More Jawing Over Larsson's 'Millenium' Trilogy

Not everyone's happy about the Americanization of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy (FIC LARSSON). When merchandising agents and unlicensed publicity began capitalizing on the new David Fincher film, a project with its predominately Anglo/American cast talking in Swedish-accented English, it's taking things too far for Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's former mistress, who this week claimed that Larsson would never have endorsed such a spectacle. She says the deceased author would've used the spotlight to promote his rigid stance against mysogyny, discrimination and violence against women. Even though she doesn't actually own the rights to any of the books (the author's immediate family does, though that's another matter), Gabrielsson said she and Larsson "would have never sold any rights for merchandizing," adding that, "It has nothing to do with the books." Some people may not have gotten the message. Rooney Mara, the American actress playing Lisbeth Salander, said that her character's neither a feminist nor an advocate of any such group or movement, a gesture to which a disbelieving Gabrielsson replied "Does she know what film she has been in? Has she read the books? Has she not had any coaching?" Gabrielsson may have a point here; the literal translation of Larsson's first title is actually "Men Who Hate Women". Oh well. Maybe Mara only read the American translation. To hear more of what Eva Gabrielsson thinks, be sure to check out her own, recently published memoir, "There Are Things I Want You To Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me (839.738 GABRIELS).

Smilla's Sense of Snow / by Peter Hoeg

37-year-old Smilla Jasperson is a loner by choice. Though she'd rather not get into reasons why, it has to do with being the product of a Danish physician father and an Greenlandic Inuit mother, the cultural implications of which haven't exactly helped her thrive in a homogenous Denmark. After spending much of her childhood in her mother's home country surrounded by a frozen wasteland of snow and ice, Smilla moved with her father back to Copenhagen following her mother's death where making friends didn't come easily. Snow is actually something she's more comfortable with, having developed a comprehensive, almost intuitive knowledge about the different types of snow and its characteristics, even working sporadically in the field of cryopediology (study of snow and ice) as a consultant. When she returns home one day to find that a neighbor boy, Isaiah, has died after falling from the roof of their apartment building, the sense of security in Smilla's life and the truth about her very origins begin to unravel at a disturbing rate.

For one thing, she's sure the fall was no accident. After looking at the boy's footprints in the snow leading to the roof's edge, it's clear he didn't just get too close to the edge--he was afraid of heights for one thing--and fall off. For another, Isaiah, like Smilla, is an Inuit, a full-blooded Greenland native who moved with his mother to Denmark after his father was killed in a mysterious mining accident. Normally not one to reach out to people, Smilla had originally only befriended Isaiah because of his hideous domestic arrangement--his mother is a raging alcoholic who beats him--and undertook to tutor him after he'd inevitably fallen behind his schoolwork. The real tragedy now that he's dead is not knowing what (or who?) happened to him on the rooftop. The indentations in the snow from Isaiah's footprints clearly indicate running away from something, but who? It's tough going at first without any real leads or help until a clue in the form of a single cassette tape emerges, shedding light not only on Isaiah's furtive habits--he had a lot of hiding places--and fearful disposition, but also on a decades old conspiracy concerning Denmark's ties to Greenland and a startling conspiracy no one could have imagined. 

Danish crime writing sensation Peter Hoeg debuted this enthralling mystery back in 1992 when the Nordic crime fiction boom was just hitting the mainstream. He's sense written several others despite his extremely reclusive behavior--2006 novel The Quiet Girl was actually penned in 1996, remaining unpublished for over a decade. Speculation has it that this may be due to his extreme sensitivity to critical reviews, but it's largely unfounded. 'Smilla' is likely his best effort, a taught page-turner with an engrossing character who, incidentally, isn't all that dissimilar to Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander. Each of them certainly make a lot of enemies while trying their darndest to go it alone. Of course they can't help but win a lot of admirers and at least a few genuine friends in the process or sorting out their personal matters while battling conspiracy and corruption with their unique skill sets. Smilla's a little more mainstream than Salander--no tattoos or piercings--and isn't quite as, er, bohemian(?). But fans of the Millenium trilogy are almost certain to take a liking to it. (MYS HOEG)

Roseanna: A Martin Beck Mystery / by Maj Sjowell

Though modern times have seen the emergence and continuing wave of crime fiction from Scandinavia, it wasn't long ago that few would have lent scant appraisal to a detective novel originating from countries like Sweden, Norway or Denmark. Now it's almost the other way around. Highlighted by the mammoth

success of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy, "Nordic Noir" has gained a prominent place in mystery circles, new titles and authors seeming to emerge every year with intriguing plots and characters moored in the generally cold and dark atmosphere of the region. But before the Millenium Trilogy, or any of the other notable works, there was the husband and wife writing team of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. Their Martin Beck mysteries burst onto the scene in 1965 with Roseanna and continued the series until 1975 when Wahloo died. The Laughing Policeman even won an Edgar in 1970. Roseanna is a book tinged with intrigue, fascination and suspense, subtly doing what so many other mystery authors have tried and failed at over the years to accomplish: describe people and society tangled up in hostilities which inevitably lead to violence, crime and punishment.

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One summer in the lakes region of Sweden, a young woman is dredged up in a canal, dead and presumably murdered. An autopsy confirms that she was also molested. Nothing is known about her origin and with no one coming forward with any information, the case soon grows cold. Detective Martin Beck of the country's Special Homicide Commission is about to shelve it when, through a near accident, it's discovered that the girl is an American tourist named Roseanna McGraw. With aid from Interpol, Beck and his subordinates are able to trace the girl back to her permanent residence in Lincoln, Nebraska where she worked as a librarian. Having no way to conduct an investigation overseas, the Swedes rely on American Detective Lieutenant Kafka to interview McGraw's friends and neighbors, soon learning that the girl was something of a free-spirited libertine who'd been traveling across Europe alone following a falling out with her roommate. She had been aboard a Swedish canal cruise ship at the time of her death.

The new information leads Beck and his department to narrow the suspects down to passengers aboard the ship and finally to a man they think might have done it. But without any evidence they'll need to catch him in the act. Roseanna has been called one of the best police procedurals ever written with Martin Beck listed among the great fictional detectives of literary history. It's a very concise book with noticeably little extraneous material interfering with the plot. It's also pretty dark and graphic. Almost forecasting the thematic associations their successors would incorporate a generation later, the authors portray Sweden as a very sedated country on its surface, its citizens rather passive and reserved to a point. But beneath this somber veneer lies a world where the darkest human evils are capable of being unleashed and where crimes of the most heinous nature inevitably crop up. Beck himself is a character who mirrors this dichotomy. At once a tranquil family man whose henpecking wife never lets him alone, he's also a master investigator, methodical and meticulous until the moment of critical engagement when his skillful maneuvers extract the truth. (MYS SJOWALL)

Nordic Noir: Scandinavian Crime Fiction

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The Ice Princess / by Camilla Lackberg; trans. by Steven T. Murray
Erica Falck, a moderately successful Swedish author, returns to her recently deceased parents small coastal fishing village to deal with their estate issues only to discover that her best friend from childhood has committed suicide. Or has she? When Erica decides to seek out some answers, she discovers more than she bargained for concerning the true goings-on in her quaint childhood hometown. (MYS LACKBERG)

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Black Seconds / by Karin Fossum; trans. from the Norwegian by Charlotte BarslundIn

Oslo, grizzled Inspector Sejer must seek out answers behind the disappearance of a young girl. In this, Fossum’s seventh Inspector Sejer novel, familiar themes of vicious criminals lurking among the everyday world and psychological suspense are intriguingly brought to the forefront. (MYS FOSSUM)
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The Inner Circle / by Mari Jungstedt; trans. from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally
On a small island off the coast of Sweden, several archaeology students are working at a site unearthing some ancient Viking relics when one of the group, a girl named Martina Flochland turns up dead, her body hung from a tree. Inspector Anders Knutas must now sift through the evidence, including some actual Viking warrior remains, to find the culprit. (MYS JUNGSTEDT)
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Mind’s Eye: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery / by Haykan Nesser; trans. from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson
A man named Janek Mitter falls asleep after a night of heavy binge drinking only to awake the next morning to find his wife dead in the bathtub--murdered. Then, only weeks after Mitter is swiftly convicted of the crime (despite only circumstantial evidence) and sentenced to a mental institution, he’s found brutally murdered in his own bed. It’s now up to Inspector Van Veeteren to see the real killer brought to justice. (MYS NESSER)

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To Siberia / by Per Petterson; trans. from the Norwegian by Anne Born

In the years leading up to World War II, two young Danish youths live a near-blissful existence in the Jutland countryside. But with the onset of the war, the German occupation and the plight of their nation, their idyllic childhood is cruelly brought to a close and their world changes tragically forever. (FIC PETTERSON)
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Echoes From the Dead / by Johan Theorin; trans. by Marlaine Delargy

Twenty years ago on the island of Oland off the eastern coast of Sweden, a young boy named Jens vanished without a trace. Now in the present day, a package suddenly appears in the mail of the boy’s grandfather bearing the lost youth’s sneaker worn the day he disappeared. (FIC THEORIN)

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The Quiet Girl / by Peter Hoeg; trans. by Nadia Christensen
Kaspar Krone is a well-known performer in a traveling circus. He’s a clown, well-known for his hearty, laugh-inducing performances. But his real face isn’t the only thing his makeup conceals; he’s also a gambling addict in debt for a very large sum of money to some pretty shady characters now out for blood. (FIC HOEG)

Jar City: A Reykavik Thriller / by Arnaldur Indridason; trans. by Bernard Scudder

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Ten years ago, no one would have considered Scandinavia a hotbed of mystery and crime literature. Recently though, Nordic crime fiction writers from countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark and even Iceland (a country of only 200,000 residents) have become a fixture on bestsellers lists. Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indridason, winner of the 2005 Gold Dagger award, is the author of the bestselling Detective Erlendur series, which as of 2009 includes ten novels. His 2006 novel Jar City follows Erlendur as he investigates the murder of one of Reykavik's oldest residents. .

Crime in general, but murder especially, is a rarity in the insular, self-contained island nation of Iceland, a country so small that everyone calls everyone else by their first name. So when one of the city's oldest residents, a man called Holberg, is found murdered in his Reykjavík apartment, everybody knows about it but few are talking when 50-year-old detective inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, a chain-smoking, divorced father of one, is called in to investigate. Holberg, it turns out, was no pleasant old man; Erlendur soon finds out about several vicious rapes likely perpetrated by him over the years, those crimes possibly being linked to two wrongful deaths and a suicide of the girls involved. The twisting search full of stubborn witnesses and crotchety old loners soon brings Erlendur to an abandoned forensic lab, "jar city". So named for housing an assortment of old research organs, the lab may have certain forgotten tissue samples which could hold some pivotal answers towards the case.

Meanwhile, Erlendur's personal life is fraught with its own problems. His daughter Eva, periodically on and off methamphetamines, is pregnant and never quite settled enough for Erlendur to find out where she's staying or what her exact situation is. Still paying alimony to his out-of-the-country, married again ex-wife, Eva is all Erlendur has for family and while she barely speaks to him, he's eager to make things right with her.

Like many popular mystery series, the character of Erlendur is rendered in the most familiar manner possible as a method of bridging the gap between reader and authority figure--in this case a detective who investigates murders. But Indridason's writing renders Erlendur not so much as obligatorily flawed as a character perfectly fitted to his situation. Iceland's not New York, LA or London; but it's also not small town USA or a cozy English country village. It's its own defamiliarized, isolated-unlike-any-other-place-on-earth locale with its own peculiar identity, customs, practices and secrets. No one but Erlendur could fit this scenario because no one else knows not only the city locals but the entire island. The story exposes Erlendur's familiarity with Icelandic culture, its atmosphere with its inclusive attitudes and colloquial customs which bind witnesses to their mistrust, indignation and obstinacy and makes for one well-conceived, expertly written mystery.