Where else but Dublin might you find a James Joyce scholar dead, and Det. Supt. Peter McGarr and the Murder Squad of the Garda Siochana reading Ulysses, and occasionally Samuel Beckett, in an effort to understand what led to his death? This is, no doubt, the only murder mystery ever written which takes so seriously the conflict between James Joyce, who was committed to writing “novels of competence,” and Samuel Beckett, who believed totally in “the novel of incompetence,” a conflict which also involved the literature scholars and critics at Trinity College who were as partisan as the two novelists. As esoteric as this sounds, author Bartholomew Gill has a field day here, creating characters who do more than just live and breathe—they live riotously, get roaring drunk, have wild and sometimes hilarious love affairs, wear their hearts and emotions on their sleeves, love their country and its history to the depths of their being, and, though they take their jobs seriously, they see them as just one part of real life. Gill includes lively and wonderfully droll conversations throughout–the teasing and byplay one expects of close and caring relationships–both at the Garda station among his repeating characters and at home. And when Det. Hugh Ward and Det. Ruthie Bresnahan finally “discover” each other, one of the highlights of this novel, their love scenes are as hilarious as they are steamy. My favorite of this series.
Read Full Post »
In The Snowman, the latest of five Nesbo novels to be translated into English, is a complete surprise with its element of horror, but it may soon become his most popular novel here in the U.S., a breakthrough novel which may finally put to rest the misperception that the Norwegian Nesbo, with a total of sixteen award-winning novels, is some kind of “successor” to the Swedish Stieg Larsson. A series of disappearances and/or murders, all involving a snowman on the site, challenge Harry Hole and his men as they try to find a serial killer who began his killings in 1992 and has continued to 2004, as the novel opens. The novel is detailed and intelligent, and will keep even the most jaded mystery lover intrigued and wanting to see how it is all resolved. When the last little piece falls into place at the end, every detail at every point in the novel suddenly all makes sense—and provides a satisfying sense of finality to this challenging case. A non-stop thriller that may very well keep you up reading till the wee hours—and great fun!
Read Full Post »
Camilla Lackberg is the most profitable author in Swedish history, outstripping even Stieg Larsson in total book sales. Setting her novels in Fjallbacka, Sweden, a small fishing village in western Sweden (and her home town), Lackberg shows that even small fishing villages hold secrets, including murder. In this second novel in the Fjallbacka series, Chief Investigator Patrik Englund learns that six-year-old has discovered a woman’s naked and beaten body in a ravine. Underneath that body are the skeletons of two more women who disappeared in 1979. Autopsies prove that all three had been slowly tortured over the course of many days before merciful death interceded. Lackberg spends as much time on the lives and motivations of her characters as she does on plot development, and when yet another young girl disappears from town, Patrik and his crew (which also has frictions and rivalries) realize they may have a chance to find her before she dies of the same tortures which were inflicted on the previous young women. Good psychological insights by a young author.
Read Full Post »
For lovers of Nordic Noir, there’s a new guy in town—at least someone new to me. K. O. Dahl (Kjell Ola Dahl), a highly respected and prize-winning author in Norway, has just had his third novel published in the U.S., though it was the first of the three books to be published in the series in Norway. Featuring pudgy Detective Frank Frolich and his boss, the taciturn Chief Inspector Gunnarstranda, Dahl focuses more on the victims and those who surround them than he does on his sleuths, not even giving physical descriptions of his detectives till many pages into the book. This focuses the action clearly on the victim(s) and helps create a suspenseful and often dramatic novel which sometimes devolves into philosophical, social, and psychological discussions as his characters meet and interact. When a young woman who has almost completed three years of drug rehab is found dead above a lake, Det. Frolich and Chief Insp. Gunnarstranda investigate her past to find her killer.
Read Full Post »
Anyone who enjoys mysteries is surely familiar by now with the growing list of Nordic authors who specialize in crime and all its horror, but these authors do not write purely for macabre sensation (though the macabre is not unknown to them). All are writers with larger themes and scopes, and many use repeating characters who keep the reader involved as they solve new crimes and reveal more and more personal aspects from their own lives. For Stieg Larsson, it was journalist Mikael Blomqvist and his computer expert friend Lisbeth Salander. For Henning Mankell, it is Kurt Wallender. For Arnaldur Indridason, the darkest of the novelists, it is Inspector Erlendur, known by his last name almost exclusively. Jo Nesbo features Harry Hole, and Karin Fossum, the most psychological of the authors, repeats with Inspecter Sejer. For Camilla Lackberg, all her novels take place in her own hometown, Fjallbacka, a fishing community in which the whole town’s characters play a role. Her second novel to be translated into English, THE PREACHER, is due in April. (Links to reviews of books by six authors follow.)
Read Full Post »
