Comments on: Death in Sweden

By: stostosto

stostosto — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:03:45 +0000

Loved this series! Brilliant, satirical, hilarious – and, of course with the added bonus of the ultimate whodunnit metamystery: Who is behind the pseudonym Bo Balderson? Olof Palme? Astrid Lindgren? Björn Borg? (OK, that was silly).

I don’t know if these books have been published in English, though.

By: Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:53:51 +0000

Double Barrel! Yes. That was it. Poison pen letters; Arlette does a drunken dance in her suspenders.

Is Tsing-Boum the one about Dien Bien Phu? If so, that is also brilliant.

By: Martin Grüner Larsen

Martin Grüner Larsen — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:32:28 +0000

Can I just say, for the record, that it is funny and quite wonderful that so many of you guys are completely in tune with the history of Scandinavian crime fiction.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:58:44 +0000

I have forgotten the name of the brilliant Dutch one where the hero has to spend six months undercover in a provincial town, “Criminal Correspondence” perhaps.

“Double Barrel”! Not “Criminal Correspondence” which I didn’t like at all—“Double Barrel” I remember as brilliant. (You want the one with the poison pen letters, right?)

OTOH it strikes me that the Freeling novels I don’t like, CC and “No Part in Your Death,” are the ones I’ve read within recent memory. Is it possible that I don’t like Freeling anymore? All the other ones I’ve read are van der Valks.

Second the recommendation for at least some van der Wettering; I found the story collection charming. The blurbs on some of the more recent ones seem kind of weird—has one of the characters moved to America?

By: Andrew Brown

Andrew Brown — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:22:57 +0000

Freeling is wonderful at his best. High points are “gadget”, about some terrorists building a bomb; and “Who are the bugles blowing for?” which is about the death penalty. I have forgotten the name of the brilliant Dutch one where the hero has to spend six months undercover in a provincial town, “Criminal Correspondence” perhaps.

Also second the recommendation for Kerstin Ekman.

I really loved the S+W novels when I read them the first time round, but an awful lot of the suspense goes out of them once you realise that anyone rich is a villain. Also, reading them in the light of modern Sweden is a very odd and rather unpleasant experience. They were, in their way, the product of a belief system quite as closed and unrealistic as the “Left Behind” series. But with all that said, they are beautifully plotted, well told, and derive a great deal of emotional strength from their remarkable nostalgia. It is extraordinary how consistently S&W and their characters hate everything (then) modern.

By: JakeB

JakeB — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:10:53 +0000

If you put the observation-of-the-main-character’s-life trope on a spectrum, I’d say Rebus is far past Wallander away from Beck. You see social questions discussed in all three, but much of the Rebus series, especially later on, is wondering just how much more he can break down and keep going. I’ve occasionally wondered if Harry Bosch, the hero of another series I really like, has been somehow vampirically draining the life from Rebus, as he seems to become more alive as the series goes on rather than less. Along some similar lines is Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks series. There’s some very good ones in there, as well.

By: Slayton I. Musgo

Slayton I. Musgo — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:54:19 +0000

You might also enjoy Janwillem van de Wetering’s Grijpstra and de Gier stories. They are set in Holland, not Sweden, but the team are a grumpy, dumpy older man with a bad marriage with a handsome dandy for a partner. Less politics maybe, more Buddhist philosophy. Same social commentary of 60s/70s milieu.

This may lead to Nicholas Freling, who has 2 detective series, and a number of stand-alones. Set in Netherlands or France, or EU at large. Full of social insight and some beautiful writing. “Tsing-Boom” is a great place to start.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:47:45 +0000

Ok, I’ll persevere.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:02:36 +0000

I’ll put in a third vote for the Wallander novels. Definitely got better, and I just devoured them one after another.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:22:53 +0000

Mankell keeps getting better, Chris. Try One Step Behind (or you can try it in German—he’s big here—as Midsommermord) or The Fifth Woman (Die Fünfte Frau).

By: lillemask

lillemask — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:56:38 +0000

The best recent Sjöwall-Wahlöö-style thriller I’ve read is Gellert Tamas’ Lasermannen from 2003. It is actually a nonfiction account of a real Swedish serial killer, but the writing, suspense and social commentary is on par with Sjöwall-Wahlöö at their best. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available in English.

It was made into an excellent Swedish TV miniseries in 2005.

By: wufnik

wufnik — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:48:59 +0000

Stick with the Mankell—Wallender grows on you. And as someone who reads lots of Nordic mysteries, two other favorites—Karin Fossum, who paints a bleak and (occasionally) very wry and funny picture of modern Norway, and Kirsten Ekman, who has written a number of novels, which include a couple of fine mysteries, particularly Blackwater. And the extraordinary The Forest of Hours, which is not a mystery at all, just a wonderful novel whose central character happens to be a troll.

By: Harald K

Harald K — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:15:32 +0000

“The portrait of a society that is all buffed and shiny on the outside but full of worms and maggots inside makes up for this.”

It seems to me those are always popular. What about societies that are buffed and shiny on the outside and are pretty OK on the inside too?

I had a discussion the other day with my wife about Tarjei Vesaas’ “Kimen”, and she was suprised I’d never read it because it sounded just like my kind of book. I suppose at one point I stopped reading opinionated fiction that makes pretenses at realism, because it seemed so deceptive. No matter how realistic the author strives to be, the book can never reflect anything more than the author’s view. I don’t like people playing emotional strings to convince me that a certain society is nice on the outside but rotten underneath, because I know that it could work, and I’ve seen that hatchet job being applied to some societies that I happen to have seen the insides of (small town life, small evangelical congregations).

Still, “Kimen” may still be surreal enough that might read it, after all. I did enjoy Selma Lagerlöf’s “Jerusalem”, and that is partly realistic.

By: Randy Paul

Randy Paul — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:16:54 +0000

Chris, I don’t know if it’s available on DVD, but Bo Widerberg did a pretty good version of Man on the Roof some time ago.

By: quietelm

quietelm — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:41:48 +0000

The social commentary is interesting, but it’s not laid on too thick. One thing I enjoyed about the series is that Beck has a life that changes over the course of the series. It was interesting to see how things turned out for hiim.