Swedish Noir: Second John Adderley Thriller #2 from Peter Mohlin and Peter Nyström

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“It all comes together in a grimly satisfying series of events, showing more clearly than ever that Mohlin and Nyström understand costs and penalties. The finale of the book sets John reeling with the consequences he’s set in motion.”

 

This second novel by the Swedish friends and co-writers Mohlin and Nyström more than lives up to their 2021 debut in The Bucket List. Like the first novel, The Other Sister is told in alternating chapters, this time by a murder victim’s sister and by former FBI agent John Adderley. The harsh crescendo of revelation adds both suspense and depth to a very dark tale of bad choices leading to crime and consequences.

 

John Adderley, who previously gave up the security of American “witness protection” in order to return to Sweden to try to salvage his half-brother’s life, isn’t doing well in a Swedish County Criminal Investigation Division—his boss lacks management skills, making it tough for John to investigate at his best. Protecting his family members added stress to his police connections in the earlier book. Now things get much worse: The other man who’d tackled undercover work with him, Trevor, is in Sweden to beg John to extend a different kind of protection, a video that insures John’s safety from the Nigerian drug cartel he and Trevor infiltrated back in Baltimore. John’s rightfully hesitant—is Trevor actually working (unwillingly) for the cartel?

 

Meanwhile, the crime John’s supposed to be investigating on behalf of the Swedish team is much more complicated than it first looks. The reader learns the secrets and twists of this through the eyes of Alicia, sister to murder victim Stella—the sisters own a high-tech online dating site, with Alicia leading the computer underlayer, and Stella being the public face. In fact, Alicia’s face is exactly the problem: She’s scarred, horribly, and nobody would buy a product linked with her appearance. Alicia’s also abusing alcohol at a shattering level of danger.

 

Alicia is the one with the worst secrets. The narrative style means readers absorb the horrors of her life, while John is still struggling to survive the international crime syndicate that’s located him. That barrier of knowledge morphs The Other Sister into a high-stakes thriller, as Alicia’s drunken manipulations and John’s half-blinded efforts tear into each other.

 

John is, of course, the ultimate focus, and Mohlin and Nyström (with deft translation by Ian Giles) grant him clarity to see that “Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong—and now he was trudging around in the trees without knowing which way was up.” While Alicia’s awful choices come from both alcohol and simmering rage, John’s add up to violating the loyalty he owes to both the law and his team.

 

“After the shooting at Bergvik, John simply had to recognize that the law—in the strictly legal sense—was no longer his guiding principle. Instead, he was deploying his own homemade moral philosophy, which seemed to take it for granted that most things were allowed if you were trying to secure your own liberty and survival. He comforted himself with the fact that this was probably the rule most people adhered to when their own existence was at stake.”

 

This cuts him off from his best allies, a lousy position. There will be no happy endings. Yet it all comes together in a grimly satisfying series of events, showing more clearly than ever that Mohlin and Nyström understand costs and penalties. The finale of the book sets John reeling with the consequences he’s set in motion.

 

It looks like there will be a third John Adderley thriller. John may survive, through his pragmatic deceptions. But where and how will he hide next?

 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Excellent Swedish Crime Fiction: WE KNOW YOU REMEMBER from Tove Alsterdal

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Among today’s abundant crime novels, it’s rare to find one that demands a second reading for its language and insight. We Know You Remember is one of that small group.”

Even before investigators suspect that he’s a victim, not a perpetrator, Olof Hagström’s presence in his long-ago home town in rural Sweden is drenched in sorrow, terror, and accusations. Living on the fringes of society, supporting himself through an off-the-books job and isolated by both his slow speech and his burdensome past, he yields to an impulse to visit his childhood home—where he finds his father dead in the bathtub.

Police detective Eira Sjödin hasn’t been around town much either, but the case calls her into a community that hasn’t forgiven or forgotten Olof. At age 14, he’d been the local scapegoat: convicted of rape and murder of another teen. His own mother wanted nothing more to do with him.

But Eira is going through her own changes of identity, as the investigator who’d mentored her enters retirement. A woman on a police force, including in Sweden, needs to watch her back as often among her colleagues as on the street. Suggestions from her mentor send her back to the case 20 years earlier where Olof was charged. “GG hasn’t exactly been explicit about what he wanted her to do, but his hints were more than enough. An unwillingness to listen. A suspicion that she was digging into Olof Hagström’s past because she felt guilty.”

Eira’d been only 9 years old when Olof was charged. Why should she feel guilty now? It has something to do with how she’d first seen the man in the interrogation room, sweating and frightened and incompetent. “It wasn’t just unease, it was stronger than that. It was disgust and contempt and a kind of curiosity that made her stray beyond the strictly professional.”

But opening up Olof’s past means reopening her own, and Eira’s family life growing up was far from simple. Those teen rebellion years included risks and secrets. If her investigation moves suspicion onto people she cares about, will the cost be too high? And what about her own mother, sliding into dementia—when she asks her mother to open up about the past, it’s only Eira’s anger at the old silence that keeps her pushing. “Whether you do or don’t remember, she thought, there’s something you’re trying to protect me from.”

The pipeline for translation of Scandinavian noir demands time. Tove Alsterdal’s 2009 debut in Sweden won her immediate acclaim, and she’s brought out more stand-alone novels.   We Know You Remember came out last year in Sweden, under a title that translates as “Uprooted.” This translation by Alice Menzies reads well, letting Alsterdal’s steady accumulation of haunting and guilt-drenched detail build a memorable internal world. The power of this crime novel is as much in the struggles of Eira’s too-personal investigation as it is in the criminal threats involved. Eira is a victim of her own inescapable compassion, as well as of the demands for clarity that comes with her investigation.

Among today’s abundant crime novels, it’s rare to find one that demands a second reading for its language and insight. We Know You Remember is one of that small group, and more American appearances of Tove Alsterdal’s other titles are well worth looking forward to.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Outstanding Swedish Crime Novel from Peter Mohlin and Peter Nyström (Overlook Press)

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Layered and lethal … The only thing better than the pleasure of this suspenseful and tightly plotted “Scandi noir” investigation is knowing there’s a sequel on the way.”

FBI fan? Witness protection reader? Scandinavian noir collector? The Bucket List, first in a new Swedish series of “Agent John Adderley” crime fiction, satisfies all these enthusiasms at once, in a stunning debut that’s layered and lethal.

Authors Mohlin and Nyström bring both journalism and screenwriting skills to this intense and unusually long first effort. FBI agent John Adderley, wrapping up an undercover stint to break up an international drug ring, knows he’ll never go back to his old life afterward, and that’s fine. Until, that is, he gets a packet from his long-estranged and dying mother in Sweden, calling him to investigate a cold-case murder being blamed on his half brother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was 12. Deliberately breaking the witness protection rules after the trial’s over, he head to his home town of Karlstad to dig for the truth, no matter the cost.

At first, chapters alternate with the earlier time of disappearance of Emilie Bjurwall, college-age heiress to a clothing empire, as seen through her father Heimar’s eyes. If Emilie is a rebel, her dad is a defeated misfit, resigned to being the eye-candy husband of his powerful wife, whose family owns the company. He’s the complete opposite of John Adderley, whose ability to plan and instant commitment to action should mean a great record in crime-solving—but backfire as he misleads his own team.

Then the action increases in pace, and drives directly through until the unexpected and impressive finale, based on John’s own deadly choice:

“John felt his palms go clammy, as Ruben continued. ‘I’ve not spoken to the boss yet. I wanted to find out what the situation was myself—see whether you were going to make contact with your brother and leak details of the investigation. But so far, all you seem to have done is drive by the house—so I’m willing to give you a chance to tell Primer yourself. He doesn’t have to know about our conversation here. With a little luck, he won’t throw you off the case. But it might also end in immediate dismissal and an internal investigation for gross professional misconduct.’

‘I realize this is going to have professional consequences,’ said John. ‘But the most important thing is that my true identity doesn’t get out. You have to understand that there are people out there who want nothing more than to see me dead.’ …

His colleague started the engine—a clear sign the conversation was over.

‘I’ll give you until the end of the week,’ he said. ‘If you haven’t told Primer who you are by then, I will.’”

Boosted by smooth and deft translation by Ian Giles, The Bucket List—the title refers to a mysterious tattoo on the arm of the missing-presumed-murdered heiress—weaves in lively side episodes of passion and pretense. Adderley’s unethical mother and brother make everything tougher. And whether the international syndicate will catch up with him before the crime’s actually solved means the pressure of that ticking clock never lets up.

The book’s already taken a debut novel award in Sweden (“Crimetime Award”) and merits more. The only thing better than the pleasure of this suspenseful and tightly plotted “Scandi noir” investigation is knowing there’s a sequel on the way.

Crime in Winter's Harsh Landscape: SNOWDRIFT from Helene Tursten

Swedish author Helene Tursten provided a strong police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Irene Huss, set mostly in urban Gothenburg and portraying the fierce rivalry among police detectives, including the bitter gender and ethnic gaps that persist in today's culture. And that series earned a place on many a crime fiction collector's shelf as either Scandinavian crime fiction or women's police procedurals.

But Tursten's second series is stronger, launched in The Hunting Game (yes, brace for how humans target each other) and then Winter Grave. Her 2020 release through Soho Crime (imprint of Soho Press) is SNOWDRIFT. This is one of the rare crime novels where the book really will make a more dramatic impression on readers who've taken the books in sequence.

Since many Soho Crime authors are less highly advertised than, say, Grisham or Patterson or Penny, this may still be the first Tursten book many readers pick up. So here's a quick backstory: Detective Inspector Embla Nyström tackles violent crime in more than the city of Gothenburg. An avid hunter, she's been out in the winter forests every year. She's also been a competitive boxer and still has those lightning reflexes. But at age 28, she's also landed two traumas that shape her life: One is physical, a mauling described in an earlier book that gave her so much head damage that she won't be able to compete in the ring again (though that won't limit her self-defense). The other, and the root of the plot in SNOWDRIFT, is her acute sense of responsibility for a girlfriend's disappearance under violent threat. She's been searching for her friend Lollo ever since—and suffering crippling nightmares that affect her professional life.

So when she gets a terribly short phone call from Lollo herself, at the start of the book, nothing can dissuade her from investigating where her friend may be, and under what duress. Shortly thereafter, she pays a courtesy call and discovers a mob murder. The victim is one of the criminals who abducted Lollo, years before.

Suddenly Embla and her colleagues are neck deep in international intrigue and danger, along with all the prime areas of Eastern European criminal activity, including human trafficking. Is that what's happened to Lollo?

Marlaine Delargy's translation from the Swedish provides a slight flattening to the dialogue, without the rhythms of native English. To some readers, that may make the book feel "more Scandinavian" in its stiffness. Tursten's rapid pacing and portrayal of the risks and bonds of team policing override most of the drawback of the language, along with Embla's overwhelming sense of threat and peril. 

Series readers and first-timers alike may find it necessary to ignore the phone and email, and embed themselves in this dramatic winter crime novel. Brace for a page-turner, and enjoy this fierce new police procedural turned thriller, with its engaging and memorable "wounded" detective.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: Fine Caper Crime Novel, LITTLE SIBERIA by Antti Tuomainen

A would-be race-car driver attempts suicide by fast car on a winter road in Finland, when instead of crashing the way he'd planned, his car is ripped apart by a random meteorite.

Now that's an opening that no crime novel has ever come close to! And from here, award-winning Finnish suspense author Antti Tuomainen rolls his snowball through one caper twist after another. For instance, there the value of the meteor—and the people who want it. Not to mention the small town where it gets placed temporarily and notoriously.

Here's a sample of Tuomainen's mid-novel explication, from the local pastor's point of view—a man with serious doubts about his own life:

The meteorite will be in the War Museum for a further two nights.

The list of people keen to get their hands on it seems to grow as time runs out. As for Leonid, I am in no doubt. He wants the meteorite. Karolina wants the meteorite and is apparently willing to collaborate with me — the guard on the night shift — to get it. Leonid is in love with Karolina, a matter that raises a number of questions.

Is Karolina employing Leonid's help in order to achieve her goal? If she is, why does she want to involve me in her plans? And if she isn't, why has she stared a relationship with a man for whom she feels no attraction? ... I feel as though I know them too well to think of them as my pursuers, and too little to know what really moves and motivates them. Of course, that applies to everyone I know, including my own wife. I don't even know the people I know.

Two more nights.

If you've had enough of the depressive side of "Scandinavian noir," here's your opportunity to snicker, guffaw, smirk, and otherwise enjoy a lively, fast-moving crime novel of marvelously black humor. Hurrah for Orenda Books bringing Tuomainen across the ocean, and for the deft translation by David Hackston.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New Series from Helene Tursten Opens, with HUNTING GAME

Helene Tursten's Irene Huss series, featuring a Swedish detective inspector, added a delightful holiday item with the short-story collection An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good. Now Soho Press is releasing the first book of a new thriller series from Tursten, and again the investigator is an official crimefighter.

Embla Nyström, age 28, is a Detective Inspector in the mobile unit for Gothenburg, Sweden. A fitness fanatic and long-time hunter, she's due for vacation -- and plans to spend it hunting moose with family and friends, a long-time autumn tradition.

The real "beasts" in the book turn out to be human, of course. Embla's slow realization that the hunt has turned murderous involves a poisonous snake planted in the outhouse (live), a vicious leghold trap at the foot of her tree stand, and finally hunters who start dying and disappearing.

Running parallel to the suspense is a powerful attraction Embla feels for a new member of the hunting party, Peter Hansson:

Embla observed him in secret. She knew that he was thirty-eight years old, but he looked younger. Given his athletic build, it was clear that he worked out. And he was tall and good-looking with blue eyes and rather long, thick blond hair. The thin linen shirt he wore was just casual enough. The collar was unbuttoned and she could see a little gold cross at his throat. When he introduced himself a row of white teeth was exposed in a pleasant smile. Bleached? she thought automatically. She also noted the appreciative look she got from him.

But this attraction and the hot passions resulting are a dangerous distraction.

Tursten's skilled writing carries the action, which is rapid and increasingly threatening. Her grasp of hunting helps; she's also adept with police procedure, and the interactions in Embla's team become an excellent subplot.

Tursten has always written her female leads with family conflicts and with emotional turmoil that makes perfect sense in the context. This holds up well, although Embla's personality and reactions are a bit softer than found in a true noir. Call this one an intense police procedural, then, with fine pacing and significant losses. And yes, there's an echo of other human-hunting tales ... but considering the context, it works very well to heighten the thrill.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Heart-Wrenching Norwegian Sleuth Mystery, BIG SISTER (Varg Veum Series), by Gunnar Staalesen

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Norwegian author GunnarStaalesen just entered his seventies, and his crime novels date back to when he was 22. Still, he’s not well known in the US because of the lag in translation. Fortunately, for his best-selling series featuring Bergen private investigator Varg Veum, that’s changing. BIG SISTER (originally published in 2016) is the sixth in this series that Don Bartlett has translated, with an easy-to-enjoy casual feel to the writing, and just enough “foreignness” on the tongue to appreciate the Scandinavian backdrop.

Big Sister is not a standard Nordic noir—Varg Veum’s darkest years are done, and he’s settled happily into a long-term relationship with stable lady friend, and a caring if somewhat distant one with his son. He’s not hitting the bottle or any other form of mind-numbing substance. But the opening of the book proves he still has secrets in his own past, or more precisely that of his family, to cope with:  The woman arriving at his office, Norma Johanne Bakkevik, introduces herself as the elderly half-sister he’s never met (she was adopted long before his birth), and wants to be his client in the disappearance of a college student.

Veum’s baffled by the presentation of the case: Nineteen-year-old Emma Hagland, a good student and quiet person, and Norma’s goddaughter, walked out of the apartment she shared with two other young women, and simply vanished. Nobody’s heard from her since. And the police, understandably, decline to take action, since college students are all too likely to move in with boyfriends, relocate due to quarrels, quit school and go on extended vacations, you name it.

Varg’s inclined to that opinion at first, too. But there are a lot of missing or damaged parents in this set-up, including young Emma’s estranged dad, who turns out to be part of a not very pleasant motorcycle club closer to Varg’s own locale. He can’t help noticing the pattern of upheaval and hurt as he investigates (he’s a PI with pretty good police connections).

Most disturbing of all is Veum’s visit to a woman named simply Veslemøy—no surname in use—who’s grown up well cared for in a mental institution and remains almost catatonic, and certainly speechless. This condition followed a long-ago sexual assault on Veslemøy—an assault blamed on the missing teen’s long-gone father, who still associates with a pair of brutal men from those years, leaders of the dangerous motorcycle club.

There’s no big payday likely for Veum in solving this case, if in fact Emma is truly missing. Even worse, the cold case around Veslemøy becomes an obsession for him. Somehow, he’s sure, Emma’s disappearance must connect to this profound disturbance in her family’s past. Veum considers the landscape around Emma herself to be distressingly vague:

I stared into space. I still didn’t have a distinct picture of Emma, but it was beginning to resemble a kind of profile, a bit blurred at the edges, but clear enough for me to see a vulnerable young woman, someone it might be easy to lead astray, someone who was open to approaches, whether well meant or malevolent, someone who could easily become a victim.

This worried me and created a sense of urgency. Perhaps I would have to resort to a few short-cuts, however brutal they might seem to outsiders—or to those concerned.

Veum’s short-cuts take him into confronting a brutality that threatens his life, repeatedly, but that’s not a new experience. Staalesen solves those moments with some “deus ex machina” moves that detract from the emotional power of Veum’s hunt for Emma and his dark plunge into the deadly side of social media. But this minor flaw doesn’t stop the force of the book, and the search for both Veum’s truth and Emma’s makes a fiercely good crime novel, with an unexpected but satisfying final twist.

Despite the Norwegian PI slant, BIG SISTER is far from the darkness of Henning Mankell or Karin Fossom. Consider it a traditional sleuth mystery, with plenty of nontraditional options added. Well worth reading, with the rest of Staalesen’s award-winning series.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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Swedish Noir Trilogy Concludes, SLOWLY WE DIE from Emelie Schepp

Special prosecutor Jana Berzelius tackles a traumatically gruesome set of serial killings in this third and final book in this noted Swedish crime fiction trilogy from Emelie Schepp. SLOWLY WE DIE pits Berzelius against what looks like a group of revenge murders. But who's doing them, and why? At first, all Berzelius knows is that the victims are people who usually get thanked, not murdered: they're first responders and other medically trained experts.

But then again, considering the murder weapon is a skillfully used scalpel, the murderer may also belong inside that world where life and death are negotiated daily.

The two earlier books in this series are Marked for Life  and Marked for Revenge. Although I read a lot of noir, this series gave me chills at a level that I didn't choose to put into detail in reviews, because of the underlying crime of child sexual abuse, graphically shown in the other two books, that drives Berzelius in her work. So yes, you'll get more of the haunting horror that Berzelius faces in this third book if you read the other two first.

Then again -- the situation this time is so terrifying ... Berzelius winds up sharing her home with a terrifying person from her past, who's blackmailing her into letting him stay:

When she'd left the apartment, Danilo had been standing in the hall, looking at her. His arms had been crossed and something resembling a sneer had been on his lips. But he hadn't said anything, and she hadn't, either. She had simply met his gaze and fantasized about putting her hands around his neck and squeezing until he was gasping for breath.

She would gladly break every bone in his body and would more than gladly erase him from the face of the earth. But killing him was not an option -- not yet.

Right, maybe you don't need to take it any darker than this third book already presents. And it gets more frightening -- although the finely tuned and paced writing may well drag you though this book at a very high speed. (It did, for me.)

Blurbs for the book, because it's "Scandinavian noir," compare it to Jo Nesbø's writing. But I'd pick Karin Fossum as the most comparable. Prepare to shudder.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Backstory #3: When Your Husband Keeps a Secret, in PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS, Swedish Crime Fiction by Helene Tursten

Helene Tursten's investigating protagonist in Göteborg, Sweden, Investigator Irene Huss, is one of the most likeable officers in today's crime fiction. Married with now-grown twin daughters, Huss depends on her husband's cooking skills -- her own are negligible -- and lives with an endless guilt about the time demands of her career that will feel familiar to many. Moreover, she works in a Violent Crimes unit where gender bias is a daily factor, as much so as personnel shortages.

So as Irene's unit teams up with the Organized Crimes Unit to intervene in a series of motorcycle gang killings (and readers of the series already know that means extra flashbacks for Huss), the last thing she needs is to have to worry about her husband's safety. Or that of her daughters. And she can't step in to do much for them -- they will have to be, as the title suggests, PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS.

In addition to the skillful interweaving of personal and professional tension, Swedish author Helene Tursten provides memorable descriptions of the gritty reality of crime investigation, like this:

The gangster reeked of sweat and stale booze. He was wearing a T-shirt with Gothia MC's emblem on the chest; the same emblem was tattooed on his right forearm, and more or less every inch that Irene could see of his massive body was covered in tattoos. A colorful snake wound its way around his neck, ending up by his left ear. It showed up clearly on his shaven head. The snake was a skillful piece of work, but the rest of the tattoos were of varying quality.

The tread for inking is one of the best things that's happened as far as police are concerned, Irene thought. ... Per Lindström would need to wear a burka if he didn't want anyone to see his artwork.

PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS is the ninth in this series that Soho Crime has brought to the United States. I like Marlaine Delargy's translation work -- smooth reading with just a hint of the awkwardness that sliding from one language and culture to another can insert, and in this case it adds to the sense of being transported to Scandinavia. Swedish and Finnish cultural insight add up in Tursten's books, and it's worth reading her entire series. But jumping into this ninth title "cold" is very workable -- Tursten carries the story forward skillfully. It's soon clear why Huss's husband refuses to share his dangerous secret with his police officer wife (although as a reader of all of the series, I think Huss's own backstory could have come into this one more vividly and raised the tension).

Watch for some insight into Sweden's experience of Muslim immigration, too. Ah, the benefits of reading well-written crime fiction! (Thanks again, Soho Crime, for keeping so many "foreign" investigations coming steadily across the Atlantic. Global crimesolving, for sure.) I look forward to more in the series from Tursten, whose entry into the field came after a career in medicine. Good move.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: Nordic Noir from Kjell Ola Dahl, FAITHLESS

The Oslo, Norway, sleuthing mysteries by Kjell Ola Dahl are well known in Scandinavia -- there are 11 so far -- but had to wait for translation, and for Orenda Books to start bringing them across the Atlantic. FAITHLESS arrived in the U.S. in September, and provides a rewarding new direction in dark Scandinavian mysteries: a police procedural with depth of character and a wickedly dry sense of humor.

Inspector Frank Frølich, attending an engagement party for an old friend, discovers the new fiancée is a woman Frank had just arrested, then released, under a Norwegian legal function that allows someone to pay a fine for possession of illicit drugs at a personal use level. But that complication, which after all can be managed within careful polite manners, pales beside the next twist: the women, Veronika, soon becomes a murder victim. Is it a result of the arrest or the party or something else entirely?

Frølich's own past turns out to have some of the clues, a decidedly uncomfortable situation for the Oslo detective and his partner, Inspector Gunnarstranda. But the twists of plot get even more intense when their fellow detective Lena manipulates one of their colleagues, as well as stepping over the line toward baiting a dangerous criminal.

The translation by Don Bartlett (British) is smooth and well carried out; the scenes are short and sharp; and although the crimes involved are dark ones, and the settings more than a little spooky ("atmospheric" is another descriptor), the characters carry a force of will that makes it a pleasure to follow their investigations. I'm glad Orenda's brought this award-winning Norwegian author to our attention; I'll be watching for more of Dahl's work.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Long Effects of Evil in BLOCK 46, Johana Gustawsson

US cover

Sometimes the movement of a good (or great) crime novel from Europe to the United States takes a while. Then again, some of them never come across the ocean. Still, the three-year transit for BLOCK 46 from French crime writer Johana Gustawsson was too long a wait for such a blockbuster of a novel.

UK cover

Like the generation-long effects of abuse and murder in the Irish "Troubles" so hauntingly portrayed by Stuart Neville, Gustawsson's terrain of Nazi terror creates people and events steeped in evil. But this author doesn't simplify in any sense -- while the serial killer in BLOCK 46 seems to reenact some trauma of Buchenwald's killings, the novel is told from three voices: his, and those of two women.

Emily Roy, a top-tier Canadian criminal profiler who works for the British police force, demands detailed support services and instant access to crime scenes and information. Considering that she's working on a killer who has already piled up three bodies in two nations when the book begins, she needs every crumb of information and insight possible.

Alexis Castells, a close friend of the first adult that the serial killer tackles, can't walk away from the murder of jewelry designer Linnéa, who at first is the lone victim in Sweden. Haunted by an earlier crime she's been unable to finalize emotionally, Alexis determines to tag along with Emily -- who, surprisingly, allows her into the pursuit process.

The book's three-voice construction is brilliantly balanced by Gustawsson. Her details of torment at Buchenwald -- the "camp" where her own grandfather suffered -- are acute and perceptive, but also rapidly exchanged for the more civilized scenes in London and Sweden as the investigation takes place. As reader, I found myself eager to return to Emily and Alexis and the assorted police officers they're teamed with. And yet after a few pages in their company, I was also ready to look again at the cold, bitter, twisted landscape and events in the concentration camp, wanting to know how (or whether) Erich Ebler, a medical student imprisoned and debased in the camp, was surviving.

BLOCK 46 was a huge hit in Europe; the author's website exposes interviews and background that fascinate almost as much as the book. Like this:

These places define me as a woman and writer: I'm not only Marseillaise and French, but I am also a Londoner and an aspiring Swede! I arrived in London in 2009, after seven years in Paris. At the time, I was a journalist, freelancing for French magazines. I immediately felt at home in this city of various villages steeped in history, great parks and ancient pubs, all mixed with a cosmopolitan culture that inspires you. Hampstead is my favourite part of town. It is truly a haven that feels just like Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead. As for Sweden, it was my husband who brought the Scandinavian influence to our family. He introduced me to the rough beauty of the west coast, the Nordic folklore and the divine  chokladbollar !

Well done, Orenda Books, in bringing this debut crime novel across "the Pond." I will be watching for the next installment.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Scandinavian Mystery, New from Vidar Sundstøl, THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING

If you started your Scandinavian crime fiction with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series, Vidar Sundstøl's mystery novels, deep and layered and rich with character, may provide a very different approach to Norway's singular history and culture. The latest from this award-winning author -- winner of the prestigious Riverton Prize for the Best Norwegian Crime Novel -- feels at first like a traditional "retired police officer" investigation. Max Fjellanger's odd compulsion to attend the funeral of fellow police officer he hasn't seen in more than 30 years, takes him to Eidsborg, a village noted for its impressive "stave church." And now it's also the source of an enduring disquiet that haunts Max and may have resulted in three untimely deaths. That is, in murder.

But can Max prove the interrelationship of the deaths, spread as they are by time, profession, gender? What ties them together has something to do with the church and a family of local sheriffs. And most of all with a haunting carved "saint" or possible ancient idol that sits in the church and has links to the village's ancient pre-Christian past.

The layering of such diverse forms of mystery -- those of vindictive or punitive death, possible suicide, cheating lovers, mystic beliefs, and family traditions of danger and threat -- is key to Sundstøl's writing. Fortunately for American readers, the University of Minnesota opted to publish over the past few years his Minnesota Trilogy: The Land of Dreams; Only the Dead; The Ravens. The dark human evil present in those volumes brings the same shudders as the classic story "The Most Dangerous Game" -- crossed with the suspense of Edgar Allen Poe. In fact, the middle volume Only the Dead may be the strongest and darkest full-length novel ever of hunting gone mad, and I plan to re-read all three books periodically, to recall how complex and probing a crime novel can become.

The press connection with the Sundstøl novels (with skilled translator Tiina Nunnally) is clear in the Minnesota Trilogy, which links crimes in that wild American landscape and its earliest inhabitants, with the lives of Norwegians who arrived as settlers, prepared to displace Native peoples by force as needed, forging their own connection with the Minnesota landscape.

It's less obvious how THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING fits the press, except that clearly there is a heartfelt connection between Minnesota and Norway -- and Sundstøl sweeps sideways into that relationship through Max Fjellanger, whose confused defeat as a young law enforcement officer in Eidsborg led to his emigration from Scandinavia, to the United States. The bittersweet pain of a loving but childless marriage there and the death of his beloved wife carries Max into an impulsive trip to his "birth country" where the losses of his adult life began.

The book's title refers to a space in the wildest segment of the hillside adjoining Eidsborg's famous and ancient church, a space where it is claimed that "the devil" once dropped his wedding ring -- causing nothing to be able to grow again where the ring had landed.

In the community life as Max explores it, however, that location in the woods may have something to do with sustaining a dark and mystic practice that has more to do with primitive roots than with community as Max finds it today. University librarian Tirill Vesterli, eager to put her dream of becoming a detective in motion, soon links up with Max while supporting his research, with Max quickly realizing he has a valued new colleague in his risky investigation:

Possibly a little eccentric, but definitely compos mentis. And clearly sharp-witted.

"Do you have any idea what you might be getting involved in?" he asked.

She nodded eagerly.

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Because the truth is out there, even though we can't see it."

Max Fjellanger leaned back and took a sip of his white wine. That was the right answer. The truth had always been his lodestar -- the thought that it was out there somewhere, no matter how difficult it might be to see. Precisely as Tirill had just said.

Max hears the story of the devil's wedding ring from a local criminal named Tellev Sustuglu, who claims he heard the tale himself in prison -- a tale that emphasizes that the past is not necessarily dead, and neither are some of the dark personalities who have shaped the criminal events that once took place, even a generation earlier. Or more.

Sustuglu wraps up his tale by saying, "And they say a place like that still exists in the woods above the Homme farm. I've never seen it personally but ... So maybe you'll understand now why I won't say anything against [former sheriff[ Jørgen Homme in public, even though he's been dead for years. That man was from another world."

Max's confusion over this statement of "facts of the case" grows more intense -- as does the risk of his life, and Tirill Vesterli's.

Sundstøl spins a well-wrought, intelligent, and intense modern mystery with archaic roots, and much to offer about the roots of crime itself. THE DEVIL'S WEDDING RING gets a place on my "hold for reading again soon" shelf, with the books that enchant me because they also teach me about writing, about a really good story, and about how to comb out the complexities of the human spirit.

(And thank goodness for the University of Minnesota Press!)

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention, CRUEL IS THE NIGHT, Karo Hämäläinen

Did you enjoy the plot, characters, twists, and finale of Gone Girl? If so, race to your favorite book-buying route and get a copy of the CRUEL IS THE NIGHT. It's translated from the Finnish, and struck me as closer to Chicago crime than to the usual form of Scandinavian noir that I've read lately ... but the moment I compared it in to Gillian Flynn's runaway success, I knew why this new book from Soho Crime seemed hauntingly familiar in a sort of parallel-universe way. Here's the publisher's synopsis:

Prizewinning Finnish author Karo Hämäläinen’s English-language debut is a literary homage to Agatha Christie and a black comedy locked-room mystery about murder, mayhem, and morality in our cynical modern world.

Well, yes, now that you mention it, "black comedy" and "cynical modern world" effectively tag CRUEL IS THE NIGHT as noir. It's also highly entertaining, as the author's multiple points of view reveal the frictions, resentments, and "frissons" of attraction and repulsion among four people -- two couples reconnecting after years of estrangement, ostensibly to celebrate one couple's striking success.

Pick this one up for the challenge of a puzzle mystery. It's quite an effort to work out the ending before the author takes you there! Hats off to translator Owen Witesman, who propels plenty of page-turning dialogue and action onto the English-language pages.

From Soho Crime, where international crime fiction thrives.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Heads Up: Emelie Schepp, MARKED FOR REVENGE, and Bill Pronzini, THE VIOLATED

I won't be posting full reviews of these two books coming out in the next week or so, but want to mention them -- and the reasons for my choices.

Emelie Schepp lives in Sweden, and her "Marked" trilogy is being adeptly translated -- the second book, MARKED FOR REVENGE, was moved into English seamlessly by Suzanne Martin Cheadle (it's hard to even tell it was translated). It's suspense, with high stakes; the protagonist, prosecutor Jana Berzelius, is investigating the international drug trade and child trafficking in Sweden.

My problem with it is really my own ... I find graphic child abuse really hard to read. I read all of the first book in this series, Marked for Life, and couldn't bear to reframe it as a review. As soon as I started reading the second book, MARKED FOR REVENGE (release date February 28), all the emotions from the first book rolled back at me. I've skimmed book 2, and it's brilliantly plotted and tightly written. But again, the level of abuse and violence is so far outside my comfort zone (which is pretty wide really ... I have read and enjoyed most of Andrew Vachss and Carol O'Connell, for example, as well as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series) that I'm not going to spell it all out. If you're into it, you can see reviews elsewhere. Sorry.

For a very different reason, I'm not going to present THE VIOLATED, the March 7 release from Grand Master of Mystery Bill Pronzini. This one's an audacious attempt at narrating the investigation of a serial rapist's career and murder from multiple points of view. I thought the technique took the book into being very flat, and the tension never rose the way a good work of suspense should. Not did the character acquire enough depth. Even the California setting didn't quite come to life. I can't recommend it -- but that said, Pronzini is generally marvelous, and if you haven't yet read any of his books, do try some of the others. I'll be watching for his next book, figuring that he too knows this one didn't work out as well as he'd hoped ... so he'll create a major winner on the next round.

Obviously, if you're a Pronzini collector, you'll pick up a copy of THE VIOLATED anyway. Go for it.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Very, Very Dark: HELL FIRE, from Karin Fossum

HELL FIRE is the 12th in Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer series, and it's grim, violent, and graphic. That said, it's also insightful and precise in its language and imagery, and I'm always willing to read another by Fossum ... but also always depressed afterward. There are no happy endings in this series.

The frame is a double story of single parenting in Norway. One is the daily struggle of caregiver Bonnie Hayden, whose heart breaks a little bit each time she has to leave her crying five-year-old at day care. The other is Mass Malthe, raising a boy with obvious "issues" around food, cruelty, and power. In a relentless double spiral, Fossum entwines the two sets of lives. Those who read crime fiction regularly will have no doubt about who's done what, from very early in the book. What Fossum does though that keeps the book compelling and the pages turning is show the navigation of ordinary lives and the tiny changes of direction that eventually create a horrifying collision.

In that sense, this is a literary novel rather than a genre page-turner. I'd hesitate to hand it to anyone who's not already a Fossum fan, though; it's darker than night, with few guiding stars, and even the kindly and wounded Inspector Sejer won't come out of this one with the same soul that he brought into it.

From HMH Books, with an August 30 release.

For other reviews, click here.

Nordic Noir: Gunnar Staalesen, WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE

What a great discovery! This is the first time I've read a crime novel by Norwegian Gunnar Staalesen, and I'm really late finding his work ... he's written more than 20 titles, most significantly his series featuring detective Varg Veum, which began back in 1977.

Veum is a classic disillusioned private investigator, and at the opening of WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE he's completing a three-year binge of alcohol and self-pity relating to the death of his (female) partner, which is never fully explained here (I will have to get some of the earlier books, to find out more). And he's not in the mood to take any case that might improve his self-esteem; he's been "working" at lower and lower levels, taking assignments that can be done drunk.

But the mother who walks into his office has a plea he finds hard to resist: Her three-year-old daughter's case, a kidnapping from almost 25 years ago, is about to hit the statute of limitations, and no perpetrator was ever found -- nor was the child. Little Mette is still the center of her mother's life, and Maja, the mom, wants the case properly solved at last. Why Veum, of all people, to solve it? Well, he had solved another unrelated case of a missing child from the 1970s. And as he begins to realize he's going to take the case, he confronts a very large hurdle: getting sober enough to do this.

The dark cover of the book actually kept me from reading it for a while, so I was relieved to discover that despite the image, WHERE ROSES NEVER DIE does not contain child abuse in any of the gruesome sexually perverse modes that are currently in vogue (I hope desperately that the real world contains less of such crime than the fictional one). Instead, it's in some ways a traditional PI investigation, with some intriguing twists. For one thing, the child and her family lived in a somewhat quirky five-family environmental project, one of those miniature communes created in an attempt to use land more wisely and kindly. For another, one of the adults who lived there at the time Mette was kidnapped (and killled? it seems likely) was just shot to death in a jewelry-store robbery. There's no obvious connection, but the death has shaken Mette's mother out of her own lethargy, into pressing Veum for answers.

Although the book's blurbs refer to sharp teeth, darkness, and brutality, I found instead that Staalesen's expert storytelling tested and tasted the forms of love and commitment, along with what can go wrong inside well-meaning families. I enjoyed it a lot -- and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who enjoys a moderately dark but very humane mystery. Not for kids, but a thoughtful book that probes what it is to be an adult in a close community, and the value of trust.

Oh, if you've been reading Scandinavian noir: This is not as dark as most, despite the cover. I'd compare it more to the British crime fiction of, say, Ruth Rendell, or Colin Dexter. Good stuff, from Orenda Books via Trafalgar Square Publishing (release date Sept. 1).

Swedish Crime Fiction from Carl-Johan Vallgren, THE BOY IN THE SHADOWS

A few months ago, the University of Minnesota Press completed its publication of all three books in Norwegian author Vidal Sunstøl's "Minnesota Trilogy" of Norway/Minnesota crime fiction, richly underlaid with mysticism and the deep ringing notes of an author who writes far more deeply than "genre" fiction labels suggest. I treasured all three -- but as a Vermont resident, it was the second title, Only the Dead, that shook me and lingers in my mind as if I'd experienced it.

Now another link to the American Midwest rises with the newly published American version of Carl-Johan Vallgren's THE BOY IN THE SHADOWS: Brought across the Atlantic by Quercus (owned by Hodder and Stoughton), the novel was translated from Swedish by Madison, Wisconsin, resident Rachel Willson-Broyles, who took advantage of the Midwest's historic connection with the Scandinavians to become an expert in bringing one language into taut, exhilarating coupling with another. Every page of THE BOY IN THE SHADOWS feels like it's written in a native American language (with a touch of British), allowing Vallgren's disturbing currents of menace and despair to flow freely. The book is Vallgren's crime fiction debut, although he has a long track record in other Swedish fiction and is an award-winning and much-heralded author (and musician) in his native land.

What malice, what evil, in someone's past erupts in violent murder? And are there currents that swirl definitively both forward and back in time from the ultimate evils? Danny Katz, a recovering heroin addict with a significant Jewish identity, is about to find out, when an old military friend's wife asks him for help finding her missing husband. Could Joel, the eventual heir to the Klingberg family wealth, have cracked under pressure of his own long-ago disaster? What are the powerful Swedish family's roots in both Scandinavia and the Caribbean?

Danny's past makes him an easy victim, and it's soon clear he's being set up in several ways. But he's determined to keep a commitment to locating Joel -- until the level of danger sweeps away almost all of what he values. The arrival of another individual determined to unravel the knot of the past, Eva Westin, provides a scrap of hope that Danny may elude the net cast for him. But what will he have to surrender in return?

Brace for a long series of unexpected but highly satisfying plot twists in this one -- if you are collecting Scandinavian crime fiction, it's a must for your shelf, but it will also intrigue those who appreciate what a shared military past can impose on a friendship ... as well as readers who appreciate how the power of the industrial and scientific complex can become a dark and terrifying force.

No website for the author at present, and the Wikipedia page is sadly lacking, but Quercus offers a bit on Vallgren here. Another translation from Vallgren, The Tunnel, is underway.

Bank Robbery, Scandinavian Style, in THE FATHER, Anton Svensson

John Dillinger, Jesse James, and Bonnie and Clyde may be America's most famous bank robbers -- but there was also Ma Barker, whose family formed the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, a ruthless group of three core members and some 20 others, and whose exploits spanned the Depression Era.

In Sweden, a string of bank robberies in the 1990s literally paralyzed commerce, as banks came to actually expect another violent attack from the team known as the Military Gang. Consider it Sweden's modern version of Ma Barker's gang. THE FATHER, the debut effort by "Anton Svensson," is the first of a two-book series that turns those robberies and the family behind them into compelling suspense fiction.

THE FATHER opens with an attack witness by sons Leo, Vincent, and Felix, as their brutal father returns after four years and batters their mother. For young Leo, struggling to both embrace his papa and stop papa's fists from pounding Mamma, the action is terrifying and confusing, and abruptly turned by his father into an object lesson in what it is to be a man.

Leo keeps hold of him, his arms around his father's waist, and leans into his body, as if he were still hugging him.

"It's your turn now, Leonard."

The smell of blood, spaghetti and meat sauce, and Mamma's blood. They look at each other.

"Do you understand? I won't be around any more, not here. You're responsible from now on."

And so this boy, oldest of the three but still heart-breakingly young, begins the confusing process of becoming a man as violent and powerful as his father. One who will, given the right plan and weapons, lead a set of crimes designed to make him rich and to terrorize Sweden.

THE FATHER is a powerful work of fiction, sweeping through years as Leo forges his team of brothers -- and one friend pulled into the group as well -- into an instrument able to commit the perfect robbery. By the time things go out of control, Leo is hooked on the addiction of increasingly violent and masterful crime, and can't seem to stop.

But the book's title beats the throb of drums under all of the action, because everything Leo puts together is a result of the "manning up" his father has taught him. And astute readers will see ahead into the catastrophes of his life far sooner than he can, as his father begins, after all this time, to seek a relationship with his son.

Although the book is the debut for "Anton Svensson," the author back-story is at least as complex as the novel itself: The pseudonym represents co-authors Stefan Thunberg and Anders Roslund. Thunberg is, in real life, the fourth brother of the actual notorious bank-robbing family, the brother who escaped the pattern and went to art school. Roslund's name should be familiar to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction, as he wrote for 14 years with Börge Hellström, creating the Roslund & Hellström author tag for award-winning Swedish crime fiction. When the Thunberg and Roslund met, they keyed into a new craft partnership -- writing a book that's neither "true crime" nor "crime fiction" but an entirely new hybrid. (The author website is layered and fascinating, by the way.)

THE FATHER is dark and often violent, but (thank goodness) stays out of the more perverse areas of crime fiction (not a sex crimes book, for example, and no gruesome games with corpses). I found it expertly paced, and the "dramatic" additions the authors made to shape the story are effective and memorable. The adept combination of narrative and inner revelation of how violence is forged in the soul is fascinating.

And for readers who become engaged with the fates of the dangerous men in THE FATHER -- a second book is on the way. The book's subtitle is MADE IN SWEDEN: PART I. It was released in Europe in August 2015, and released in the US this week; at a guess, the second volume may be a year or so away. Published by Quercus; pick up a copy of THE FATHER while the first US printings are still available.

THE CONSIDERATE KILLER, Finale of Danish Crime Series, Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis

When Lene Kaaberbøl, a lifelong writer, and journalist Agnete Friis collaborated to write the first Nina Borg crime novel, The Boy in the Suitcase, they swept immediately into the top level of Scandinavian crime fiction. Nominally writing from Copenhagen, Denmark (although Kaaberbøl also is at home on the island of Sark: see her website), they brought to life heroic Red Cross Nina Borg with her fierce commitment to serving the wounded and ill under the most desperate conditions. Not surprisingly, those conditions also foster crime.

In the fourth book in the series, THE CONSIDERATE KILLER (released today), assault in a parking garage takes Nina down with a cracked skull and a very much expected segment of amnesia around the attack. Readers know that her assailant spoke the Lord's Prayer over her, in a language she didn't recognize as her consciousness faded. Her relatively recent lover Søren Kirkegard has even less specifics on why someone would go after Nina. But he's less in denial than she is: Her urge to rescue and to fight for the beleaguered, front and center in the past three titles of her adventures, have always put Nina close to danger. Somehow she insists on pushing into more of it, and her children -- who now live with their (divorced) dad, in an effort to give them safe and sane childhoods! -- have already realized what Nina doesn't seem to grasp: Their mother is never out of danger.

Readers also know, as Kaaberbøl and Friis spin out to Manila and an earlier time, 4 years earlier, that something evil and manipulative happened then in the Philippines. Somehow, for reasons slow to unfurl, that knot of evil has leapt across the globe to Denmark. But what does Nina have to do with it? Her mother, battling cancer, doesn't have time to waste on dainty confrontation:

"Nina-girl, you can't save the entire --"

"Don't call me that!" Nice. Now she had shot out of her chair and stood with two fists floating up somewhere near chin level, like a boxer with his dukes up. Her head was pounding and she forced herself to lower her hands and breathe more calmly. ...

"Nina. You have two children who are afraid of losing you, and you need to deal with that, whether you want to or not."

She had no defense. She couldn't deny it.  ... Nina hadn't exactly sought it out.

... D*mn it. Exactly how rotten a person did you have to be to take out your own frustrations on your cancer-stricken mother?

Soren's not in great shape, either. He's still recovering from the knife Nina deftly inserted into his chest to save his life when his police work went awry in the preceding book, and "work" won't let him back into action until he's shown real recovery. Awkwardly, with less-than-wise choices stemming partly from his own exhaustion, partly from the powerful love he feels for Nina, he flounders into the situation, where a killer keeps apologetically appearing and trying to kill Nina the rest of the way.

Kaaberbøl and Friis do more than shape a hunt for a killer (and an anxious effort by Nina to avoid pulling the threat toward the people she loves): They also frame dramatic contrasts between the Global South and the middle-class affluence of Denmark; between those called to their work, whether nursing or doctoring or policing, and those struggling to get into a "well-paid career"; and between friends and family who link to each other out of love and loyalty, and those who manipulate and maim in order to out-shout the emptiness within them.

In the end, it's Nina's courage that counts, and Soren's persistent investigation, in a long struggle for survival while the motives of the killer and his allies are slowly, painfully revealed. What success can there be -- readers already know from the book's cover that this is the series finale. Who will die? What must be relinquished in order to defeat a spreading illness of menace and blood?

THE CONSIDERATE KILLER wraps up with a fitting, satisfying ending, one where it's good to pause and reflect on these four strong Nina Borg books. This time, there's clearly no sequel, but in spite of searching the websites, Twitter feed, and Facebook posts related to the collaborating authors, I don't have a clue of what's next for this writing team.

But I'm certain it will be well worth reading.

* * *

PS - Kudos to Soho Crime for bringing this series across the Atlantic, and to translator Elisabeth Dyssegaard for making sure the fast-paced and insightful storytelling moves smoothly into English, for American readers.