» How Mysterious!

Wallander, Season 3 (TV series)

Jun 072013

I still have never read any of Henning Mankell’s books, but the BBC series based on it is always worth watching.

Well, with one exception.

Season 3 includes three episodes, beginning with “An Event in Autumn,” a story about hopes dashed — both the victim’s and Wallander’s. First a young pregnant woman commits suicide by jumping off a ferry. But is it really suicide? Then, Wallander uncovers a body in the garden of the home where he’s just moved in with his significant other, Vanja. She’s a wonderful person so you know it can’t possibly go well for poor Kurt. He feels that somehow the body was left for him to find, although it’s not clear whether he thinks he’s expected to solve the mystery or if it’s just a plot to ruin his life. Either way, death and unhappiness seem to stalk him. As is typical of “Wallander” episodes, this one is melancholy when it’s not downright sad, but it’s well-acted, meaningful, and thought-provoking.

I can’t say that for the second episode, “The Dogs of Riga.” Two bodies are found floating in a boat in Ystad, and it turns out they’re involved in the Latvian drug trade. Wallander briefly works with a Latvian detective, Karlis Liepa, but when the detective is killed in the same spectacularly painful way as the drug dealers, Wallander rushes to Latvia where he manages to uncover a conspiracy and police corruption, despite the fact that he doesn’t speak the language, is completely unfamiliar with the culture and history, and has no connections to speak of. Oh, and his hotel room is bugged and he’s being shadowed. My friends, Wallander is a fine detective but no one could overcome those odds. Perhaps I was just annoyed and not paying enough attention, but I kept getting confused about who people were and which side they were supposed to be on, and in sum this is my least favorite episode, ever.

The final program, “Before the Frost,” concerns religious fanaticism, a topic I don’t remember from any of the previous episodes and not something I’d typically associate with Sweden. The episode begins with a crazy man setting fire to geese and killing a woman who witnessed too much. Her body is discovered buried in the woods with a Bible. Things get even more strange when Wallander realizes that the murderer was connected to a childhood friend of his daughter, a woman who has struggled with mental illness and is now a member of a fundamentalist Christian group. I particularly liked seeing Wallander interact with his daughter, Linda, as they struggle to reach an accommodation in their troubled relationship, paralleled by the problems her own troubled friend has with her mother.

I recommend the series in general and the last episode in particular, especially if you don’t mind a dark story and endings that are never really happy.

Roslund and Hellstrom, Cell 8

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May 222013

If you have any qualms about sending your tax dollars to a state that has capital punishment, you will like Roslund and Hellstrom’s Cell 8. If you’re strongly in favor of capital punishment, forget about it.

Cell 8 refers to the longtime home of John Meyer Frey, convicted of murdering his girlfriend when he was just 17 years old, a cell on death row in an Ohio penitentiary. Frey eluded execution when he died of heart failure.

Years later, a cruise ship band member watches as a creepy drunk dude surreptitiously accosts women on the dance floor. John Schwartz is completely disgusted by the guy, so he calls hime out. When he refuses to leave, Schwartz brutally kicks him in the face from the stage, nearly killing the man. Schwartz then goes home to his wife and child, expecting the police any time.

He’s not disappointed. When our old friend Ewart Grens, grumpy insomniac police officer, hears that the victim may be brain damaged, he orders that Schwartz should be picked up immediately. If you’ve read previous Roslund and Hellstrom books, you’ll recall that Grens’s wife suffers from brain damage, so he of all people knows the severity of Schwartz’s crime.

There’s just one problem. A search of international police records indicates that John Schwartz doesn’t exist, and that the man held in a Swedish police cell — a man terrified by the mere thought of a cell door closing behind him — is actually John Meyer Frey. As the investigation continues, it becomes very clear that the authors and most of the characters are unapologetically, morally opposed to capital punishment, and those who aren’t are ugly Americans whom no one could support.

The conclusion may be somewhat outlandish, but the ugliest of the ugly Americans gets his due, and all of the loose ends are tied. In addition to the gravity of the capital punishment debate, there are lighter moments that have actually stuck with me as much as the main story: Grens attending a music concert (it doesn’t go well), his wife appearing to show some awareness of what’s happening around her, a boat ride for her benefit. Perhaps Grens can escape his years-long self-imposed misery.

Camilla Lackberg, The Gallows Bird

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Apr 242013

Now that I’ve accepted that this series is about Patrik and not Erica, I found I enjoyed Camilla Läckberg’s The Gallows Bird and am happy to recommend it even to people who think they don’t like Scandinavian crime fiction.

Set in Fjällbacka, Sweden, the series focuses on Patrik Hedström, who starts off the book by visiting what seems to be a car accident — but there’s something wrong with the scene, and Patrik can’t help but think there’s more going on than is immediately apparent. Eventually he recalls something that reminds him of another incident reported by an officer in another district, and he and his colleagues, including a promising new female officer, gradually realize that something very wrong is taking place.

In the meantime, there’s much more to think about: a wild reality show being shot in the town, Patrik’s own wedding to Erica Falck, who’s dealing with her sister and her children following their own family tragedy from a previous book, and of course their own child, who’s changing every day. The book is almost as much about Patrik and Erica’s personal lives as it is about his investigations.

Moreover, the end of the book sets up the possibility of an investigation for Erica involving her own family. Lackberg’s previous books briefly mentioned that Erica and her sister had been raised by an unfeeling mother; in this book Erica realizes that she knows almost nothing about the woman, and what little information she has points to deeper mysteries that might explain her coldness to her children. I hope Erica (and Läckberg) follows through on her desire to learn more.

Sjowall and Wahloo, The Abominable Man

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Mar 052013

Sjowall and Wahloo’s Martin Beck series continues with #7, The Abominable Man. This is one of those stories where you feel so sorry for the victim, until you begin to understand who he is.

I think “abominable” is probably the right word for him.

The Abominable Man begins with the murder of a senior police officer, in his hospital room. You’re made to feel sorry for him because the poor guy is weak and afraid; who’s more vulnerable than a patient in the hospital? But it turns out that “the poor guy” has a long history of vicious, undeserved, and illegal attacks on citizens of Stockholm who in many instances weren’t even doing anything wrong. As Martin Beck and his team dig into Stig Nyman’s past, they find any number of complaints filed against the officer and his men, yet nothing was ever done by the police hierarchy to punish him or even to curb his future behavior.

But only one of the victims of this man’s abhorrent behavior decided to do something about it. Unfortunately for Stockholm, and especially the police, killing the person immediately responsible just isn’t enough, and Martin Beck will have to risk his life to bring an end to the killing.

I’ve only got three books left in the series and find myself in that weird place of wanting to read/not want to read the rest because I’m getting too close to the end. The commentary on society that goes along with each mystery, in this case the role of police in society, is never heavy-handed because it’s vital to understanding the solution to the mystery, yet is pointed and incisive. The more I read of the series, the more I can see it reflected in many of the more recent Scandinavian crime fiction I’ve been reading. It really sets the Scandinavians apart.

Helene Tursten, Night Rounds

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Feb 052013

I’ve read three books in Helene Tursten’s series so far. As much as I liked Detective Inspector Huss, I was only minimally interested in The Glass Devil — not that I disliked it, but it says something that I never got around to reviewing it. I’d be hard pressed to tell you now what it was even about.

But I really like Irene Huss, investigator, wife, mother of teenaged twin girls, friend, and a woman whose thoughts you might recognize as your own at times. And so I read Night Rounds, written earlier in the series than The Glass Devil but just recently translated into English. And I seriously couldn’t put it down.

The plot concerns the murder of a nurse in a private hospital in Göteborg. Someone cuts the electricity and the backup generator, kills the nurse, and walks away. Two separate witnesses see the hospital’s ghost, Nurse Tekla, gliding away in her old-fashioned nursing sister’s uniform — she haunts the hospital where she committed suicide, apparently after having been dumped by the current head of hospital’s father.

Although none of the investigators believe a ghost was the perpetrator, the old story clearly has some connection to current events, even more obviously as the investigation continues and further crimes occur, and Irene insists on following up, even though it’s hard to see how something that happened 60 years ago could have any bearing on the murder. In fact, one of the less likable cops on the team with Huss calls her a “ghostbuster” for her efforts.

So now I’m off to look for the other Irene Huss mystery that’s been translated into English, hoping it’s at least something like this one.

Kristina Ohlsson, Unwanted

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Jan 102013

Kristina Ohlsson’s Unwanted fell flat in the end, but nonetheless I found much to like in this debut novel.

The story concerns a child, Lilian, who goes missing from a train when her mother steps off to make a phone call and is distracted by an injured dog just long enough for the train to leave the station. The police investigating the case in Stockholm are Alex Recht’s team, especially Fredrika Bergman and Peder Rydh, who change throughout the book, both as investigators and as people, because of the case.

Fredrika is a civilian training to be a detective; she’s good at analysis and theories, but lacks the patrol-car background of her colleagues. They see her as cold and unemotional, when in fact the strong emotions of police work are what force her to shut down. They also have no idea that she’s in a long-standing, on-again off-again relationship with the married man who was her professor at university.

Peder (I interject here to state that as child I had an imaginary friend named Peder, name stolen from a kid at nursery school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — a place not unlike the Nordic countries, now that I think about it) is married with twin baby sons, but after a year of his wife’s severe postpartum depression, he’s finding solace elsewhere. If Fredrika is cold and unemotional, Peder is eager and spirited.

Alex is well-known in Swedish law enforcement, but it’s hard to see why based on this case alone. He steers the team down a path that turns out to be wrong, over Fredrika’s objections, which is particularly unfortunate when additional children turn up missing under similar circumstances.

It’s hard for me to say what I didn’t like about the book without giving too much away, so I’ll only say that I thought the solution, the identity of the perpetrator, was unfair to a reader like me who tries to solve the mystery as the book goes along.

Still, I liked Ohlsson’s writing — the book moves quickly and flows well, and the characters, mostly Fredrika, drew me in — and I’ll definitely read her next book, Silenced, as soon as I can find a copy.

Karin Alvtegen, Betrayal

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Oct 112012

If you like Karin Fossum’s creepy psychological mysteries, you’ll like Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal.

The story begins with a young man, Jonas, who seems to have stopped living life in order to care for a woman who almost died in a drowning. Although the doctors tell him there’s nothing there anymore, and that her body will die, too, and soon, Jonas just can’t let go of Anna. From there we turn to the story of Eva and Henrik and their crumbling marriage. Perhaps it’s just because I’m going through a divorce myself, but I thought many aspects of their story rang true. The circumstances of their divorce are quite different from mine, but I thought Alvtegen accurately captured the barrenness of a dead marriage.

Even so, Eva is stunned to find out that Henrik not only has met someone else but intends to leave her and take their son, Axel, for half the time. She must sort out her own feelings — after all, she hasn’t been happy either — as well as the finances and life plans and everything else. She decides to take action in a number of ways, one of which is cheating, just for one night, in return.

The consequences of Eva’s action cannot be foreseen, but in the end the reader can see that Alvtegen has cleverly set the stage. Although not that much actually happens in terms of plot, the characterization is such that this book is hard to put down (even when you’re in the middle of moving house. Heh.). If you’re looking for strong characters and psychological tension rather than murder and mayhem, Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal is a great choice.

Kjell Eriksson, The Cruel Stars of the Night

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Aug 152012

Kjell Eriksson’s first ensemble police procedural, The Princess of Burundi, was good, but the second, The Cruel Stars of the Night, is even better. Ann Lindell, back from maternity leave, is a bigger focus, and for me at least that’s a good thing.

Set in Uppsala, the story alternates between Laura Hindersten, a woman who’s reported her father missing and complains that the police aren’t doing enough, and Ann and the other members of the Violent Crimes division of the police. Although I liked how we got to know more about the suspects and victims in The Princess of Burundi, I didn’t think it worked as well here, perhaps because Laura’s not only not very likable but also sick and twisted after years of living with her dreadful father — a scholar of Petrarch who makes all professors look bad — and whose loss to the world so far as I can tell isn’t very great.

In spite of that, I very much liked the focus on Ann Lindell. She’s a good investigator (though she does make one pretty stupid mistake toward the end), she’s a single mom who has never told the father of her child’s existence, and she’s trying to date again. And although the focus is more on Lindell, the rest of the team from the first book — Ola Haver, Sammy Nilsson, Allan Fredriksson, etc. — fill in parts of the investigation according to their own strengths.

Although I wouldn’t say that this is my favorite Scandinavian series, I do enjoy Eriksson’s writing and will look forward to the third book in the series, The Demon of Dakar, which I see is billed as an “Ann Lindell Mystery.” Now that I think of it, beginning the series with the main character on maternity leave is an interesting way to introduce the supporting cast for the rest of the series!

And here’s one last thought: how unusual is it for a serial killer to attack elderly men in crime fiction? I’ll give Eriksson points just for not killing off kids, who seem to be a target in so many contemporary mysteries.

Camilla Grebe and Asa Traff, Some Kind of Peace

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Jul 262012

Book cover provided by Free Press

Here’s a first for me: crime fiction written by sisters, Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff, one a book publisher and the other a psychologist. Together they’ve combined to write a compelling mystery featuring a cognitive behavioral psychologist who has her own demons to face.

Siri Bergman is a Stockholm psychologist who, following the accidental death of her husband, insists upon living in their country home alone, despite the fact that she’s terrified of the dark. Each time that night begins to fall, she walks around turning on every light in every room, lighting up the landscape surrounding her home. She never stops to think that someone may be using that light to look in at her.

Because of Stefan’s death, Siri’s life isn’t tranquil anyway, but she begins to realize that someone is purposely trying to shatter her peace of mind. She gets a threatening note, her cat disappears, a disturbing new patient shows up, another patient receives a letter about her, and someone, probably someone she knows, is tightening the noose. She begins to question almost everyone around her — fellow psychologists, patients, friends. Who among them is doing this to her?

I really liked the juxtaposition between Siri’s work and her own psychological problems: that made this different from other woman-in-jeopardy thrillers. I got a bit frustrated in the middle of this one when it seemed really obvious what was going on yet Siri blithely continued living alone with no curtains drinking herself to sleep, but luckily she snapped out of it and got down to business in the end. Woman-in-jeopardy is okay with me as long as she’s not a stupid woman!

My thanks to Simon & Schuster publicist Lauren Bender for sending me a review copy of Some Kind of Peace.

Mons Kallentoft, Midwinter Blood

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Jun 262012

“Midwinter blood” is a reference to ritual sacrifices, part of the ancient Æsir religion in Sweden, and it appears to be one possible explanation for the crime that’s been committed at the beginning of Mons Kallentoft’s first Malin Fors mystery, Midwinter Blood.

Malin is a detective inspector in Linköping, Sweden, and she’s a complex, fully developed character, described on the cover as “Talented. Troubled. With a sixth sense for the truth.” Now in her 30s, Malin was a teenage mother who’s now divorced from, but not over, Janne, who wakes up in a sweat every night with nightmares from the peacekeeping work he’s done in places like Bosnia. Malin is raising her teenage daughter, Tove, gets obsessed with her cases, and can’t seem to stop drinking once she starts, even when it’s obvious to her daughter and her colleagues the next day. She follows her gut instincts in the line of duty, yet fails to recognize what’s going on in Tove’s life, and spends a lot of time criticizing absent fathers until Tove’s situation makes her question how she’s raising her own daughter.

All of this is backdrop to the investigation of a truly horrendous crime: the murder and posthumous hanging of a lonely, overweight man whose tortured, naked body is left in a tree in the bitter cold of the forest. Malin, her partner Zeke, and the rest of the Linköping crime unit — an interesting group of characters in their own right — aren’t aware of the private thoughts of this man’s sad soul, but the reader is, and we know that he’s pulling for Malin to figure out what happened to him and to prevent it from happening again.

The back cover of the book includes a quote from Swedish critic Magnus Utvik, who urges readers not to bother with Steig Larsson, because “Kallentoft is better.” I have to admit that I’ve never read the Larsson books, just watched the Swedish movies, and it’s hard to imagine a more compelling character than Lisbeth Salander, but I have heard people complain that Larsson needed a good editor. If that’s the case, Utvik may well be right: Malin is a great character in her own right, and the book is well written, edited and translated, and I highly recommend it.

There are three other books in the series, one each for the four seasons, and I look forward to seeing the rest translated into English.

My thanks to Diana Franco, publicist at Atria Books, for providing me with a review copy of Midwinter Blood.

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