The Hypnotist / by Lars Kepler

In a bedroom community outside of Stockholm, a couple has been discovered brutally murdered in their home. The only survivor, their teenage son, found with multiple knife wounds all over his body, is still nearly catatonic with shock. A homicide squad headed by detective Joona Linna at the helm begins an investigation with very little to go on--despite the horrific crime scene, the killer left no clues. Linna persuades Dr. Erik Maria Bark, a noted psychiatrist, to help extract information from the young victim and though the veteran trauma specialist is initially averse to employing the tactics of hypnosis, a method he used many years earlier but has now given up, Dr. Bark eventually relents and is able to get just enough from the young boy for Linna to hit on a suspect. And just in time too. It turns out that the youth has an older sister who lives away from home and may now be in danger from a very cold-blooded figure indeed, a man who is every bit as menacing as Linna had feared and who most certainly will try to kill again.

This book moves really fast, as swift as Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy and with almost as many plot-boilers. The character of Detective Linna isn't so particularly distinctive--he's as much like many another clever, daring, relentless and often rogue homicide detective--and there's no Lisbeth Salander character to endear the reader, but the story still catches on fairly quickly and its pace keeps the attachment. Lars Kepler is actually a pseudonym for the husband and wife writing team of Alexander and Alexandra Coehlo Ahndori, and much like another author couple from a generation earlier, they've managed a great deal of success with their debut book and it's sequel (yet to be released stateside). At times the stories of both Dr. Bark and Detective Loona can be a bit hard to juggle. It's very back-and-forth. But seasoned Scandinavian crime fiction readers will soon get the hang of it. As with many other similar Nordic Noir thrillers, this book is not for the faint of heart. There is plenty of blood and mayhem, guts and violence on the pages and 'Kepler' spares no one, even the most innocent, from their destiny. (MYS KEPLER)

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.