Northern exposure

Stieg Larsson’s popularity helps push established Nordic crime fiction writers into the limelight

In the wake of Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally successful Millennium series, booksellers have been pushing the work of a number of Nordic crime writers, marketing their new translations or reprints with Oprah’s Book Club-esque stickers that read “the next Stieg Larsson.”

Long-time fans of Henning Mankell (among whom I count myself), Analdur Indriðason and Jo Nesbø will find the label laughable, if not downright offensive, as all three authors have been pub­lishing since the late 90s (and in Mankell’s case, the early 70s) and have created bodies of work to equal (or in some cases, surpass) Larsson’s in terms of readability, social relevance and literary merit.

Sadly, the tragic events in Norway have brought the work of these authors to bear in a new light; the novels still function as genre fiction—with the requisite character types, narrative struc­tures and stylistic devices—but the issues they explore are more pressing now, and the horrors they convey more real.

Henning Mankell, who divides his time between writing fiction (crime and otherwise) in Sweden and running a theatre company in Mozambique, is the elder statesman of the group, having published his first novel, The Stone Blaster, in 1973. He is also the most literary. In fact, in his evocation of the Swedish landscape, especially in winter, his writing—even in translation—is almost poetic, rich in sym­bolism and imagery.

With Mankell, a good place to start is Faceless Killers. Detective Kurt Wallander is emblematic of hard-boiled fiction: old before his time, allergic to authority, prone to alcoholic benders and, though loath to admit it, lonely as hell. Still, his free time and his workaholic tendencies mean that he always manages to solve the crime.

In Faceless Killers, the lone witness to a murder whispers “foreign” on her deathbed, and in doing so, introduces some of the dominant themes in Mankell’s work: isolation, xenophobia and racism. The most recent Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, was released in English this spring.

Isolation, racism and xenophobia are also central themes in Arnaldur Indriðason’s Detective Erlendur series. In the seventh book, Arctic Chill—as with Nesbø, the first two books haven’t been trans­lated (and the others are hard to track down)—the story opens in typical crime novel style with the discovery of a dead body, in this case, a young Icelandic boy of Thai descent. Here, the focus is on the community of foreign brides who arrive with husbands met abroad. But in telling this story, the novel also delves into other social issues plaguing Iceland that may surprise readers with a more idealized view of the Nordic countries: poverty, addiction and crime.

For my money, Indriðason’s work is the least compelling of the three, but Icelanders would seemingly disagree—in fact, in 2004, seven of the 10 most borrowed books at the Reykjavík library had been written by him. The translation may be partly (or entirely) to blame, as might the fact that I joined the series halfway through.

Norwegian Jo Nesbø, who as his bio explains is also a songwriter and economist, writes in a muscular, driving prose and shares with Mankell an interest in history—in particular, the occupation of Nor­way during World War II, the fate of the Norwegian SS volunteers, and the country’s ongoing struggles with Neo-Nazism. These issues take center stage in The Redbreast, the third in Nesbø’s Harry Hole series.

In Redbreast, Hole has been demoted to a desk job. Still, he is the only one to see a common thread in a rash of seemingly unrelated murders. Like his Swedish and Icelandic counterparts, Hole is known for his insubordination, but he’s even more misanthropic and self-destructive. Famous for his surly attitude and post-punk attire (concert t-shirts, Doc Martens), he remains one of the force’s best detectives, and one of its most ethical, working across the series to expose a corrupt and racist cop. An English translation of the latest Harry Hole novel, The Phantom, is soon to be announced, giving readers anoth­er opportunity to engage with Nesbø’s eerily relevant fiction. ■

Short URL: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/?p=24183