Cold Cases
Scandinavian crime fiction mapped out
[ SCANDINAVIA ]
SWEDISH AUTHOR STIEG LARSSON’s Millennium Trilogy has sold upwards of 27 million copies around the world and has already been turned into a series of Swedish films. An English-language version of the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is due to hit cinemas at Christmas, directed by David Fincher (The Social Network) and starring Daniel Craig as the journalist at the centre of the blockbuster action and upcoming US actress Rooney Mara as his punkish, cyber-savvy sidekick, Lisbeth Salander. But Larsson’s success is just the tip of the iceberg for crime fiction from cold climes, with a host of his crime- writing peers being snapped up for translation, all bestsellers in their Scandinavian homelands – perhaps it’s something to do with the long nights? Omer Ali
The new cool
He’s the much-hyped new talent in town (that town being Oslo), with Thomas Enger’s Norwegian publisher describing his debut, Burned (just published in the UK by Faber & Faber), as probably ’the best crime novel manuscript we’ve ever received from a new writer’. The former journalist and sometime composer of musicals answered Voyager’s emails:
Voyager – Like Henning Juul in Burned, you worked for an online newspaper – are your novels inspired by stories you worked on?
Thomas Enger Burned is a complete work of fiction, although some of my characters are inspired by real persons. For instance, Henning Juul shares a few characteristics with yours truly, but he is smarter than I ever was as a journalist. He is the reporter I would have liked to be. It’s fun to live out my journalistic ambitions through him.
In the crowded field that is Scandinavian crime fiction, how do you make your work stand out?
By creating a character the reader can sympathise with and then letting bad things happen to him. That’s the key to any work of fiction, I guess. And if that story is genuine and believeable, then you’re really on to something. It’s quite difficult to stand out, not only in the Scandinavian crime respect, but also when it comes to crime novels in general. There are so many brilliant authors out there, and my goal is to be mentioned among them one day.
What is it with Scandi- navian crime fiction and its tortured heroes? Wallander is an alcoholic, Lisabeth Salander was abused as a child, Henning Juul carries the scars from a fire in which he lost his son – did you ever consider writing a novel with a happy protagonist?
Happy characters are no where near as interesting as characters with scars, both physically and mentally. I don’t want the reader to be envious of the life my protagonist is living. The reader must wish for good things for him, and there has to be some inner drive and motivation other than ‘just doing my job’.
Wallander and Lisbeth Salander have already been portrayed on-screen – who’d be your choice to play Henning Juul?
If we’re talking Hollywood, I would probably say Edward Norton. He has the skills to portray a man with deep inner scars without making them too visible.
Music features heavily in Burned and you are a composer – does Henning share your musical tastes?
There is a sequence in Burned where Henning thinks about a song he wrote for his son. I did the same thing when I learned I was to become a father. We are uncurable melancholics, Henning and I.
Burned ends with a fantastic twist that sets up the next book: how far ahead have you planned out Henning Juul’s fate?
Burned is the first novel in a planned series of six. I have just finished my second – Pierced – and I can’t wait to get started on my third. Andrew Humphreys
NORWAY
Norwegians are said to spend more money on books than any other nation and detective fiction is a favourite. Native son Jo Nesbo has been touted as the successor to Stieg Larsson for his series of six Harry Hole investigations, with the latest, The Leopard, just out in paperback. However, Norwegian crime writing is particularly worth investigating for its women authors, including Karin Fossum, Pernille Rygg and Eva-Marie Liffner. Female writers are always a favourite with publishers wanting to take advantage of the larger number of women readers and Fossum is very highly recommended. Her ten Inspector Sejer books (start with Don’t Look Back), achieve a particularly literary tone that can be missing in some of her male counterparts. OA
SWEDEN
Author Henning Mankell arguably paved the way for his fellow Swede Stieg Larsson: Mankell is the creator of world-weary Inspector Kurt Wallander, the star of ten critically lauded novels. The character has been filmed for television starring Kenneth Branagh (in English) and Krister Henriksson (in Swedish), and the fictional detective has become so popular fans make the pilgrimage to Wallander’s small home town, Ystad, down on the tip of southern Sweden. Mankell comes from a strong crime fiction heritage in Sweden where husband-and- wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö developed the so-called police procedural in the 1960s and ’70s with their series of books centred on Inspector Martin Beck, most famously the novel The Laughing Policeman. Other Swedish authors in the genre worth looking out for include Karin Alvtegen, Åke Edwardson, Håkan Nesser and Helene Tursten. OA
DENMARK
In some ways Denmark kicked off the whole Scandinavian noir thing with Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, which came out back in 1992 and was made into a film five years later with Julia Ormond as a woman who sets out to discover the truth behind the death of her neighbour’s child. More recently the Danes have come into their own with TV series The Killing, which became one of the BBC’s word-of- mouth successes this spring, pulling in an average of half-a-million viewers for each of the show’s 20 episodes.
A second series is the highlight of BBC4’s autumn schedule and there has already been a US remake. In print, Jussi Adler-Olsen is a local phenomenon and his abduction thriller Mercy has just been published in the UK (the film rights have been snapped up by Lars Von Trier’s production company). He launches in America this month with The Keeper of Lost Causes, which the publisher is cannily putting out with a cover design that has strong echoes of the US editions of Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. OA
