#37 / Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night (ebook; London: Faber and Faber, 2013). 5 stars

Opening line: It is summer and luminous. 

I’m very excited about this book. Promoted as ‘a literary novel, a police thriller, and the funniest book about war crimes and dementia you are likely to read anytime soon’ (true), it’s also one of the best and most original novels you’ll ever read.

The star of the novel and its central protagonist is Sheldon Horowitz, a recently-widowed Jewish-American octogenarian and former Marine with possible dementia, who has been transplanted by granddaughter Rhea from New York to Oslo, so that she and her husband Lars can take care of him in his dotage. A few weeks after his arrival, following sounds of a violent argument in the flat above, Sheldon is faced with a life-changing choice: whether or not to open his door to help a mother and son in physical danger. His decision to do so, strongly influenced by the memory of the Holocaust, sets off a chain of events which have major repercussions for himself and those around him.

I loved this novel’s distinctive Jewish-New York voice and its brilliant characterisation of Sheldon, an old man trying to right past wrongs and protect a six-year-old boy from harm by drawing on the memory of his soldier’s training from half a lifetime ago. The narrative has the free-wheeling brilliance and humour characteristic of the best Jewish-American writing and is, quite simply, a joy to read (Miller’s work fits perfectly with others like The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer). The following excerpt is typical:

Sheldon catches his breath and stands up again. He walks over beside Paul and says, “Right, now we start walking backward. If we’re lucky, we’ll go backward in time, before yesterday and the day before. Before you were born, all the way back to at least 1952 [...] We could stop for lunch in 1977. I knew an excellent sandwich shop in 1977.”

The novel also explores an extraordinary number of larger subjects and themes, such as: fatherhood, parental regret and loss; aging, memory and dementia; Jewishness, identity, the desire to belong, masculinity and war; the German Occupation of Norway during World War Two, the Holocaust, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Balkan Wars; war crimes and justice; and, last but not least, criminality and policing in a global era. While hugely ambitious in tackling such a wide range of issues, the author – somehow – manages to integrate them successfully, along with three generations of Horowitz family history, into a thrilling plot.

Written by an American author based in Oslo, this is also very much a book about Norway and its relation to the world. Sheldon and Rhea’s outsider perspectives  – like the author’s own – provide the opportunity for wry comparative analyses of American and Norwegian cultural traits. Meanwhile, Police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård (another warm and wonderfully-realised character), allows the narrative to reflect on the globalisation of organised crime and the opportunities afforded to criminal networks through the softening of Europe’s borders. Norway is depicted as unprepared for the speed of these developments, with criticism levelled at its liberals (‘expounding limitless tolerance’) and conservatives (‘racist or xenophobic’), as well the failure of both sides to hold positions properly ’grounded in evidence’. Here we see the author’s own background in international relations shining through: in a 2012 interview on the ‘Bite the Book’ blog, Miller describes how he has worked ‘designing “evidence-based” approaches to peace and security programming for almost a decade at The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research’. The whole interview is well worth a read.

Norwegian by Night is by turns a hilariously funny, heart-breakingly sad and genuinely suspenseful novel that makes you care deeply about its characters – not least the irascible Sheldon. On finishing it, I immediately wanted to read it again -  along with a stack of other books it called to mind (by Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving and Michael Chabon, to name but three). You can’t ask for more than that.

With thanks to Raven Crime Reads for alerting me to this novel. You can read Raven’s excellent review here (which contains slightly more details of the plot than included above). There’s also an earlier Mrs P. post on Jewish detectives here.

Mrs. Peabody awards Norwegian by Night an utterly brilliant 5 stars

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BBC Radio 4′s Book at Bedtime from Monday 13 May: John le Carré’s A Delicate Truth

Hot on the heels of the publication of John le Carré’s A Delicate Truth comes an adaptation of the novel for BBC Radio 4′s wonderful ‘Book at Bedtime’ slot.

The first of ten episodes, wittily titled ‘Between A Rock And A Hard Place’, will be broadcast on Monday 13 May, from 10.45 to 11.00pm (GMT). The narrator is Damian Lewis, famous (amongst other things) for his Emmy-winning role as Nicholas Brody in the American hit series Homeland.

Here’s the publicity blurb accompanying the adaptation from the BBC:

>> Damian Lewis begins John le Carré’s gripping, brand-new novel about a good man who must choose between his conscience and his duty to the Service.

An undercover counter-operation in the British colony of Gibraltar [the eponymous Rock]; a middle-ranking man from the Foreign Office serving as ‘eyes on’ and reporting to an ambitious Minister; the aim to capture a jihadist arms-buyer: the success, assured.

But back in the UK a junior officer has his doubts and commits an unthinkable act. Three years on, he will find himself facing an impossible choice. In a journey that will take him from Cornwall to Wales via murky secrets in the depths of Whitehall, Toby Bell will try to find out the truth about the night on the Rock and bring it the attention and justice it deserves.<<

The novel is abridged by Sally Marmion and produced by Di Speirs for the BBC.

#36 / Wendy James, The Mistake

Wendy James, The Mistake (Penguin / Michael Joseph ebook, 2012). An outstanding portrait of a family in crisis and the repercussions of past mistakes  4.5 stars

Opening line: If, before all this happened, before her – before their – unravelling, she had been asked how her life was, she’d have said that life was good.

The Mistake is Australian author Wendy James’ fourth novel. Like her first, Out of the Silence, which won the Ned Kelly Award for ‘Best First Crime Novel’ and was shortlisted for the Dobbie women’s writing award, it’s a hybrid narrative aimed at a diverse reading audience (doesn’t that cover remind you of something by Jodi Picoult?). While not a conventional crime novel, it raises profound questions about legal and moral boundaries, and the media’s role in pre-judging those it deems to be guilty of transgressing social and cultural norms.

Jodie Garrow is a middle-class wife and mother living in the affluent New South Wales town of Arding. She has the requisite lawyer husband, two children and a dog, and is a respected figure in the local community. However, when daughter Hannah breaks a leg on a school trip to Sydney, Jodie’s carefully ordered existence begins to fall apart. The hospital Hannah is taken to is the same one where Jodie secretly gave birth to a daughter many years before, and when a nurse from that time recognises her, a damaging piece of information comes to light: there is no record of baby Elsa Mary having been given up for adoption as Jodie claims. In the absence of legal proof, the baby may have to be classified as a ‘missing person’ by the police, with suspicion of foul play falling on Jodie as the last documented person to see her alive.

While the question of what happened to the baby looms large, the exploration of the fallout from Jodie’s ‘mistake’ (whatever that turns out to be) is central to this rich, multi-layered narrative. The novel can be read simultaneously as a portrait of a complicated woman, of a family in crisis, of a possible crime, and of the vilification of ‘bad mothers’ by the press. The ‘bad mother’, in this context, is a woman who fails to show the requisite ‘maternal’ qualities or emotion to convince the public that she is innocent of wrong-doing (as in, to a greater or lesser degree, the examples of Lindy Chamberlain, Sally Clark and Kate McCann). We are shown in brilliantly-drawn detail the destruction of an individual’s reputation, and the social consequences for the entire family of the doubts raised about Elsa Mary’s fate.

What stood out for me in particular was the novel’s excellent characterisation, which allows a nuanced picture of Jodie’s identity and her relationships with others to emerge. There’s also a superb analysis of how Jodie is shaped by class, which helps to illuminate her response to her unplanned pregnancy at the age of nineteen. Fittingly for a novel that is critical of a rush to judgement, no absolute moral position is taken. It thereby success-fully avoids stereotyping and knee-jerk reactions, focusing instead on the very individual circumstances that lie behind the case.

I read The Mistake in almost one sitting, and can therefore happily testify to its properties as a page-turner. The plotting and pace are excellent (although there is one ‘lead’ that would surely have been followed up sooner), and its ending will stay with me for a long time to come.

My thanks to Angela Savage for encouraging me to read this novel following an earlier post on crime novels that critique the media (Leif G.W. Persson’s Linda, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Yvonne Erskine’s The Brotherhood). You can read Angela’s own review of The Mistake here as well as Bernadette’s review at ‘Fair Dinkum Crime’ here.

Mrs. Peabody awards The Mistake a thought-provoking and utterly gripping 4.5 stars

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In praise of John le Carré

Today, 25th April, sees the publication of John le Carré’s new espionage novel, A Delicate Truth, which has already garnered excellent reviews (see for example Mark Lawson in The Guardian). Set in 2008 and 2011, it explores shady Whitehall operations against the background of the Bush-Blair era and the ‘war on terror’, and is being viewed as a stunning return to form. Check out the atmospheric trailer featuring le Carré himself on YouTube.

In the run-up to publication, le Carré has also been marking the 50th anniversary of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). In a piece for The Guardian on 13. April, he explores the personal and historical contexts in which this ground-breaking novel was written, and the frustration he experienced at being ‘branded as the spy turned writer’; the author of ‘anti-Bond’ novels that critics erroneously insisted on regarding as spying handbooks.

Given all the above, it seems like an apt moment to try to sum up what makes le Carré such a wonderful and important writer. Here is my personal appreciation, in random top 10 form:

One of the many covers for The Spy – showing the barbed wire that divided East and West in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

I love John le Carré’s works because…

1. …the author and his creation George Smiley are linguists, just like me      Le Carré studied German literature for a year at the University of Bern, and graduated with first-class honours in modern languages from Oxford. Most of his spies are linguists, and the most famous of them all, George Smiley, studied Baroque German literature and was destined for academia until the British Secret Service came knocking (in the shape of the brilliantly named ‘Overseas Committee for Academic Research’). The profession of intelligence officer offers Smiley ‘what he had once loved best in life: academic excursions into the mystery of human behaviour, disciplined by the practical application of his own deductions’ (Call for the Dead, Penguin 2010, p. 2). And languages still really matter. Smiley’s ability to speak fluent German plays a vital role in Smiley’s People when he gathers intelligence in Hamburg, the city where he spent part of his boyhood, as well as a number of years ‘in the lonely terror of the spy’ during the Second World War. Le Carré says of him that ‘Germany was his second nature, even his second soul [...] He could put on her language like a uniform and speak with its boldness’ (Sceptre 2011, pp. 252-3). This author’s world, then, is overwhelmingly multilingual, multicultural and international. Monoglot Brits need not apply…

Berlin checkpoint featured in the film of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)

2. …they so effectively evoke Germany during the Cold War. The frequent use of a German setting was practically inevitable given le Carré’s education, his membership of the British Foreign Service in West Germany (as Second Secretary in the British Embassy in Bonn and Political Consul in Hamburg, which provided cover for his MI6 activities), and the timing of his stay between 1959 and 1964 at the height of the Cold War. Berlin was the frontline of the ideological battle between the Eastern and Western blocs, and le Carré says in an afterword to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold that ‘it was the Berlin Wall that got me going, of course’ (Penguin 2010, p. 255). Le Carré’s first novel, Call for the Dead, was published in 1961, the year the Wall went up, and, along with a number of his other novels, is partially set in East/West Germany (see list below). The most memorable for me are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and Smiley’s People (1979), both of which feature dénouements involving Berlin border crossings and evoke the Cold War tensions of that time and place perfectly.

3. …as someone who teaches in this area, I’m appreciative of le Carré’s sophisticated understanding of 20th-century German and European history. This is evident in his recent Guardian piece, where he references the complexities of Allied intelligence operations in Cold War West Berlin, including the pragmatic but unethical protection of former Nazis, because they were viewed as valuable in the fight against communism. The difficult legacy of National Socialism in post-war Germany is most closely examined in his 1968 novel A Small Town in Germany (and forms part of the corpus for my own research on crime that engages with the Nazi period).

4. …as someone who reads and researches lots of historical fiction, I admire le Carré’s ability to communicate complex histories to a mass readership in intelligent and entertaining espionage novels. This isn’t something that many authors can do well; le Carré is one of the best.

5. …their narratives reveal a deep engagement with moral questions. A fascination with the themes of loyalty and betrayal – in relation to both individuals and ideologies/states – is particularly visible in the Cold War ‘Karla Trilogy’ (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1974; The Honourable Schoolboy 1977; Smiley’s People 1979), which in turn forms part of the eight-novel Smiley collection. What’s had the greatest impact on me as a reader, though, is the critique of how the intelligence services (on either side of the ideological divide) are willing to sacrifice the individual for the ‘greater good’, and the recognition of the immorality of this act. Le Carré’s third and fourth novels – The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and The Looking Glass War (1965) – are extremely powerful in this respect, as they recount the tragic tales of those who become pawns in larger political chess games. Incidentally, I’ll bet my maximum bet of 10p that the figure of Avery in the latter novel most accurately embodies the professional and moral disillusionment that led Carré to leave the Service. The central question for this author was and continues to be: ‘how far can we go in the rightful defence of our western values, without abandoning them on the way?’ (see Guardian piece).

6. …their characters are fantastically drawn. Aside from the masterpiece of Smiley, the dumpy, middle-aged, unassuming, sharp-as-a-tack intelligence genius, who could forget Control, Connie Sachs, Toby Esterhase, Peter Guillam, Ricky Tarr, Jerry Westerby, Bill Haydon and Jim Prideaux? All are so beautifully depicted that you feel they are living, breathing people.

Kathy Burke as Connie Sachs in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

7. …you won’t find more perceptive writing anywhere. In German one would say that le Carré is ‘wach’: he is awake. He really SEES the world around him and has a deep understanding of how its political and power structures work, and how individuals get tangled up in them.

8. …they have given us wonderful TV and film adaptations, featuring great actors such as Alec Guinness and Richard Burton (whose diaries happen to rest at my own institution, Swansea University). See here for my film review of the 2011 adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Gary Oldman.

Alec Guinness as Smiley, retrieving a clue in Smiley’s People (1982)
The man sees everything….

9. …they are so often top-quality. One of my own later favourites is 2001′s The Constant Gardener – a brilliant exploration of pharmaceutical corruption for commercial gain in the developing world. And now, at the age of 81, it looks like he’s done it again with A Delicate Truth. Mark Lawson, in his review, writes that ‘le Carré has a strong claim to be the most influential living British writer’ and that he ‘is back at full power with a book that draws on a career’s worth of literary skill and international analysis’. ‘No other writer has charted – pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers – the public and secret histories of his times, from the second world war to the ‘war on terror’.

10. Last but not least, le Carré is a true friend of languages, and has been extremely generous in using his influence to promote language learning in the UK – for which I as a German studies lecturer am deeply grateful. He was deservedly awarded the Goethe Medal in 2011 for ‘outstanding service for the German language and international cultural dialogue’.

All of which leads me to say how much I’m looking forward to reading A Delicate Truth. Further information about the novel is available at le Carré’s website (including an audio excerpt and the first chapter). The novel begins with a quote from Oscar Wilde: ‘If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out’. Something every spook needs to remember…

Le Carré novels that reference the German-speaking world/history

Call for the Dead (Smiley’s German links; Nazi past; East Germany)

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (Nazi past; divided Berlin; East Germany)

The Looking Glass War (East and West Germany)

A Small Town in Germany (Nazi past; Bonn, West Germany)

Smiley’s People (Hamburg, West Germany; Bern, Switzerland; divided Berlin)

The Perfect Spy (German at Oxford; Vienna and Berlin)

The Secret Pilgrim (diverse, including East Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Zurich)

Absolute Friends (West Germany, East Germany)

A Most Wanted Man (Hamburg, Germany)

Our Kind of Traitor (Switzerland)

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Nominations, shortlists and stacks of crime

A few tasty tidbits as we (finally) make it to the weekend.

1. Spotted on It’s a Crime! (Or a Mystery): the BAFTA TV nominations are out, and the International category includes two series with strong elements of crime - The Bridge and Homeland. They make up half of the nominations (listed below).

The one I want to win…

• The Bridge – Hans Rosenfeldt, Charlotte Sieling, Anders Landstrom, Bo Ehrhardt (Filmlance, Nimbus, ZDF Enterprises/BBC Four)
• Game of Thrones – David Benioff, D.B Weiss, Carolyn Strauss, Frank Doelger (HBO/Sky Atlantic)
• Girls – Lena Dunham, Jennie Konner, Judd Apatow (HBO/Sky Atlantic)
• Homeland – Production Team – (20th Century Fox/Channel 4)

The full list with all categories is available here (thank you, Rhian!).

2. The Independent foreign fiction prize 2013 shortlist has been announced, and contains one of the crime narratives I highlighted in an earlier post – Gerbrand Bakker’s The Detour (translated from the Dutch by David Colmer / Harvill Secker).

Publisher description: A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales after confessing to an affair with one of her students. In Amsterdam, her stunned husband forms a strange partnership with a detective who agrees to help him trace her. They board the ferry to Hull on Christmas Eve. Back on the farm, a young man out walking with his dog injures himself and stays the night, then ends up staying longer. Yet something is deeply wrong. Does he know what he is getting himself into? And what will happen when her husband and the policeman arrive? The Detour is a deeply moving new novel, shot through with longing and the quiet tragedy of everyday lives.

It all sounds rather existential. I’m intrigued! Here’s the full shortlist, which might need further exploration as well.

3. Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year

I’m getting very excited as crime novels for the 2014 Petrona begin to arrive. Having been away from the university for a while over Easter, I returned to a veritable mountain of packages, and felt like proverbial kid in a sweet shop as I opened them all up.

Petronas on the right; other goodies to the left

The winner of the first Petrona Award will be announced at CrimeFest in Bristol (30. May to 2. June). I’ve just booked my ticket and hotel and am looking forward to it all greatly, not least because this will be my first ever visit to the convention. The programme looks very inviting. Perhaps see you there?

#35 / Jason Webster, A Death in Valencia

Jason Webster, A Death in Valencia (London: Chatto and Windus, 2012). The second in the Max Cámara series provides some much needed summer warmth and a genuine insight into modern-day Spain  4 stars

Opening line: The green-and-white Guardia Civil patrol boat looked out of place so close to the shoreline. 

Fed up of our seemingly never-ending British winter, I found myself reaching for Jason Webster’s A Death in Valencia, set during a sweltering summer in Spain’s third largest city (and home to one of its most famous traditional dishes, paella). Being transported to the land of sun, sea and sangria proved to be an excellent move.

A Death in Valencia opens with the body of Pep Roures, a well-known paella chef, being recovered by Chief Inspector Max Cámara from the sea. The subsequent murder investigation is set against the background of a number of challenging events: the town hall’s commercially-motivated demolition of El Cabanyal, an old fishing quarter by the sea; the sudden collapse of an apartment block; the kidnapping of the director of an abortion clinic, and the visit of the Pope. Cámara, too, is going through a tough time, with the emotional fallout from Or the Bull Kills You (the first in the series) leading him to act rather unwisely on occasion, in spite of his grandfather Hilario’s sound counsel.

While the plot takes a little time to ignite, the novel builds to a satisfying conclusion, not least due to its rich depictions of Valencia and contemporary Spanish society. Readers learn about regional details such as the all-important rating system for paella, as well as larger issues, such as the fundamentally divided nature of Spanish society: conservatives with ‘traditional’ values rooted in the church on the one hand, and those who celebrate regional diversity and change on the other. The Valencian setting is also vividly evoked, especially the old El Cabanyal quarter (which really is under threat – see www.cabanyal.com).

El Cabanyal

If you’re a Max Cámara fan, or are interested in this series, you might like to read Mrs. Peabody’s interview with Jason Webster, recorded at the 2012 Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and available here. Areas explored include the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, the role of Spanish proverbs, and the influence of the author Vázquez Montalbán.

Mrs. Peabody awards A Death in Valencia a highly enjoyable 4 stars and looks forward to meeting Max Cámara again soon. 

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Arne Dahl’s The Blinded Man airs this Saturday (6 April) on BBC4

As I reported in a recent post on forthcoming international crime drama, the TV adaptation of Arne Dahl’s ‘Intercrime’ series is about to hit our screens, airing this Saturday on BBC4 between 9.00 and 10.30pm. We begin with a two-parter of The Blinded Man (first published in the U.S. as Misterioso), with the same pattern being repeated for another four Intercrime novels (ten episodes in total).

I’ll be very interested to see how the adaptation is handled. The storyline seems to be fundamentally the same as in the novel, but the Head of the A-Unit, Jan-Olov Hultin, has morphed into Jenny Hultin (pictured in the burgundy jacket below).

Image courtesy of BBC4

The BBC4 synopsis of Episode 1 reads as follows (light spoilers): High-flying financiers are being murdered and it’s beginning to appear like the work of a serial killer. CID inspector Jenny Hultin puts together a team of top detectives to crack the case before there are more deaths and a national panic. One of the team, Paul Hjelm, is saved from a disciplinary hearing for shooting a hostage taker when he said he was unarmed. Together with his new colleagues he finds himself working 24 hours a day to find the killer quickly. They are the ‘A Unit’ and their pursuit of the Fat Cat Killer will expose tensions within the newly-formed group and put some of them in fear of their lives.

Further links

Radio Times interview: ‘Arne Dahl on the success of Nordic Noir and taking tips from Prime Suspect’.

Full details of the 10 Intercrime novels on Arne Dahl’s website (and lots more besides).

A review of The Blinded Man / Misterioso at Petrona.

An earlier Mrs. P. post on Arne Dahl and his novel Chinese Whispers (the first in Dahl’s ‘Europol’ series).

An advance review at Crime Time Preview (should you wish to sneak a peek).

Film of Jan Costin Wagner’s Silence on BBC4 tonight (Saturday 23 March)

The film adaptation of Jan Costin Wagner’s Silence (see here for Mrs P. book review) will be shown tonight on BBC4 at 9pm. It’s a German production, Das letzte Schweigen (the final silence), directed by Baran bo Odar, and transposes the Finnish action of the novel to small-town Germany (Costin Wagner is himself German, which may have prompted the switch).

The trailer on the TV/Radio Times website looks promising, although it should be noted the film’s subject matter is quite harrowing.

Here’s a portion of the TV/Radio Times review by Trevor Johnston (contains mild spoilers) :

>> Twenty three years after the unsolved murder of a schoolgirl in a wheat field, another young victim goes missing, in this German thriller that surveys the course of justice from various angles. The perpetrator of the first killing is identified in the very first scene, with the key dilemma revolving around his unwitting accomplice, who is so troubled by events that he disappears and keeps his silence over the decades. There’s certainly an involving moral complexity to Baran bo Odar’s film, though at times it does get bogged down trying to keep tabs on the killers, the investigators and the victims’ families across both time frames. Occasional lapses in credibility notwithstanding, it’s still tense and unsettling fare that treads delicately through difficult territory that involves the abuse of children.<< 

Baran bo Odar was listed by Variety Magazine as one of ’10 Directors to Watch’ in 2011. You can read Variety’s profile of him here – with some comment on the film as well.

Update: I’ve just finished watching the film and thought it was a truly excellent adaptation, faithful in almost every respect to the novel, and conveying its central themes of guilt and grief in an extremely effective way. Some terrific acting (especially from Katrin Sass, who also played a mother in Goodbye Lenin) and the cinematography was wonderful too. Top quality, intelligent (and highly unsettling) crime drama.

#34 / Leif G.W. Persson, Linda, As in the Linda Murder

Leif G.W. Persson, Linda, As in the Linda Murder (Linda – som i Lindamordet), trans. from the Swedish by Neil Smith (London: Doubleday, 2013 [2005]). 5 stars

Opening line: It was a neighbour who found Linda, and, all things considered, that was far better than her mother finding her. 

The dedication at the front of Linda, As in the Linda Murder reads ‘for Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö - who did it better than almost anyone’. In this newly-translated novel, first published in 2005, author Leif Persson undoubtedly pays homage to the godparents of the Swedish police-procedural, and in particular to the first in Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series, Roseanna, published exactly 40 years prior to Linda in 1965. Consider the following:

• both novels are named after a young female murder victim
• both open with the discovery of the victim’s body, on 4 July and 8 July respectively
• both are set outside Stockholm in smaller Swedish cities (Motala and Växjö)
• both depict the police investigation in exhaustive detail
• both critique misogynist attitudes in Swedish society and foreground the female victim
• and … the murderer’s name in Linda echoes the murderer’s name in Roseanna!

However, the lead investigator in Linda, tasked with solving the murder of 20-year-old trainee police officer Linda Wallin one hot summer night, is no Martin Beck. Meet Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström, also known as ‘that fat little bastard from National Crime’, whose egotistical, sexist, racist, homophobic, vain and supremely-blinkered mind we are invited to see in all its dubious glory. Bäckström is a darkly comic tour-de-force, a monstrous creation who cares solely about his financial interests, maintaining a steady supply of drink, and the welfare of his pet goldfish Egon. His character is used to shine a spotlight on a less-than-heroic side of Swedish policing: while he is busy impeding the progress of the investigation, capable detectives such as Jan Lewin are forced to work around his prejudices and incompetence as best they can.

Thus, at the same time as paying tribute to Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Persson stamps his own style on the Swedish police procedural, imbuing it with a highly satirical edge. Other aspects of Roseanna, such the critique of the press’s prurient interest in female murder victims, are also extended further in Linda (see my earlier post on crime fiction and the media for details).

In the context of Persson’s own work, Linda forms a departure from his first two hugely ambitious novels, Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End and Another Time, Another Life, which are set against the much larger political and historical backdrop of post-war Sweden and the Cold War. In Linda, the focus is kept deliberately local, with the exploration of the consequences of just one crime, and strongly drawn characters such as detectives Jan Lewin and Anna Holt, as well as the murderer and the victim’s mother. Hats off also to translator Neil Smith, who captures Persson’s dry, satirical tone perfectly.

In sum, Linda is a rich and satisfying read from an author who’s now one of my absolute favourites.

*****

A useful further note from Neil Smith on Persson’s novels - poached with Sarah’s kind permission from the comments of the excellent Crimepieces Linda review - and with a couple of additions from me in square brackets:

Neil says >> As so often happens, Leif’s books are being published in a slightly different order in translation to their original Swedish publication.

The three books Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End (Sw. 2002, tr. 2011), Another Time, Another Life (Sw. 2003, tr. 2012), and Free Falling, as if in a Dream (Sw. 2007, tr. 2014), together make up a trilogy entitled ‘the Decline of the Welfare State’.

One of the main characters from that trilogy, Lars Martin Johansson, takes the lead in a later novel, The Dying Detective (Sw. 2010, as yet untranslated) [and appears a bit in Linda as well].

Evert Bäckström [who appears as a secondary character in the 'Welfare State' trilogy] is the focus of a further series of books, of which Linda, As in the Linda Murder (Sw. 2005) is the first. He Who Kills the Dragon (Sw. 2008), due to be published in English in October 2013, is the second in the series, and will be followed by Pinocchio’s Nose (not yet published in Sweden). <<

Mrs. Peabody awards Linda, As in the Linda Murder, a wonderfully rich and satisfying 5 stars

With thanks to Transworld for sending me an advance copy of this book.

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International crime drama news from BBC4: Dahl, De Luca, Young Montalbano, The Bridge 2 and more!

I’ve just seen the following on a BBC4 press release and couldn’t resist reporting IMMEDIATELY.

>> BBC Four has announced two exciting additions to an outstanding new year of international drama and film on the Channel: Swedish crime series Arne Dahl and Italian series Inspector Da Luca.

Arne Dahl (a pseudonym of award-winning author Jan Arnald) is based on five of Dahl’s novels, beginning with The Blinded Man. The series revolves around a tight-knit team of elite specialists who investigate the dark side of Swedish society. It is produced by Filmlance International and written by Rolf Börjlind and Cecilia Börjlind.

Inspector De Luca is made by Ager 3/Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana. A four-part crime series based on the novels by Carlo Lucarelli, it is set in and around Bologna during the tumultuous years of Mussolini’s dictatorship. Inspector De Luca is an investigator whose brutal honesty and uncompromising character may help him solve cases, but combined with his love of women, they also conspire to get him in trouble…

Other crime drama and film highlights in 2013 include:

Young Montalbano. Set in the early 1990s and starring Michele Riondino in the title role, Young Montalbano gives an insight into the private life and early crime-fighting career of the idiosyncratic Sicilian detective. This prequel series, also written by Andrea Camilleri, was recently shown to critical acclaim in Italy.

The Bridge, Series 2. A rusty old coaster en route in the Öresund sound suddenly veers off course and rams the concrete foundations laid out to protect the Öresund Bridge. The ship is empty – or so it is believed until five people are found chained, cold and exhausted below deck. The unknown victims, of whom three are Swedish and two Danish, are brought to a hospital in Malmö. Without hesitation, Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) from Malmö CID contacts her Danish colleague, Martin Rhode (Kim Bodnia) and their new investigation begins.

Inspector Montalbano. The popular Sicilian detective makes a welcome return in four brand new episodes.

The King Of Devil’s Island. Based on a true story, The King of Devil’s Island tells the unsettling tale of a group of young delinquents banished to the remote prison of Bastøy in Norway. Under the guise of rehabilitation the boys suffer a gruelling daily regime at the hands of their wardens until the arrival of new boys Erling and Ivar spark a chain of events that ultimately ignite rebellion.

Point Blank. In this action-packed French thriller, Samuel Pierret is a nurse who saves the life of a criminal whose gang then take Samuel’s pregnant wife hostage to force him to help their boss escape. A race through the subways and streets of Paris ensues. As the body count rises, Samuel must evade the cops and the criminal underground to rescue his wife <<

I’m so excited I can hardly breathe. Though I’m not sure how to break the news to my family that the telly will be off-limits for most Saturday nights this year.

For the full press release see here (contains info about series 3 of BORGEN as well). There’s also a very atmospheric trailer of all the international drama coming up.

Enjoy!