Charlie Stella's polemical porno pizzazz and a handful of Holt

I've finished Johnny Porno by Charlie Stella and started 1222 by Anne Holt, the latter because it's up for a best-novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America on Thursday night, and the former because no one in crime fiction is more fun to read than Charlie Stella.

With Stella the fun starts before the novels proper do; how can you not smile at an author's note that addresses readers as amici (friends)? The note that follows is a zesty polemic on the historical moment in which the novel is set: 1973, after a New York judge ruled Deep Throat obscene.

"As films go," Stella writes, "one has to acknowledge Deep Throat was nothing more than a campy, cheaply made porno that showcased the `sexual talent' of a young woman stage-named Linda Lovelace. With a soundtrack comprised of silly parodies and jingles and a plot born of male fantasy, the movie might well have come and gone without the slightest notice had the government ignored it. Instead, political directives from the White House launching a moral crusade that had much more to do with distracting the public from the war in Southeast Asia and an ever growing Watergate scandal guaranteed the film’s iconic success. What it also did was provide organized crime with a new way to make a fast buck. It is fittingly ironic that the name given to the secret informant (FBI agent William Mark Felt) who provided information that would eventually take down the Nixon White House itself shared the name of the film."

That polemical thread runs judiciously through the novel that follows, adding social and historical oomph to Stella's cast of hard-working guys, reluctant gangsters, cops, bookies, wives, girlfriends, and families, almost all of whom the author means us to view with a sympathetic eye.

***

1222 is the first novel of Holt's that I've read (she's published about sixteen), and I'm impressed because she has given herself the challenge of taking a well-worn crime-story set-up (group of people trapped by a snowstorm in an isolated hotel; one of them is found dead) and making it fresh. She has succeeded so far, in part by making the narrator/protagonist not especially likable, in part by doling out information about her characters only gradually.

1222 is one of at least six novels by a non-American author up for an Edgar (Holt is from Norway) and, based on what I've read of it so far, I won't complain if it wins.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Scanning Scandinavian crime

Declan Burke asks a provocative question about why Scandinavian Crime Always Pays: Whither the mavericks?

His thesis, to which commenters, including your humble blog host, provide but minor correctives, is that there's a certain sameness to the Nordic crime fiction translated into English, as good as some of that crime fiction may be.

You can find the rest over at his place, but to expand on one of Declan's rhetorical questions, where are the Scandinavian Eoin McNamees, Ronan Bennetts, Eoin Colfers, Adrian McKintys, and Kevin McCarthys?

The hook for Declan's post was the publication of Barry Forshaw's Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction. Forshaw was kind enough to provide some advance material from the book last year when I moderated a panel full of Scandinavian crime writers at Bouchercon.   And here's a post based on some notes Forshaw sent along some months ago about the book.

*

Declan's post may be a message from above, as it comes just when I had picked up his interestingly neo-Chandlerian novel Eightball Boogie for a second reading.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Nights of Awe

The protagonist of Harri Nykänen's Nights of Awe is named Ariel Kafka, and he's one of two Jewish police officers in Helsinki.

Now, Finland's entire Jewish population is no bigger than a couple of good-sized Long Island bar-mitzvahs, so it's no shock that Jews would be somewhat exotic figures there. Nykänen has Kafka react with head-shaking amusement to well-meaning questions about Jews, and the deadpan humor is of a piece with what Nykänen did so well in Raid and the Blackest Sheep.

Kafka's Jewish identity figures also in the crimes that drive this story, a series of killings of Arabs that eventually involves drugs, trains, cars, Israeli diplomats, the Mossad intelligence service, and friends and others from Kafka's own past. To say too much more would risk spoilers, except that things, as in all good mysteries, are not what they seem, even when you think you've figured out what's what and who's who.

The novel's title refers to the Jewish high holidays, the Days of Awe, when observant Jews repent of their sins. Nykänen presumably intends moral weight, but a character named Kafka needs no help from the calendar to get introspective. The story could have been set any time in the year.

***

The book was smoothly translated into English by Kristian London, an American who lives in Helsinki. The fluency of the translation is especially noticeable in the novel's first half, which consists largely of routine police detail and dialogue, where the prose, and not the action, must hold readers' attention.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Television program examines Nordic crime fiction

If you have a television handy, MHz Networks will examine the question of what makes Scandinavian crime fiction so popular. The show will be telecast tomorrow and then repeated severval times over the next few days.

I'd call modern Nordic crime writing's birth in Naj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck novels spectacular, rather than humble, as the program notes say. But that's a quibble. Here's the information

Lone Wolves & Dragon Tattoos: How Scandinavian Crime Fiction Conquered The World

Air: Sunday, July 31, 9:00 pm on MHz1 WNVC-DT 30.1
Future Airs: 08/01/11, 12:00 am MHz1 WNVC-DT 30.1; 08/02/11, 9:00 pm MHz1 WNVC-DT 30.1; 08/03/11, 12:00 am MHz1 WNVC-DT 30.1

  Broadcast In: OTHER

With Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy topping the bestseller lists and Kenneth Branagh starring as Henning Mankell's Detective Kurt Wallander on TV, Scandinavian crime fiction has never been hotter. But what is it about these characters and the worlds they inhabit that hold such universal appeal?

Lone Wolves & Dragon Tattoos traces the evolution of Nordic crime fiction, from its humble beginnings with Sjöwall-Wahlöö's Martin Beck novels of the 1960s straight through to the worldwide phenomenon of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, featuring interviews with some of the genre's brightest stars — authors Henning Mankell (Wallander), Gunnar Staalesen (Varg Veum) and Håkan Nesser (Van Veeteren) — as well as the actors and producers who bring these mysteries to life on-screen.

Produced by MHz Networks and Nordic Blast Entertainment. In English, Swedish and Norwegian with English subtitles.

Run Time: 02:00:00

Rating: TVPG Format: SD Source: MHZ

Nordic crime is more than just a barrel of laughs

Nordic crime fiction has been in the spotlight here at Detectives Beyond Borders, notably the question of what, if any, characteristics are common to crime writing from the Nordic countries.

With that in mind, two bits from Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall, by Finland's Jarkko Sipila, typify what I suspect many people would regard as typically Nordic:

"Finland was home to one of the top per capita homicide rates in Western Europe, but most slayings were the result of drug and alcohol addicts solving their disputes with whatever weapons they could get their hands on."

and

"Over a million semi-trucks passed from Finland to Russia every year. It was impossible to track all the imports and exports. ... The incidents of fraud were numbered in the thousands, or tens of thousands, but investigators were numbered in the tens."

Resignation. Fatalism. What does Nordic/Scandinavian crime fiction mean to you?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Nesbø in my newspaper

My review of Jo Nesbø's The Snowman appears in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer. I had a bit of fun writing this one, and the headline writer picked up the fun rather nicely.

Here's what Nesbø had to say about that fun topic in my interview with him:

There's a big wave of Nordic crime fiction. Do you consider yourself part of that?

I am part of that whether I consider myself part of it or not because it's sort of a commercial label. It doesn't necessarily have much to do with Scandinavian writers having the same style. When I've been asked what I think are the similarities between Scandinavian authors, I would say that they were either from Denmark, Norway or Sweden.

I think my style is probably closer to some of the American writers — Bukowski, Hemingway — than to other Scandinavian writers. Then again, I write from Oslo, so the atmosphere would probably be similar to Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell.

For me, my inspiration doesn't come mainly from Scandinavian crime writers. It comes from Scandinavian literature, like Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, lots of other Norwegian and Danish and Swedish writers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A Finnish crime novel that's all deadpan, all the time

I like my cold, gray Nordic crime fiction sprinkled with a bit of humor, and Harri Nykanen obliges in Raid and the Blackest Sheep.

Deadpan humor is plentiful in crime fiction from countries in the Scandinavian cultural sphere, but the first third of this Finnish crime novel  is all deadpan, and the effect is novel, as if a joke is liable to break out at any moment.

One nice touch: Further evidence that Nordic writers' are willing to poke fun at their countries' reputations for vigorous good health. Here's Helsinki Police Lt. Jansson moping his way through a stay at a health center:

"The decision to stay in bed had nothing to do with a hangover. Having only drunk moderately, he felt reasonably alert. He simply had no desire to submit to the hazing of another physical therapist. `Doesn't Jansson's back bend?'  `Jansson, tuck in your belly.' `Jansson, breathe deeply.'"

That's a nice companion piece to the stone-massage ordeal Iceland's Yrsa Sigurðardóttir puts her protagonist through in My Soul to Take.

***

Raid and the Blackest Sheep come from the commendable newish publishing house Ice Cold Crime, an American publishing house dedicated to translating and promoting Finnish fiction,

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

The trouble with Hole: An interview with Jo Nesbø, Part II

In preparation for a review of Jo Nesbø's novel The Snowman upon its U.S. release, I bring back this second part of my interview with Nesbø from last year. His recent anointing in some quarters as the next Stieg Larsson makes his comments here perhaps more pertinent than ever.

==========================

In the second part of his interview with Detectives Beyond Borders, Jo Nesbø discusses future English translations of the first, second and eighth Harry Hole novels [the five translated to date are books three through seven], philosophical musings on celebrity and revenge in Nemesis, and his place in Scandinavian crime fiction. He also talks about how Hole (pronounced approximately HEU-leh in Norwegian) got his first name — and did not get his second.

(Read Part I of the interview with Jo Nesbø.)

==============================

Detectives Beyond Borders: Can you talk a little about why you chose the name Harry for your protagonist?

Jo Nesbø: It's like the most corny name you can think of. It's even an expression in Norwegian, to be Harry. It's like the cliché of a redneck.

In the Seventies what we meant with Harry was someone who dressed like Elvis. It was someone from the rural areas coming to the city not knowing how to dress. That was why I wanted the name. `How can you call somebody Harry?' It's not a funny name, but it's an uncomfortable name. It's a normal name in one way, but on the other hand, a guy living in Oslo named Harry, it gives the character character.

There was an English musician born in Norway that suggested the name really was `Hairy Hole,' that I was playing with that. I told him no, I wasn't. I really laughed hard when he suggested that. No, I didn't think about that, but I wish I had, you know.

There's a big wave of Nordic crime fiction. Do you consider yourself part of that?

I am part of that whether I consider myself part of it or not because it's sort of a commercial label. It doesn't necessarily have much to do with Scandinavian writers having the same style. When I've been asked what I think are the similarities between Scandinavian authors, I would say that they were either from Denmark, Norway or Sweden.

I think my style is probably closer to some of the American writers — Bukowski, Hemingway — than to other Scandinavian writers. Then again, I write from Oslo, so the atmosphere would probably be similar to Stieg Larsson or Henning Mankell.

For me, my inspiration doesn't come mainly from Scandinavian crime writers. It comes from Scandinavian literature, like Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, lots of other Norwegian and Danish and Swedish writers.

What have readers in English missed by not having The Batman, The Cockroaches (Books 1 and 2 in the series, which take Harry to Australia and Thailand) and The Leopard (Book 8) available in their language?

The Leopard will be translated, hopefully next year. The first two books, there are enough references to them in the third and the fourth and the fifth books. That's why we decided we can start with the third book, because you will get the rest of the story.

The series is now so established in the UK, they want to translate the first two, also.

Also by Don Bartlett?

I hope so.

Are you deliberately more philosophical in Nemesis? And do Americans prefer a simpler, more compact, less complex story like Nemesis [shortlisted for the best-novel Edgar Award for 2010]?

[Laughs] The first part of the question, the short answer is, I don't know.

Number two, no, I don't necessarily think so. I think that nominations — I have to answer this carefully — nominations sometimes tend to be the result not only of what you did in your last novel, but in the novel before that.

==============================

(Read Part I of the interview with Jo Nesbø.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

The hero in the bathtub

A few months ago, I wrote about a charming tribute Andrea Camilleri paid Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in his novel The Track of Sand. Sjöwall and Wahlöö accord similar tribute to another crime writer in The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969), fifth in the Martin Beck series:

"He also drank some coffee and cognac and watched an old American gangster film on television. Then he got his bed ready and lay in the bathtub reading Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake, every now and then taking a sip of cognac which he had placed within reach on the toilet seat."

Who said Swedes don't know how to live? A recent Detectives Beyond Borders post asked "Who is the hero in a Sjöwall and Wahlöö novel?" There's your answer: If you know what a character likes to read, he's your protagonist.

***

On the other side of the Atlantic, I wonder if Every Bitter Thing, Leighton Gage's fourth novel featuring Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil's Federal Police, has been translated into Spanish and, if so, how well the book sells in Venezuela. Not that the novel names Hugo Chávez, at least not early on, but Chavistas might frown at several references to "the Clown."

How do you feel about such topical references in crime fiction? What are some of your favorites?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Colin Dexter on Sjöwall, Wahlöö, and Swedish sex

I've just has a couple of beers and a plate of fish and chips at my local, and I'm ready for a snooze, so I'll let Colin Dexter do the honors for today.

Dexter is yet another of the current crime authors who wrote introductions to the (relatively) recent editions of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's Martin Beck mysteries (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard in the U.S., Harper Perennial in the U.K., at least in paperback).

The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969) came fifth in the series and, writes Dexter, "My first preconception was that this husband-and-wife team, with a political stance well to the left, had become rather too bitterly cynical in the sixties and seventies of what they saw as the betrayal of many of their Socialist ideas and ideals."

We took care of that here two weeks ago; Detectives Beyond Borders readers know that strong political sensibilities do not preclude acute observation and sensitive, entertaining storytelling.

We also know about Sjöwall and Wahlöö's wit, though I am pleased to add such a distinguished witness for the defense as Dexter against the canard that Scandinavians aren't funny. "What struck me" about The Fire Engine That Disappeared, writes Inspector Morse's creator, "was the gently underplayed humour of the writing."

One of Dexter's preconceptions involved Ed McBain's influence on Sjöwall and Wahlöö, and I'll save that matter for another post. Another was his belief that anything coming out of Sweden in the 1960s must be saturated with explicit sex.

Instead, he writes, "Sex plays only a very small part in the novel; and what sex we do find is handled with an almost serene simplicity." And if that isn't a beautifully sane (and accurate) assessment, I don't know what is.

Thanks, Colin; and goodnight, readers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Adverbs of gloom, or Humor in Nordic crime writing

Discussion here has turned once again to Nordic crime writers and their reputed lack of humor — on a post called What do your favorite writers do less well?, no less.

On the one hand, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö elevated the adverb to heights unseen in crime fiction since the Black Mask days, and those adverbs are generally gloomy. Characters are forever gesturing helplessly and slumping dejectedly. On the other hand are Kvant and Kristiansson:

"Outside police headquarters on Kungsholmsgatan stood two persons who definitely wished they had been somewhere else. They were dressed in police caps and leather jackets with gilded buttons, they had shoulder belts diagonally across their chests and carried pistols and batons at their waists. Their names were Kristiansson and Kvant.

"A well-dressed, elderly woman came up to them and asked, `Excuse me, but how do I get to Hjärnesgatan?'

"`I don't know, madam,' Kvant said. `Ask a policeman. There's one standing over there.'

"The woman gaped at him.

"`We're strangers here ourselves,' Kristiansson put in quickly, by way of explanation."

(Kristiansson and Kvant are officers in Solna whose eagerness to avoid work takes them over the municipal border into neighboring Stockholm and smack into the scene of the novel's central crime. Their ignorance of the lay of the land is thus plausible.)

Read more about humor in Nordic crime fiction in Mystery Readers Journal.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

What do your favorite writers do less well?

I've finally found something Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö did not do well: routine description.

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966), second of the ten Martin Beck novels, takes Beck to Budapest to look for a missing Swedish journalist. His reflections on arrival are potted history and travel-guide boilerplate, the only time I have been tempted to skim rather than read Sjöwall and Wahlöö. Apologists might call the flat prose a comment on Beck's alienation or on the economics of tourism, but that would be out of character for Beck, who we are told enjoys travelling. Besides, alienation ought not to alienate the reader.

In any case, the bad bits were brief distractions, paling next to Sjöwall and Wahlöö's compelling portrayal of Beck's feeling at a loss in a country about which he knows little, whose language he cannot speak, investigating a case as baffling as the novel's title.

But that's a distraction from the day's question: What have your favorite writers tried that did not work?

***

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke is broadly similar to Henning Mankell's The Dogs of Riga, which takes Kurt Wallander to Latvia. Each novel is the second in its series in order of original Swedish publication.

Mankell has acknowledged Sjöwall and Wahlöö's formative influence on Swedish crime writing. Could The Dogs of Riga be in part a tribute to his great predecessors?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Win "The Ice Princess"

Camilla Läckberg has made it to the United States, and two American readers can win copies of The Ice Princess, newly out from Pegasus Publishing. All the two of you have to do is answer this question correctly:

The Ice Princess' English translator has translated books under at least three names in addition to the one he uses here. Tell me at least one of those names along with the title of at least one book translated under that name.

***

A reader in Washington State knew that Steven T. Murray translated Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo under the name Reg Keeland, and a California reader knew that he translated Karin Alvtegen's Shadow under the name McKinley Burnett. They win Camilla Läckberg's The Ice Princess, which Steven T. Murray translated under the name Steven T. Murray. Congratulations.

Now, based on the above, can you guess what kind of music Steven T. Murray likes?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Rolling Stones and scary snowmen: An interview with Jo Nesbø, Part I

Jo Nesbø is touring two countries promoting two novels. The Snowman, newly published by Random House Canada (and also out in the United Kingdom) has elements of horror stories, and it continues a theme put forth in The Redbreast, Nemesis and The Devil’s Star of scary characters within the police.

The Devil’s Star, out in hardback in the United States from HarperCollins, brings to a conclusion a confrontation between one of those characters and Nesbø’s protagonist, Inspector Harry Hole.

In the first part of an interview with Detectives Beyond Borders, Jo Nesbø talks about his fascination with Jim Thompson, his early attraction to ghost stories, and Norway’s shaky national identity. He also answers a question posed in a scene long a favorite here at Detectives Beyond Borders: Are the Rolling Stones the world’s greatest rock and roll band?

(Read Part II of the Detectives Beyond Borders interview with Jo Nesbø here.)

==============================

Detectives Beyond Borders: What attracts you about having monsters or psychotic villains within the police?

Jo Nesbø: The enemy within is always more scary than when you have the defined enemy. I’m a fan of Jim Thompson and his title The Killer Inside Me, which may be a somewhat cheesy title, but it’s a title that grabs me. To me it’s a scary idea that the killer is inside you, behind you. Also, I like to write about closed milieus, where you have a society within a society.

Like the Salvation Army (A key setting in The Redeemer)?

Right. That is parallel to the police force. Loyalty is very important, and you have certain rules that enable people to get power over other people. … You can have more dramatic conflict than in open societies.

You liked to write or tell ghost stories when you were young. Is there a connection between The Snowman and that earlier preference for ghost stories?

I didn’t come up with the stories, I told traditional ghost stories, then added a bit.

I think the reason why they asked me to tell the stories, I thought for while it was because I was a great storyteller. Later on, I think it was my big brother who told me the reason why he wanted me to tell the stories was because when I told them, they could hear the fear in my voice.

Are the Rolling Stones the world’s greatest band or the most overrated band?

The Rolling Stones are a great band and the world’s most overrated band.

Why do your novels include so many prominent and thematically important references to music?

People use music in so many ways, to say who they are. … You use a T-shirt to tell the world `I’m the kind of guy who listens to the Doors,’ and that is interesting to me because it’s just sounds, but it isn’t just sounds. They project ideas, basic values. I don’t really like Joy Division, but I wish I liked to listen to Joy Division.

Myself, I like jazz, and I like rock, but I like pop, the smoothest pop music, easy-listening pop music. I love that. [But] I thought it would be too confusing for people to have [Harry] like pop music. You’d have to explain it, so I put in some references. I try not to do it too much.

For example, you read George Pelecanos; to me, sometimes it’s on the verge of being too much. Everybody, every single character, is listening to a special radio channel. Well, they don’t. But then again, I love the references.

Talk a bit about some of the satirical fun you poke at Norway.

We’re a young and, in a way, an insecure nation. … It’s a very young nation, and it is trying very hard to find itself. Like any nation, it needs pillars to build an image of a nation on.

In Norway the most important things are probably the explorers of the South and North Poles, and Thor Heyerdahl, and the war, the myth about the resistance movement during the war.

Up until 1917, Norway was one of the poorest countries in Europe. In the Seventies, we found oil, or the Americans found oil, actually, off Norway. In the Eighties were booming times, and Norway quickly became one of the richest countries in the world. It’s like a guy with an inferiority complex that has suddenly had some success and who can’t quite cope with it.

Norwegians are so focused on what's going on in Norway now. If you read the newspapers, it's all local news. So many of the stories are `What do they think about Norwegians?'

It’s pride and insecurity going together. You see that in many countries. Norway has always had the same relationship to bigger countries, Sweden especially, Denmark, maybe the same way that Canada feels toward the United States, like a bigger brother. Canada is a nicer country, but that’s not enough.

==============================

(Read Part II of the interview with Jo Nesbø.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Nesbø in North America and your chance to win a book

This could be Jo Nesbø's year in North America. Nemesis, his fourth novel featuring Oslo police detective Harry Hole, has been shortlisted for the CWA's 2010 Edgar Award for best novel. And readers in North America have the chance to get their hands on some new Nesbø.

The Devil's Star, fifth in the series, is just out in hardcover in the U.S., and The Snowman, Book 7, is newly released in Canada and the U.K. Because the order of publication is different in different parts of the English-speaking world, time might be right for a listing of the novels in order of original publication (titles in italics are available in English translation):

1997 – Flaggermusmannen
1998 – Kakerlakkene
2000 – The Redbreast (2006); English translation by Don Bartlett
2002 – Nemesis (2008); English translation by Don Bartlett
2003 – The Devil's Star (2005); English translation by Don Bartlett
2005 – The Redeemer (2009); English translation by Don Bartlett
2007 – The Snowman (2010); English translation by Don Bartlett
2009 – Panserhjerte

=====

And now, one lucky reader can win a copy of the U.S. edition of The Devil's Star, courtesy of the good people at HarperCollins. I'll read it first to see how it differs from the British edition, and then I'll send it to the first person with the correct answer to a skill-testing question. Harry Hole has a wise slacker of a rock and roll-loving cab driver friend named Øystein. You win The Devil's Star if you're the first to tell me the name of Øystein's favorite rock and roll band.

====

Ladies and gentlemen, the answer is the Rolling Stones. Congratulations to Iasa for sending in the right answer before the ink on this page was dry. Read Harry and Øystein's testy exchange about the Stones here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Nesbø on news

The profession of which I am a part has cropped up twice this weekend in my crime reading. First, Dan Waddell writes about the excesses of English tabloids and the non-action of Home Secretary Jack Straw in a notorious real-life murder case. (Jack Straw used to be my favorite political name until Philadelphia elected Michael Nutter mayor.)

Then Jo Nesbø's The Snowman offers an amusing swipe at newspapers' moral pretensions and a more probing examination of television. Here's the first, as reporters besiege Oslo police headquarters

"Mumbling among themselves that the police had to acknowledge their responsibility to keep the general public informed about such a serious, shocking and circulation-increasing matter."

Later Nesbø has protagonist Harry Hole appear on Norway's leading talk show to discuss the killer and turn the show into something like Harvey Pekar's appearances with David Letterman. That television manipulates truth and reduces everything to entertainment and morally neutral "content" goes without saying, though Nesbø says it well. What I like best, though, is that he captures that ghastly attraction of the insidious medium.

"`Jesus,' she heard the producer wheeze behind her. And then, `Jesus bloody Christ.' Oda just felt like howling. Howling with pleasure. Here, she thought. Here at the North Pole. We aren't where it happens. We are what happens."

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Youth is served, but will it pick up the check?

I've twice cited bits of rueful wisdom from Jo Nesbø's novels. In Nemesis, Harry Hole asks his cab driver friend Øystein if he might want to return to his old career:

Øystein shook off internal laughter as he ran the tip of his tongue along the paper. "Annual salary of a million and a quiet office – of course, I could do with that, but I've missed the boat, Harry. The time for rock 'n' roll guys like me in IT is over."

Two passages in The Redeemer have Hole musing on the passage of time, invoking the ephemeral excitement of punk music and the fading appeal of a classic rock and roll album.

Perhaps because Nesbø and I are about the same age, I find these passages attractive. They're welcome respite from corporate- and media-driven youth and technology worship. Hole is reflective, I think, without descending into maudlin, hard-bitten cliché.

Such maturity is evident as well in The Snowman, fifth of the Hole novels to be translated into English. This time Harry recalls a television producer who wants him as an expert spokesman on an interview show:

She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, had talked in a boring, young way and had eyed Harry hungrily ...

One might object that Nesbø shows rather than tells; what exactly is "a boring, young way"? But the passage is about Harry, not about the young woman, and it says much about how he sees the world.

Now it's your turn. Tell me how you think youth is overrated. What are your favorite examples of maturity, introspection and self-knowledge in crime fiction?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Here's to you, Mr. Robinson, or the real secret of Nordic crime fiction

(Photo © Katja Gottschewski 2002)

Uriah Robinson of Crime Scraps published a piece of common sense the other day about why Scandinavian crime fiction is so popular.

He invoked an anecdote about a question to Atlanta students on a high school history exam: Why did the South lose the Civil War?

"Most of the class wrote reams and reams on the military, economic, social, political and demographic reasons," Uriah reported, "apart from one student who answered with one sentence: 'I think the Yankee Army had something to do with it.'"

"Scandinavian crime fiction is popular," he continued, "because it features good writing, usually excellent translation, well-thought-out plots and interesting characters."

Search his blog post from top to bottom, and you'll find no sociology, no commonplaces about Nordic stoicism, nothing about suicide or vodka or long nights. (You'll find precisely the opposite, in other words, of Laura Miller in the Wall Street Journal.)

It was a pleasure to see good writing, rather than sociology, invoked as a reason for popularity. Nordic crime writing is good? I think Arnaldur Indriðason (Or Jo Nesbø. Or Karin Fossum. Or ...) had something to do with it.

What are your favorite or least favorite takes on international crime fiction in the English-speaking world?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Something new ...

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö blazed a number of crime fiction trails, among them those of social criticism, a multiplayer cast of detectives, and elevation of the investigator's personal life to importance comparable with that of the mysteries he or she investigates.

(Whether, in fact, they blazed the trails or were early followers is immaterial here. At any rate, they were among the first to tread the paths in question.)

Here is some of what I've noticed in Roseanna:

1) The team approach to the police procedural.

2) The occasional jab at military regimes, though these have been far less frequent that I'd expected.

3) Great stress on the protagonist's everyday problems.

4) And, what I consider the book's most impressive innovation, one cited by Henning Mankell in his introduction and handled beautifully by Sjöwall and Wahlöö: its portrayal of an investigation that moves in fits and starts, with long stretches when nothing happens.

If you've read Sjöwall and Wahlöö, which of their innovations most impressed you? Which have held up best? Which seem less exciting now that they might have in the 1960s? If you haven't read them, what crime-fiction innovations have impressed you most? Who introduced those innovations? Who perfected them? And what crime fiction innovations are less exciting now than they must have seemed when new?

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

"Don't hate me because I brood": Now with 60 percent fewer words!!!

Someone remarked recently that Nordic crime novels tend to feature whiny male detectives. I suggested that morose might be more accurate than whiny, and someone else added that Nordic crime fiction offers whiny female detectives, too.

Yet another observer offered the off-hand but accurate observation that a Nordic crime novel is likelier than an American one to include immigration as a major theme.

It would be a shame if anyone thought they knew what they were getting with Arnaldur Indriðason, though, just because he has that odd letter in his patronymic and because his protagonist lives alone in a cold country and broods occasionally and eats lots of lamb. He is a remarkable writer.

(Read all my posts abour Arnaldur here.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2009