Swedish Crime - The New Flavour of the Month

I came across an article in The Guardian newspaper’s website from last year, entitled “Swedish crime wave sweeps European book charts”. It considers the success of Swedish crime writers in European book markets in 2008 and, as you might expect, Stieg Larsson was number one with his Millenium series. Surprisingly, other Swedish crime writers featured prominently with Henning Mankell at number 10, and Liza Marklund at number 12. In 2009, as reported in The Independent, the trend continued, with Camilla Läckberg joining Larsson and Mankell in the top ten.

What makes Swedish crime the new flavour of the month? Like a lot of people I know, I enjoyed the modern rawness of the Millenium series novels. The use of contemporary gadgets and brands such as Apple and Blackberry give the books an appeal to the younger end of the adult market and when combined with the interesting but far from perfect characters, the exotic setting (to Australians, at least), and the insights into Swedish political history, make these books a compelling read. Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers also included local issues with its story interwoven with the impact Sweden’s relaxed policies regarding immigrants on the attitudes of the Swedish characters. These novels remind me of the way TV crime shows made by the BBC have so much more depth than their American counterparts. Having just finished Camilla Läckberg’s The Stone-Cutter, I once again found an author whose writing embraces, not only the traditional crime, but also history and the undercurrents of daily life.

Here’s an excerpt from the inside cover for The Stone-Cutter:

The remote resort of Fjällbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman’s net. But the post-mortem reveals that this is no accidental drowning…..

Local detective Patrik Hedström has just become a father. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the methodical murder of a child both he and his partner, Erica, knew well. He knows the solution lies with finding the reason for such a terrible crime.

What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjällbacka and tear aside its idyllic façade, perhaps for every.

The Stone-Cutter features two parallel stories – one set in the past, one in the present.  How are they connected? Each suspect that is introduced has the potential to be the murderer and is believable in their depiction. The author manages to keep the reader guessing right until the end, and it is this element of suspense which I believe is missing from many American crime novels that I have read recently. Finally, all is revealed and suddenly the two storylines converge and make sense. Together, this makes a good crime novel.

It is exciting to find something new and with hidden layers in this genre that has so many books that are, frankly, a waste of paper. I will be using the lists of authors I found in the two articles to select my crime reading for the near future. The only problem will be whether the books I want to read are available here in Australia. Given the number of bookshops that I went to in my local area in order to track down Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, the first of the Wallender series of books, I might have to order them online.