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

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