Liza Marklund

Vanished

Journalist: Annika Bengtzon

Location:  Stockholm, Sweden

Time:       Present (Recent Past: Pub 2002)

Genre:      Scandi Noir

This is one of the earlier novels in the Annika Bengtzon chronology.

The story opens with the murder in a transshipment area of two Balkan immigrants and the dramatic escape of a woman from the assassin. Bengtzon's paper carries the story.

Bengtzon herself is contacted by a woman who want coverage of her organisation which, she alleges can can help people, particularly battered wives,, to disappear completely from Government records.

When Bengtzon takes a phone call from and meets the escaped woman, helping her to avoid the gunman a second time, she decides to help her by putting her in touch with the woman running the organistation.

However Bengtzon is not completely sure that the organisation is completely above board and she starts investigating its probity assisted by a local government finance officer who has challenged his superiors about paying it large sums of money.

At the same time the gunman, clearly involved in Balkan mafia smuggling is still on the loose loking for a lorry load of stolen fake cigarettes.

The themes weave together well. 

The backround story arc involves

a) Bengtzon meeting the man who is to feature as her partner/husband in later novels (the local government officer)

b) The politics of the editorial battle at the Evening Post as an editor with vision begins to position himself to achieve dominance in an attempt to improve the quality and integrity of the paper,

A

Liza Marklund Website

Previously read

Prime Time

The Bomber

Red Wolf

Last Will

Aline Templeton

Dead in the Water

Detective: Marjorie Fleming
Setting:     Galloway
Time:        Present
Genre:      Police Procedural

This, the sixth n the Fleming series, is another cleverly plotted novel by Aline Templeton intertwining a cold case investigation of an unsolved murder from the mid 1980's, the attempted murder  of a TV actor with local roots location shooting a police procedural series in the area and feuding among Polish building workers, not to mention unreasonable pressure on Marjorie Fleming by the acting Procurator Fiscal.

The cold case review, demanded by the Fiscal, is a testing one for Fleming as the original investigation was not as thorough as it might have been and involved her immediate superior and her father, then a Detective Sergeant.  The TV actor could have been involved, the victims mother thinks he did it,  but he had not been interviewed at the time, which necessity draws him into the cold case review. The attack on him could be by the victim's brother seeking revenge, or the result of arguments he has had with an old acquaintance or  the confrontation he had had with one of the Polish workmen.

The false leads are all plausible as is the final denouement when the murderer confesses all in a sort of parody of the way a Poirot might force a killer to confess to a room full of the suspects, although with unfortunate implications for Fleming.

A

Aline Templeton's Website

Previously Read
Cold in the Earth
The Darkness and the Deep
Lying Dead
Lamb to the Slaughter
Evil for Evil
Cradle to Grave

Helene Tursten

The Glass Devil

Detective: Irene  Huss
Setting    ; Gothenburg, Sweden
Time       ; Current
Genre:       Scandi Noir

This opens with the murder of a Swedish Pastor and his wife and also  their son at a nearby cottage. Their are suggestions that the murder may have been committed by Satanists whom the Pastor has been trying to identify through the internet following an arson attack which  destroyed a local church. The only surviving member of the family, a computer expert living in London is too traumatised to offer useful information. 

Irene Huss and her colleagues pursue the possibility of Satanic links but eventually another, less esoteric but sinister motive emerges.

A

Helen Turtsten Website

Previously read
Detective Inspector Huss
The Torso

Karin Fossum

Bad Intentions

Detective: Konrad Sejer

Setting:     Norway

Time:        Current

Genre:      Scandi Noir

Once again, a different tone in a Karin Fossum novel. There is no gruesome killing. There is no race to find the killer before there are too many bodies. For a detective story, one might actually say it was gentle.

A young man staying with two friends by a lake on a weekend's outing from the hospital where he was being treated for depression, falls out of a rowing boat they are all in at night and disappears into the muddy waters. No attempt is made to save him. His friends choose to invent a fiction that he has disappeared from the cabin overnight and may have committed suicide and this is what they report to the police. There are allusions to some nefarious deed the three of them have been involved in.

When the body is fond, the story of the possible suicide does not ring true to Konrad Sejer, but he has no proof otherwise.

Later another body is found in another lake, that of a young man missing for some months. Is this death accidental. How are the three friends connected to it?

The story is well written and the plot unfurls nicely.

Rating A

Web site referring to Karin Fossum  although this book is not listed

Previously Read

Dont Look Back

What the Devil Holds

The Caller

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

Someone To Watch Over Me

Lawyer: Thora Gudmundsdottir

Setting:  Reyjkavik, Iceland

Time:     2010

Genre:   Scandi Noir  

This is the fifth of Sigurdardottir's stories with lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir as the investigating character. As with many Icelandic novels, the consequences of the 2010 recession seep into the plot.

She is asked by a serial killer in a secure hospital to investigate the case against a fellow inmate, Jakob,  who has Down's Syndrome and who has possibly been wrongly placed in the unit  following a fire at the residential home where he lived and which killed five people.

As she investigates, it becomes apparent that both the case pursued against Jakob was not as thorough as it might have been and that other people may well have had motive to raze the residential home, particularly following the discovery that someone had managed to get a comatose patient pregnant.

The plot is tightly controlled and moves to a logical but unpredictable climax.

And of course the serial killer has his own motive for promoting the investigation.

Rating A

Previously Read

Last Rituals

My Soul to Take

Ashes to Dust

The Day is dark

Web reference

Kjell Erikson

The Demon of Dakar

Detective:  Ann Lindell
Setting :     Upsala, Sweden
Time:         Current
Genre:       Scandi Noir

This s a detective story with some interesting aspects. There is a murder of a person related to drug trafficking which leads Lindell and her colleagues into pursuing links to his partner, the owner of a restaurant, the Dakar of the title. However the killer is in many ways the part of a parallel  but related plot which Lindell does not realise until late in the novel.

It was in fact a revenge killing by a Mexican,whose two brothers had been inveigled, out of financial necessity to carry drugs from Mexico to Sweden. One is dead. The other is in a Swedish jail.  The brothers' third word plight is portrayed sympathetically and when the imprisoned brother makes a fortuitous escape that they should both manage to return safely to Mexico seems only right.

The more important thing for Sweden and Upsala is that the owner of the Dakar is caught for his drug activities but not without some covert help from a rival drug baron who is muscling in n the area.

There is currently no website for Kjell Eriksson 

Previously read
The Hand that Trembles
The Princess of Burundi