Liza Marklund

Last Will


Investgative Journalist: Annika Bengtzon
Location:                     Stockholm, Sweden
Time:                          Present
Genre:                         Scandi Noir

This is the sixth of Marklund's Annika Bengtzon Novels which have followed her career from fist being appointed as a reporter. This plot begins with a murder of a member of a Nobel Prize selection committee by a hired assassin at the annual awards ceremony in front of Bengtzon

As the plot develops there is a questioning of the relationship between the integrity of the Nobel Prizes and the commercial pressures on medical research. A sub plot is developed as a terrorist cell takes credit for the murder and the Swedish Government is too happy top collude with the CIA to allow the rendition of suspect to Jordan.

Although the hired assassin returns to cover her mistakes, this is incidental to the main concern of the plot and the way Bengtzon becomes the target of the killer happens very rapidly at the end as an almost afterthought and is the least satisfactory aspect of an otherwise impressive thriller.

The underlying story ARCs concern 
a) Bengzon's professional development and the integrity of tabloid journalism competing with emerging electronic media 
b) Benggzon's personal life with the stresses on her marriage as she copes with her job, two small children and a husband with his own developing career as a Government adviser working on anti-terrorist legislation and which at one stage leaves hi trying to justify the rendition.

Rating A++ (I read it non stop in a day)

Liza Marklund's web site

Previously read, 
(in chronological but not published order)


Prime Time
The Bomber
Red Wolf

Arni Thorarinsson

Season of the Witch

Investigative Journalist: Einar
Location:                     Akureyi, Iceland
Time :                         Present
Genre:                         Scandi-noir

The protaganist, Einar (no other name given) has been transferred from Reykjavik to the northern town of Akureyi as part of a bid to increase regional sales of his paper covering local issues. The early stages seem as much concerned with his settling in as the development of what will be the main plot.  The story doesn't seem to get going until at least a third of the way in.

It concerns the apparent accidental death of a local businessman's wife and the murder of a student. Eventually the cases converge. Set against the background of an imminent General Election and Iceland's economic problems, there is also underlying concern about the impact of immigrant labour.

This appears to be the only Thorarinson novel traslated into English so far.although there are oher novels translated into other European languages

Rating B

Dana Stabenow

A Cold Blooded Business

Detective/Investigator: Kate Shugak
Location:                     Alaska
Time:                          Recent (mid 1990s)
Genre:

Kate Shugak is a former District Attorney's investigator, inveigled into specific jobs. She is a native Aleut living on a 160 acre holding in Alaska. In this novel she is asked to work undercover to discover who is responsible for drugs trafficing into a large closed industrial zone run by a major oil company. In this novel, the 4th in the series, she stumbles perhaps too fortuitously on the actual villains. Not quite as tight a plot as some of the previous Shugak novels I've read

An underlying concern in the Shugak novels is the status of Aleut and Inuit natives of Alaska, the frequent prejudice against them and their difficulty in coping with the rapid impact of the commercial development of Alaska, particularly the degrading influence of alcohol. The concern for the native Alaskans' disappearing culture lleads to a sub plot about the illegal export of historic ivory artefacts.

Rating B

Dana Stabenow web link

Previously read 
A Cold Day for Murder
A Fatal Thaw
Dead in the Water

Karin Fossum

The Caller

Detective: Konrad Sejer
Location:  Norway
Time:        Present
Genre;      Scandi-Noir

There's something quite different about Fossum's novel, her eighth featuring Konrad Sejer. This is not about a murder and its solution. It's about a maladjusted and negelected young man who vents his discontent on the world through seemingly harmless but still malicious practical jokes such as covering a sleeping baby with animal blood,  posting  a premature death notice for an old lady or sending a mother rushing to a hospital following a false call that her daughter had had a traffic accident. Fossum explores the impact of the hoaxes on the lives of the victims, particularly the parents of the blood covered child.

There is no intentional murder but the hoaxes seem to culminate in the horrific death of a child which may or may not have been the fault of the hoaxer followed quite quickly by the accidental death of the young man's much loved grandfather, as far as the police know at the hands of the hoaxer's drunkard mother. But the reader knows better. 

Eventually the hoaxer meets his fate and only the little girl who has been one of his victims knows the truth.

Rating A

Web site about Karen Fossum

Other Inspector Sejer Books read previously

Don't Look Back (1)
When the Devil Holds (3)

Graham Hurley

Happy Days

Detective: Joe Faraday (Paul Winter) Jimmy Suttle
Time:        Present
Location:  Portsmouth
Genre:      British Police Procedural

This is the twelfth and last of the Joe Faraday novels with Faraday, disillusioned and facing retirement  after a likely reassignment from front line policing, being found dead from an overdose in the opening chapter.  the main course of the novel works to the conclusion of the underlying story ARC which has been the conflict between Faraday and the growing power and menace of Portsmouth's most powerful criminal Bazza McKenzie and to some extent also covers the rehabilitation of Paul Winter, the Faraday aid who went to the "dark side" and began working for McKenzie. 

Set against the background of the imminent 2010 General Election,  McKenzie, with the aid of a spin doctor and a cmputer guru is positioning himself to run as an Independent in Portsmouth North.  Winter, increasingly disillusioned with McKenzie is prepared to risk setting him up while the senior police establishment realise that the man's political ambitions must be stopped. The ne police officer who has ket a good reatioship with Winter, Jimmy Suttle, is Winter's handler on the covert operation, which leaves one wondering to the end whether the operation will see fate catch up with McKenzie and whether Winter will survive the plot.

Although Hurley has finished with Faraday, he is about to launch a new series picking up the career of Jimmy Suttle who has obtained a post outside Portsmouth.

Rating A

Graham Hurley's web site

Previously read in the series
Turnstone
The Take
Angels' Passing
Cut to Black
Blood and Honey
One Under
The price of Darkness
No Lovelier Death
Beyond Reach

Louise Penny

A Trick of the Light

Detective: Armand Gamache
Time: Present
Setting: Three Pines, Quebec
Genre: Police Procedural

This is the seventh of Penny's Gamache Novels which, like some of the previous ones, is set in the imagined idyllic village of Three Pines (so small it's not even on the map) not far from Montreal.

The main plot involves the murder of a bitchy art critic in the garden of the home of an artist and her long time former friend during a party packed with artists after the artist's successful show preview.The investigation explores jealous rivalries in the art world an delves the victim's past relationship with a number of characters.

Much of the underlying story ARC harks back to the trauma that Gamache and his 2iC endured during a violent incident in an earlier novel but also devlops the charcters of many of the Three Pines' residents introduced in previous novels

Rating B+

Louise Penny's Website

Previously Read Novels in the Series : Still Life (Gamache 1)

Mons Kallentoft

Autumn Killing

Detective: Malin Fors

Time:        Present 

Setting      Linkoping, Sweden

Genre       Scandi-Noir

This is the third in the Malin Fors series. Ostensibly its about solving the murder of a wealthy lawyer but as much as anything it is about Fors' descent  into alcoholism and the increasingly strained relationship with her teenage daughter and her daughter's father.

Kallentoft plaits together three narratives in working towards his conclusion. Besides the straight plot of the criminal investigation, As in the earlier novels he uses a device of the murder victim observing Fors and her colleagues at work and also employs a sequence of flashbacks, primarily into the perpetrators history  but mixing it with that of the original victim. Throughout the novel Kallentoft also explores the reflections on events past and present of a number of characters.

The underlying ARC about Fors' problems is paralleled by an exploration of the difficulties many of her colleagues face in their personal lives.

Rating A+

Mons Kallentoft's website 

Previously read novels in the series

Midwinter Sacrifice

Summertime Death

Camilla Lackberg

The Drowning

Detectives: Erica Falk & Patrik Hedstrom 

Setting:      Fjallbacka, Sweden

Time:         The Present

Genre:       Scandi-Noir

This is the sixth of the Falk/Hedstrom Fjallbacka novels to be translated into English. Struictly speaking Falk is not a detective but an investigative crime writer, who by this novel is comfortably married to Hedstrom. Fjallbacka itself is a very small, almost rural,  community 

As in previous novels Lackberg, intersperses the main plot with (in italics) the psychological story of the main, but unknown perpetrator bringing the solving of the crime and the revelation of identity together at the end.

This plot begins with the mysterious and unsolved disappearance of a Fjallbacka resident, while, in an apparently unconnected theme,  a new local author receives poison pen letters  ruining his book launch. Later it is revealed that friends of the missing man (by now the possibly drowned body of the title) are also receiving such letters but seemingly unconnected to the author. Eventually the threads are drawn together relatively seamlessly. The only weakness is whether the transformation of a person over the years so he is unrecognisable is fully credible

The background story ARC concerns the developing relationship of Falk, who in this novel is expecting twins imminently, and Hedstrom. There is another almost comic thread around the Fjalbacka incompetent police chief's humanising relationship with the mother of one of his detectives and his de-facto adoption of the detective's child as a grandson.

Rating A

Camilla Lackbergs web site

Previously read in the Falk/Hedstrom Fjallbacka sequence
The Ice Princess
The Preacher
The Stone Cutter
The Gallows Bird
The Hidden Child*

*This novel involves treachery and betrayal rooted in the Second World War and as in other Swedish Scandi-Noir, Sweden's conscience about its behaviour is explored

Helene Tursten

Detective Inspector Huss

Detective: Irene Huss

Setting:     Gothenburg: Sweden

Time:        Recent Past (1990's)

Genre:      Scandi-Noir

This is the complicated investigation of the murder of a wealthy Swedish industrialist with a sub plot that involves violent criminals, Hell's Angels and drugs and which eventually merges into the main story. Although Huss is the main character, the team she works with are significantly involved in the development.

As this is the start of a sequence of novels featuring Huss, the elements of the background story ARC are laid, introducing a home life with a husband who is a chef and with twin teen daughters.

As is often the case  prejudiced assumptions enter the story. This time with relating to Finnish immigrants ("only a Finn can clean well"). At one stage one of the daughters gets involved with right wing skinheads and begins to Holocaust deny She needs persuasion to abandon the interest. One agent in this is one of Huss' colleagues who has a Jewish/holocaust ancestory and the other is Huss' mother who experienced rehabilitating concentration camp survivors. In so doing Sweden's discomfort in the ambivolent role it played in the Second World War is revealed.

Rating B++

Helene Tursten's web site

J Papachristou


The Halcyon Murder (1)
Murder in the Chapel (2)

Detective      Aliki Notis

Setting          Kalini, A fictional Greek Island

Time             Present
Genre           Mediterranean Noir

Possibly the start of a longer sequence of novels set on a fictional Greek island part way between Greece and Turkey.

Both novels involve Aliki Notis, a young female detective (in the first one with a partner) sent from Athens to investigate a homicide on the island. The island itself is coming to terms with the impact of tourism and the exploration of the cultural tensions between an essentially conservative and traditional lifestyle of the islanders and the liberalism that does or could come with the tourism is key to the novels. The cultural tensions between the islanders and their Albanian immigrant population are also apparent with gossip casting an Albanian as a likely perpetrator.

Notis herself is sympathetic to the sensitivities. She is a modern Greek pursuing a career in the police against her father's traditional view of a woman's role.

Rating A

Peter James

Not Dead Yet

Detective Roy Grace

Setting     Brighton

Time        Present
Genre      English Noir

This is the eighth in the Roy Grace novels set in Brighton, so far all including "Dead" in the title.

The plot centres around a Madonna-like mega-star who is in Brighton to film a historical and romantic epic to be filmed in the Brighton Pavilion and whose life is under threat.

There's also a sub plot involving a dismembered corpse found in chicken droppings on a poultry farm. Apparently a separate story from the main plot, James brings them together effectively as the novel comes to its climax

As with most sequences of novels involving the same characters there is a developing story ARC.

Grace's partner, Cleo nears the end of her pregnancy while Grace seeks to have his long missing wife, Sandy, declared dead to enable his marriage to Cleo. The novel starts to reveal more about Sandy's disappearance and her impending threat to Grace's security.

Professionally Grace solves the issue of the embarrassing leaks from his investigations to the local crime reporter Spinelli, This is possibly solved too easily and the uncovering of the guilty party concludes within two chapters with minimum effort to throw suspicion on one of Grace's team.

Rating   A

Peter James' web site

Novels in the sequence read previously
Dead Simple
Looking Good dead
Not Dead Enough
Dead Man's Footsteps
Dead Tomorrow
Dead Like You
Dead Man's Grip