The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (32 page)

But like the director Ingmar Bergman (to whose daughter Mankell is married) the writer frequently confounds all stereotypical expectations of Nordic gloom and produces books crammed with humanity and optimism, plus the bloodshed and murder that are prerequisites of the crime genre. The keen social conscience that illuminates Mankell’s books chimes with his own commitment to make disadvantaged people’s lives better: he has done a great deal of theatre work in Africa, and his reach as a writer extends beyond the crime genre, with such books as the ambitious
Kennedy’s Brain
,
Depths
and
Eye of the Leopard.

STIEG’S RIVALS: YRSA SIGURDARDÓTTIR

It’s to be hoped that the children who so avidly consume Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s juvenile novels don’t accidentally pick up
Last Rituals
, as the author’s first adult book was a very different kettle of fish from her first work. (‘I had five books worth of bad thoughts I needed to vent –
Last Rituals
was a sort of release for my darker side,’ she noted.) In fact, new careers are a speciality for Sigurdardóttir; this is (at least) her third, as she’s also a highly successful civil engineer in Reykjavik, with prestigious hydro-construction projects under her belt. The latter clearly wasn’t slaking her creative instincts – good news for lovers of quality crime in translation, as Sigurdardóttir arrived, fully formed it seems, as something of a unique talent in the field. She needs to be – the once rarefied field of Icelandic crime thrillers is now becoming somewhat overcrowded.

In
Last Rituals
, the body of a young history student is discovered in Reykjavik, his eyes gouged out. He has been researching witchcraft and torture, and his moneyed German parents won’t accept the police theory that he was killed by his drug dealer. What makes Sigurdardóttir’s writing such an exhilarating experience is the fashion in which she takes familiar, perhaps even over familiar ingredients – for example ill-matched, combative detective duo, murder victims with their eyes removed – and throws off a series of dizzying and innovative riffs on these concepts. Sigurdardóttir clearly realises that women writers are obliged to be every inch as gruesome as their male counterparts these days, and matches such writers as Tess Gerritsen and Kathy Reichs in the blood-chilling stakes. But like all the best Scandinavian writers, it’s her acute sense of place that gives such individual character to her work, and readers may feel a keen desire to visit Reykjavik after reading her books.

STIEG’S RIVALS: HÅKAN NESSER

When I asked Håkan Nesser why non-Swedish readers should pick up one of his crime novels rather than those by his more celebrated countryman Henning Mankell, he replied, ‘Well, I’m eight inches taller than him…’ But if this isn’t a persuasive enough reason for you to read Nesser, just a few pages of
Borkmann’s Point
,
The Return
or
The Inspector and Silence
will undoubtedly do the trick. This is splendid stuff: Scandinavian crime writing that is so rivetingly written it makes most contemporary crime fare – Scandinavian or otherwise – seem rather thin gruel. Nesser’s tenacious copper, Chief Inspector van Veeteren, is one of the most distinctive protagonists in the field (lauded by no less an authority than Colin Dexter: ‘… destined for a place among the great European detectives’), and the handling of the baffling, labyrinthine cases he tackles has a rigour and logic all too rarely encountered.

But Håkan Nesser’s is no overnight success story. Being born and raised in Kumla – the most prestigious prison town in Sweden – may have helped put the author on the right criminal path (at least, the kind of criminal path where you’re paid rather than arrested), but it was via his clandestine scribbling away at novels in the classroom for 20 years, when he should have been polishing young Swedish minds, that allowed Nesser to develop into the master he is today.
Borkmann’s Point
, dealing with two savage axe murders in a sedate coastal town, marked the UK debut of Nesser’s chess-loving copper and instantly established a following.
The Return
consolidated the success of the earlier book, with van Veeteren investigating a corpse rolled up in a carpet in an otherwise sylvan beauty spot, while a double murderer prowls the area.

Nesser already has a slew of Scandinavian crime awards under his belt for his novels, which have received enthusiastic welcomes in nine countries. And as his reputation gathers momentum, it is only a matter of time before British fans will be learning how to pronounce his name (a good approximation is ‘Hawk Ann Nessair’).

STIEG’S RIVALS: MAJ SJÖWALL & PER WAHLÖÖ

Sjöwall and Wahlöö are the pinnacle of Nordic crime writing – truly
sui generis
. Now that English readers can sample all the novels of this highly influential husband-and-wife team of crime writers in solid translations, their true achievement – which is considerable – can be fully appreciated. For many years the lamentable fact was that these taut and socially committed novels never seemed to be available all at the same time in the UK and US (they slipped out of print all too quickly). These days, the reputation of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö is rock solid, with fellow crime authors routinely describing them as the very finest practitioners of the police procedural.

In Sweden, the Martin Beck series has long had the highest possible standing (the proselytising left-leaning agenda of the books clearly not alienating readers, whatever their individual political stamp). Beck is, of course, one of the great literary detectives, and continues to influence writers long after his creators have laid down their metaphorical pens. Stieg Larsson was, naturally, an admirer of the Beck books – as he was of the British writer Val McDermid’s Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series – the influence of which is also clearly discernible in his books. Jens Lapidus, with his remarkable
Stockholm Noir
trilogy, is in some ways a spiritual heir of the duo.

STIEG’S RIVALS: ARNALDUR INDRIDASON

After Indridason won the CWA Gold Dagger, many felt that he would be one of the foreign language crime writers who would break the stranglehold that Henning Mankell maintained on this particular branch of the genre. The signs are that this remarkably talented writer has yet to do that… so far. British and American readers may have problems pronouncing his name, but are fully aware of the highly distinctive talents of these Reykjavik-set thrillers. The remarkable success of
Silence of the Grave
was followed in 2006 by
Voices
, another taut and beguiling thriller. Indridason’s detective, Erlendur, comes across echoes of his difficult past when the doorman at his own hotel is savagely stabbed to death. The manager attempts to keep the murder quiet (it is the festive season) but Erlendur is, of course, obliged to find out what happened. As he works his way through the very bizarre fellow guests who share the hotel with him, he encounters a nest of corruption that gives even this jaundiced detective pause for thought.

The particular pleasure of these books is the combination of the familiar and unfamiliar – while the detective is cut from the familiar cloth, the locales and atmosphere are fresh and surprising for the non-Scandinavian reader. In
Jar City
(2003), the body of an old man is found in his apartment in Reykjavik; DI Erlendur has only an enigmatic note found on the body to go on. The murdered man’s computer contains pornography, and it transpires that he has been accused of rape in the past. A photograph of the grave of a young woman leads Erlendur towards a solution quite unlike anything he has encountered in his career. It was inevitable that this Scandinavian crime novel would be compared with previous successes by Henning Mankell, and that DI Erlendur would be racked up against the former’s Kurt Wallander. Both readers and critics did not find Indridason or Erlendur wanting in the comparisons. The cop here is much given to philosophical speculations, and has a very dark view of human nature. Science (and not just forensics) is a crucial part of the plot, and as with Mankell, the scene-setting has a freshness and novelty that are very striking to the non-Scandinavian reader. As a debut novel for yet another saturnine copper, this pushes all the right buttons.

STIEG’S RIVALS: KARIN FOSSUM

At one time, the crime novels of Karin Fossum were something of a well-kept secret, known to a growing band of aficionados but not to the larger crime readership. Not any more. In fact, Fossum’s highly atmospheric and involving books are among the best being produced in the genre today, and her work certainly deserves the widest possible audience.
Don’t Look Back
was a psychological thriller that was both economical and forceful, and
He Who Fears the Wolf
(2003) is an even more persuasive piece of writing. In an isolated village, a horribly mutilated body has been found, and the suspect (spotted in the woods nearby) has recently been committed to a psychiatric institution. Then a violent bank robbery occurs, with the thief grabbing a hostage and escaping. As the gunman becomes more and more desperate, paradoxically a strange calm seems to descend on his hostage. And as the hunt continues for the murderer, only the young suspect’s doctor maintains his innocence.

Like the best of Ruth Rendell, this is a dark and unsettling novel about the reasons people commit crime and the devastating effect it has on the protagonists’ lives. All the characters here are exuberantly drawn, notably the resourceful police inspector Sejer and the under-suspicion misfit Errki. But for the English reader, it’s the evocation of Nordic society (not a million miles away from our own) that is so effective here. Fossum’s novels featuring Konrad Sejer have been published in 16 languages, and so it’s only a matter of time before mainstream English readers take these books to their collective bosom.

STIEG’S RIVALS: CAMILLA LÄCKBERG

As readers in Britain and America eagerly seek out other Nordic writers, the discovery of Camilla Läckberg was something of a no-brainer. Already celebrated in her native Sweden with much accomplished work to her credit, she has been introduced to the UK with
The Ice Princess
and has earned the sobriquet of Sweden’s new Agatha Christie, which isn’t quite the whole story. True, in this book there is a Christie-style small village (Läckberg’s birthplace, Fjällbacka) and a slew of candidates for a grisly killing. Also in the style of The Queen of Crime is the effortless plotting – but Läckberg takes on social issues assiduously, serving up a vision of Swedish society that is acute and trenchant. Erica Falck is a writer who has travelled to her home town after the death of her parents, but discovers a divided community. A friend, Alex, has been found with her wrists cut, frozen solid in a bath that has turned to ice. Erica opts to pen a book about the secretive Alex, dealing with her own writer’s block as well as the puzzle of Alex’s death. As with her other equally accomplished novels (such as
The Stonecutter
), Läckberg shows here that she is another star in the Nordic pantheon.

STIEG’S RIVALS: ÅKE EDWARDSON

The British – as opposed to many non-Russian nations – felt an instant connection with the work of Anton Chekhov, recognising a common cause with the Russians of his plays. These morose, stoic types in their inhospitable climate dreamt of bettering their lives, and lacked the unrealistic optimism of, say, the Americans. Long after Chekhov’s death, in the now popular genre of crime in translation, residents of Albion have latched on to Scandinavian essays in murder and detection – the bleaker, unvarnished view of life in these novels has a surprisingly British air, as does the uncritical acceptance of eccentricity. But while the ex-journalist and novelist Åke Edwardson hasn’t yet enjoyed the success of his better-known colleagues, the auguries are good, with the youthful Inspector Winter (and his older, more saturnine colleague Ringmar) bidding fair to make a breakthrough in the fashion of Mankell’s copper Kurt Wallander.

In, for instance,
Frozen Tracks
, the narrative has a Mankell-like grip: autumn in Göteborg, and two unpleasant series of events are to cause headaches for DCI Erik Winter. Two children have been lured into a car by a man proffering sweets. Reports are filed, but as different day nurseries and different police stations are involved, the reports are not correlated (Edwardson implies that a lack of joined-up thinking is just as endemic to Swedish policing as it is to British). As in such books as
Never End
, Edwardson shows his skill in both his succinctly characterised coppers and a nicely labyrinthine plot. The queasy glimpses into the psyche of a dangerous paedophile are intelligently and responsibly handled, and the narrative has all the fastidious skill of the best crime writing.

STIEG’S RIVALS: ÅSA LARSSON

Are readers ready for another Scandinavian crime writer called Larsson? As the popularity of crime in translation grows apace, such novels as Åsa Larsson’s
The Savage Altar
are devoured by aficionados searching for something innovative in the field. Åsa Larsson takes us to different locales (here, a vividly rendered Sweden unlike that of the subject of this book) and plotting of more heft and character than may be discerned in many UK or US crime novels.