One offshoot of the popular Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tatoo series is the surge in interest in Scandinavian detective mysteries. Though Larsson is not my favorite author, readers have an appetite for something more because only three of his books have been published. A dispute over his estate and the ownership of his unpublished material may take years to resolve.
What follows are, in my opinion, some of the best contemporary and some older but not dated European – not all Scandinavian - detective mysteries.
HENNING MANKELL, the Kurt Wallander series. Mankell is still alive and writing but just published the last book in this series, The Troubled Man. Mankell locates these books in an actual small town in a rural area of southeastern Sweden. He is skilled at writing about the changes being brought to his country by both immigration and growth and the inevitable backlash from hate groups in what is considered a tolerant, open society. Wallander is cast as an anti-hero, deeply flawed in the conduct of his personal life, charmingly aware of his failings, and consumed by his work at which he is highly successful. Also recommended are the 6 episodes of the Public Television/WGBH-produced “Mystery” series starring and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Because the novels are complex, they were simplified for television. Read some of the books before watching the series which is available on DVD.
MAJ SJOWALL and PER WAHLOO. Their Martin Beck series was written in the 1960’s yet there is little to date these Scandinavian books. Considered by some to be among the best detective novels ever penned. The website www.Scandinavianbooks.com recommends reading these books in sequence, beginning with Roseanna.
OLEN STEINHAUER. His first series - there are five books - is set in the eastern bloc beginning post-World War II and continuing into the 1980’s. Beginning with The Bridge of Sighs these novels contain frightening sequences. His police officers experience bleak and dangerous situations. Sometimes the greatest danger comes from their colleagues who may be agents working on behalf of the repressive political regime. Steinhauer lived in Romania under a Fulbright Scholarship and knows his subject very well.
MICHAEL DIBDIN, the Aurelio Zen series. These will delight you, scare you, make you laugh and appall you. The Italian bureaucracy is completely exposed with a mix of charm and contempt. Zen is a detective who is assigned to a number of the outer provinces, away from his Venice home base. Dibdin writes intelligently but with sparseness. Zen is witty and smart. He sometimes knowingly plays the boob in order to beguile those around him but he is skillful at verbal zingers. Start at the beginning with Ratking. The books will make you want to travel to every location in Italy memorialized in his books. Dibdin’s death leaves his appreciative readers with only a fixed number of books. They are easily read more than once.
ALAN FURST, The Foreign Correspondent. This book was recommended to me by my sister-in-law who is very knowledgeable about the genre and could probably write a blog of her own on this subject. It is not his only book but as I have read others, it seems to be his best. It is set in Paris in World War II during the time of the Nazi occupation. Another good one is titled Spies of the Balkans.
