paul becomes obsessed with a mark on his cheek, most likely a common pimple. However, he worries it’s melanoma and the mark takes on different shapes depending on his mood and the different crises he is facing.

Much of the dialog is tongue in cheek and I found myself laughing at the oddest moments. Tiina Nunnally did a wonderful job of translation and the book flows throughout. There is not a dull moment. It seems like the Scandinavians are having a true renaissance in crime writing and Arne Dahl is right at the top with this first in a 10 book series finally available to US readers.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Pantheon (July 12, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Arne Dahl
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Scandinavian mysteries:  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson The Shadow Woman by Ake Edwardson The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

Bibliography (translated only):

• Misterioso (1999; July 2011 in US)

“Crime is an army. He was a policeman but he wasn’t cynical. He believed in the power of good, and that was why he spoke about evil. It was impenetrable, like observing the enemy through bulletproof glass. Anyone who tried to comprehend it with reason went under. He was starting to realize this, but he still had the urge to get in close to defeat that monster. If you couldn’t use your goodness and intellect to confront evil close up, what were you supposed to use? The thought had flashed through his mind before – a thought that was like a black hole right in the middle of reality, terrifying: that evil could be fought only in kind.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (NOV 27, 2010)

Sweden’s youngest ever chief inspector, at thirty-seven years old, cuts his vacation short when one of his team – a black, Swedish-born woman – has her jaw broken at the annual Gothenburg party, an outdoor late-summer festival at which nativist thugs get drunk and run amok, often in motorcycle gangs.

Gothenburg is sweltering in an August heat wave and Winter shows up for work in cut-offs, a rock band tee shirt and uncut hair – quite a contrast to his usual designer suits and perfect grooming. The attack on his officer has provoked an unaccustomed rage and he unleashes it on his ex-brother-in-law, a criminal with racist ties. “Winter opened his eyes again and looked at his hands. Were they his? It had felt good clenching his fingers around Vennerhag’s jaw.”

It doesn’t take long to round up the attackers, but a murdered woman found in a lakeside ditch effectively ends Winter’s vacation. She has no id or identifying marks; her fingerprints aren’t in any database and no one has reported her missing, though the autopsy shows she’s had a child.

Winter, who finds himself musing on the nature of evil and the urge to fight violence with violence, sets his team in motion, chasing down every lead they can think of, no matter how thin:

“An investigation is a great big vacuum cleaner that sucks in everything: witness statements and forensic evidence, sound ideas and crazy hunches, most of it completely irrelevant to the case. Eventually you find things that fit together. Then you can formulate a hypothesis.”

It takes almost half the book to trace the woman’s identity. Meanwhile the narrative breaks for interludes with a child held captive and missing her mother and a lonely old lady growing anxious about her missing neighbors.

A police procedural with a strong psychological bent, Edwardson’s series stays primarily on Winter, while branching out to include details of his team’s private lives and aspirations. Winter himself is on the brink of a life choice, spurred by his girlfriend Angela’s ultimatum.

The prose is Scandinavian spare with a vivid sense of place only occasionally confusing to an American audience. Fans of Scandinavian crime fiction will love Edwardson. (Translated by Per Carlsson)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 21 readers
PUBLISHER:	Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (September 28, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Åke Edwardson (in Swedish) Wikipedia page on Ake Edwardson
EXTRAS:	An Interview with Ake Edwardson
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Other Swedish novels: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson Mind’s Eye by Hakan Nesser The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo

Partial Bibliography:

Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novels:

• Death Angels (1997; 2009 in English)
• The Shadow Woman (1998; September 2010)
• Sun and Shadow (1999; 2005 in English)
• Never End (2000; 2006 in English)
• Frozen Tracks (2001; 2008 in English)
• Room No. 10 (2013)

“Her name is Lisbeth Salander. Sweden has got to know her through police reports and press releases and the headlines in the evening papers. She is twenty-seven years old and one metre fifty centimeters tall. She has been called a psychopath, a murderer, and a lesbian Satanist. There has been almost no limit to the fantasies that have been circulated about her. In this issue, Millennium will tell the story of how government officials conspired against Salander in order to protect a pathological murderer…”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (MAY 24, 2010)

The Girl Who Played with Fire ended with Mikael Blomkvist dialing for emergency help after he found a man with an axe in his head and fugitive-from-the-law Lisbeth Salander in extremely critical condition with a bullet lodged in hers. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest begins where Fire left off, and soon both Lisbeth and the man, Alexander Zalachenko, aka Karl Axel Bodin, are being airlifted to Sahlgrenska hospital. After undergoing operations, both patients are placed in the same critical care wing. Although the medical staff keeps them isolated, since they are mortal enemies, keeping them from attacking each other could be an impossibility if they wake up and manage to pull themselves out of bed. Meanwhile, Sweden’s law enforcers try to determine what charges should to be filed against each of them, but especially against multiple murder suspect Salander.

Meanwhile, Blomkvist, who used duct tape and clean sheets to keep Lisbeth’s blood inside her before the paramedics took over, isn’t allowed to see her. He has his own problems with the police. They want to know about the gun in his possession and about exactly what happened at Bodin’s Gosseberga farm. Mikael doesn’t have all the answers and even those he does have, he isn’t ready to fully disclose. In addition, he’s infuriated at the keystone cops who refused to heed his warning about the immense danger — even when trussed up — presented by the third person he — and Salander before him — encountered that night: the giant, Ronald Niedermann. And Blomkvist wants to get back to the offices of Millennium magazine so he can get on with his investigation into who masterminded more than two decades of cover-up that allowed Zalachenko to commit untold crimes and Lisbeth to be placed into a psychiatric facility and then declared mentally incompetent as an adult. The quote that introduced this review is lifted from his Word document; he is organizing the facts he has accumulated thus far. He’s kept so busy that he doesn’t even ask about how Lisbeth is doing for a while, and when he does think to ask, he feels his oversight wasn’t insensitivity, but a subconscious confidence in her will to survive: “It dawned on him that he had not been worried about her. He had assumed that she would survive. Any other outcome was unthinkable.”

And so, the reader immediately gets into the thick of things in the final volume of the late Stieg Larsson’s trilogy about the asocial girl with an eidetic mind (at least until her head wound), deep secrets that include her extraordinary computer hacker abilities and her burning, vigilante sense of justice. As in the previous books, quite a few epithets, some casual sex, lots of investigative journalism, and jags of violence and vengeance mark this novel. Alongside, it continues the unusual and winning liaison between Lisbeth Salander and “Kalle Bastard” Blomkvist. Endearingly and memorably, when one is in trouble, the other pulls out all the stops.

Broadly speaking, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo dealt with corporate greed and the violent secrets in the family of one of Sweden’s magnates. Then, Larsson turned to exposing the underbelly of the sex trade in Fire. Now, the subject is violation of Sweden’s constitution by a shadowy group. What can the media — to which Mikael Blomkvist belongs — do to uncover and expose the corruption and the illegal activities that have gone unchecked for so long? Can Blomkvist legally and ethically cooperate with the horde of legitimate authorities also suddenly launching criminal probes? Assuming his instincts are right and Salander does recover, can he find a way to communicate and work in tandem with her even if she is under arrest? And what can he do to help his sister defend Lisbeth in court if it comes to that?

In addition to the main story, this volume spools out a subplot about Erika Berger’s resignation from Millennium in order to become editor-in-chief at a major daily Swedish newspaper (in Fire, she had already begun thinking of making this transition). In her new job, she has to confront ethical questions about a story her old publication is investigating that might implicate someone with powerful ties to her new organization. And to top it off, she finds herself and others at the newspaper the targets of increasingly edgy and possibly dangerous harassment.

Although Blomkvist and Salander are by no means ignored in Hornet’s Nest, much of the novel is another procedural that courts tedium. The novel, slightly longer than the previous one, just suffers from too many cops from various agencies, too many prosecutors and other officials whose meticulously chronicled activities gum up the story. Arguably, the inevitable trial compensates for all that tedious groundwork, but Larsson also made what some readers will undoubtedly consider a mistake when he fairly thoroughly explained the plot’s major conspiracy early in the book from the viewpoint of one set of people and then used a large chunk of the remainder of the novel to show step-by-step how other characters unraveled that surreptitious set-up. The tale does perk up when certain characters connect and spark. But on the downside again, Blomkvist and Salander (necessarily) have very little face time together.

The idealistic activist Larsson used his characters as a platform to preach against the imperfections of Sweden’s systems of government, legal system, police, etc. I’m reminded of a somewhat similar subordination of character to message in the recently published “novel” entitled, Red to Black, by a journalist in Russia who employs the pseudonym Alex Dryden. However, Dryden fills his book with a great deal of allegedly true information about Putin and other power players in Russia and their purportedly conspiratorial activities. Dryden sometimes gets so carried away with background facts and figures that he neglects his featured couple. Larsson’s story is fiction, not lightly veneered nonfiction, although it does reference real people and actual historical occurrences from time to time. However, Larsson’s own experiences as a reporter and activist clearly served as a basis for Blomkvist’s activities as an investigative journalist and for fleshing out the rest of the detailed inquiries into who is doing what. Accordingly, Larsson’s novel has more of a nonfiction feel than it truly contains. That needn’t be a negative, except that Larsson ventured too far away from Blomkvist and Salander too often and allowed his penchant for adjunct characters and describing procedure to mar tight, more suspenseful plot structure.

In my review of Fire, I wondered whether the Salander/Blomkvist trilogy would conclude satisfactorily. I think it does. Many ongoing questions are resolved by the last page of Hornet’s Nest. There is closure of sorts — although, among a few ongoing issues: the whereabouts of Camilla, Lisbeth’s mysterious twin sister. Nevertheless, after I’d finished the last sentence, I couldn’t help wondering what Larsson might have presented to us had he lived and been able to write the ten books he apparently envisioned. An arc that only really began in this trilogy could have deepened and strengthened the bond between the taciturn woman who looks like a child and thought she was in love with Blomkvist and the journalist who, as his sister says, “…is completely irresponsible when it comes to relationships. He screws his way through life and doesn’t seem to grasp how much it can hurt those women who think of him as more than a casual affair.” I would have liked to have witnessed that Salander/Blomkvist evolution. But the series does rest here at a natural stopping place, and that creates decided contentment.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 889 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (May 25, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Stieg Larsson
EXTRAS:	Excerpt Possible 4th novel?
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo The Girl Who Played with Fire

Bibliography:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005; September 2008 in US)
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006; July 2009 in US)
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2007; May 2010 in US)

Movies from books:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008)

“Harry had felt the gnawing ache for alcohol from the moment he woke up that morning. First as an instinctive physical craving, then as a panic-stricken fear because he had put a distance between himself and his medicine by not taking is hip flask or any money with him to work. Now the ache was entering a new phase in which it was both a wholly physical pain and a feeling of blank terror that he would be torn to pieces.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (FEB 24, 2010)

In Jo Nesbø’s The Devil’s Star, Harry Hole is an alcoholic who will be lucky to reach his fortieth birthday. His job as an inspector in Oslo Police Headquarters is hanging by a thread. He would not have a position at all if his supervisor, Crime Squad Chief Inspector Bjarne Møller, did not feel sorry for him, especially since he knows what a terrific detective Harry is when he manages to stay sober. Harry’s self-loathing is deepened by regret over his crumbling relationship with his lover, Rakel. He is all too aware that he cannot offer Rakel the stability and security that she and her young son, Oleg, need and deserve.

It is summer in Oslo, and the city is in the grip of a debilitating heat wave. In addition, the police force is working with a skeleton crew since so many people are away on vacation. When a fresh homicide falls into Møller’s lap, he calls Beate Lønn, a forensics whiz and a straight arrow who practically lives in the lab and is blessed with a photographic memory. Next, he contacts Inspector Tom Waaler, a rising star who is handsome, self-confident, and respected by everyone in the department. Møller hesitates before telephoning Harry Hole, “the lone wolf…the department’s enfant terrible.”

Harry is still reeling from the death of his colleague, Ellen Gjelten. Although Ellen’s case is closed, Harry is obsessed and will not let it rest; he has some disturbing theories about what really happened to her. He spends hours pursuing leads that turn out to be dead ends. Out of frustration, he goes on a binge and Bjame covers for Harry by placing him on leave. However, Harry’s boss cannot protect him indefinitely.

Circumstances bring Waaler, Hole, and Lønn together on a strange case of a serial killer who seems to be fixated on pentagrams, “devil’s stars.” The perpetrator appears to pick his victims randomly and his motive is unclear. As the killings continue, the police remain baffled. Harry, who gradually emerges from his alcoholic haze, uses his keen insight and out-of-the box thinking to shed some light on this murky investigation. As he does so, he butts heads not only with a cold-blooded psychopath but also with a sworn enemy who has a great deal to lose if Harry succeeds in unmasking him.

Although Harry is something of a stereotype (the brilliant cop who needs a big case to give him an excuse to go on the wagon), he is likeable, honest, and compassionate. Unsurprisingly in a book that exceeds four-hundred and fifty pages, the mystery is complex, with red herrings galore, clues scattered throughout to tantalize the reader, and of course, a climactic and violent final confrontation. Although The Devil’s Star is far from realistic and breaks little new ground in a well-worn genre, it is evocative and suspenseful, with detailed and vivid descriptive writing and a fascinating look at the minutiae of forensics, interrogation, and surveillance. Nesbø’s characters are varied and intriguing, there is plenty of action to hold the reader’s interest, and the twists and turns keep us guessing, even after we think that the crime is solved. Aficionados of novels that feature a talented cop who lives on the edge, a sadistic and devilishly clever serial killer, and a plot that teases and surprises us until the truth is finally revealed, will find much to like in this multi-layered thriller.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 422 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (March 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Jo Nesbo
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Police The Snowman Nemesis

Bibliography:

• The Bat (1997; 2013)
• The Cockroaches (1998; 2014)
• The Redbreast (2000; 2006 in UK; 2007 in US)
• Nemesis (2002; 2008 in UK; January 2009 in US)
• The Devil’s Star (2003; 2010 in US)
• The Redeemer (2005; 2009 in UK; not in US)
• The Snowman (2007; 2011 in US)
• The Leopard (2011)
• Phantom (2012)
• Police (October 2013)

Stand-alone Novels:

• Headhunters (2008)
• The Son (May 2014)

“I understand that this letter will wreak havoc with your investigation. But what we are all searching for, of course, is clarity. I hope that what I have written can contribute to that…. The day we stop searching for the truth, which is never objective but under the best circumstances built on facts, is the day on which our system of justice collapses completely.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (FEB 16, 2010)

Henning Mankell’s The Man from Beijing, ably translated by Laurie Thompson, opens in January 2006. It is eerily quiet in the northern Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen. No smoke rises from the chimneys and not a soul stirs. A photographer studying deserted villages in Sweden arrives and knocks on doors, but no one answers. Fearing that something is wrong, he breaks into one of the houses and to his horror, “there was an old woman lying on the kitchen floor. Her head was almost totally severed from her neck. Beside her lay the carcass of a dog, cut in two.” This isolated place will soon make headlines as the scene of a massacre “unprecedented in the annals of Swedish crime.” An unknown assailant used an extremely sharp weapon to torture and cut up his victims.

After Detective Vivian Sundberg and her team survey the carnage, they call for reinforcements, but even experienced law enforcement officials are stymied by the slaughter of nineteen people, most of them elderly. Equally puzzling is the fact that three individuals living in Hesjövallen were left alive. A district judge, fifty-seven year old Birgitta Roslin, has a personal interest in the matter (her mother grew up in Hesjövallen), and we get to know Roslin intimately. She takes her job seriously, suffers from recurrent panic attacks and high-blood pressure, has four grown children whom she sees infrequently, and worries about the future of her passionless marriage. Her fate will be inextricably tied up with the mass murder, which grew out of terrible events whose roots lie in the distant past.

The beginning of the book has an epic sweep and is absolutely mesmerizing. Mankell takes us to China in 1863, where the peasants live in squalor and are oppressed by wealthy and avaricious landowners. The author poignantly recounts the odyssey of three orphaned brothers who travel to Canton to find work. Eventually, they cross the path of predators who transport them in chains to the United States, where they spend many backbreaking hours cleaving mountains and laying rail lines for the transcontinental railroad. Because one of the brothers manages to survive long enough to leave a detailed diary, the tale of his family’s suffering will have grave consequences more than a century later.
Birgitta, whose mother grew up with foster parents in Hesjövallen, uses her sharp judicial mind to form a theory about the killings, based on the fact that a Chinese man was seen in the vicinity of Hesjövallen around the time of the murders. Since the police do not take her ideas seriously, she takes advantage of an opportunity to visit China with an old friend, Karin. There, Birgitta visits the Forbidden City, sees the Great Wall, and reminisces about her younger years as a radical who supported Mao’s ideals of solidarity and liberation. She also tries to learn the identity of the man behind the mass execution in Sweden. Unfortunately, her inquiries place her in danger, since she is being watched by a powerful and psychotic villain who will dispose of her if she gets too close to the truth.

Here, the novel starts to lose steam, as Mankell not only reveals the identity of the killer (a one-dimensional monster), but also introduces too many extraneous characters and subplots. Also irritating is the incredible ineptitude of the Swedish police, who are so clueless that Birgitta has to do their job for them. In addition, the pace of the narrative is slowed by tedious and heavy-handed passages in which various individuals lecture about China’s path to the future. Should this emerging superpower make more of an effort to stay true to its communist roots instead of succumbing to the lures of capitalism? Mankell has combined a crime story with a depiction of a female jurist’s midlife crisis and a polemic about China’s efforts to become a worldwide economic and political force. This is far too much baggage for one work of fiction.

The Man from Beijing might have been more satisfying had the author focused throughout on the massacre and on Birgitta’s efforts to solve the mystery and put her troubled life back together. As it stands, Mankell has written half of a good novel. The second half is a bit dreary and diffuse, and it will take some persistence to stay the course for the entire 366 pages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 186 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (February 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Henning Mankell Wikipedia page on Henning Mankell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Daniel Italian Shoes The Troubled Man The Fifth Women Other Swedish crime writers: Stieg Larsson Johan Theorin

Bibliography:

Kurt Wallander Series:

• Faceless Killers (1991;1997 in US)
• The Dogs of Riga (1992; 2001in US)
• The White Lioness (1993; 1998 in US)
• The Man Who Smiled (1994; 2005 in US)
• Sidetracked (1995; 1999 in US)
• The Fifth Woman (1996; 2000 in US)
• One Step Behind (1997; 2002 in US)
• Firewall (1998; 2002 in US)
• The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases (1999; 2008 in US)
• The Troubled Man (2009; 2011 in US)

Stand alone novels:

• Chronicler of the Winds (1985; June 2012 in US)
• The Return of the Dancing Master (2000; 2004 in US)
• Before the Frost (2002; 2005 in US)
• Depths (2004; 2009 in US)
• Italian Shoes (2006; October2010 in US)
• Kennedy’s Brain (2007; 2008 in US)
• The Eye of Leopard (2008; 2009 in US)
• The Man from Beijing (2007; 2010 in US)
• Daniel (2010 in US)

Teen Read:

• Shadows in the Twilight (2008;  2010 in US)

Movies from books:

• Wallander: Sidetracked / Firewall / One Step Behind (2009)
• Wallander (Faceless Killers / The Man Who Smiled / The Fifth Woman) (2010)