Category Archives: Sweden

In Cold Blood: CultureCritic Guest Guide to Wintry Crime Fiction

Posted on by Kat Hall
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The good people over at CultureCritic recently invited me to contribute a piece to their fabulous blog. The result is a guest guide to ‘wintry’ crime and the role of chilly settings in five of my favourite novels.

  • Jan Costin Wagner, The Winter of the Lions (German author; Finnish setting; 2011)
  • Leif G. W. Persson, Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End (Swedish author; Swedish setting; 2010)
  • A.D. Miller, Snowdrops (British author / Russian setting / 2011)
  • Julia Keller, A Killing in the Hills (US author / Appalachian mountain setting / 2012)
  • MJ McGrath, White Heat (UK author; Arctic Circle setting; 2011)

Many thanks to CultureCritic for the invitation; it was fun to do!

If you’re not yet familiar with the CultureCritic blog, do pop over: you’ll find all the latest on film, music, books, exhibitions, theatre, opera, dance and more…. It’s a regular smörgåsbord of cultural delights.

Depictions of violence and women in crime fiction (with list of STRONG WOMEN IN CRIME)

Posted on by Kat Hall
83

A few days ago an extremely interesting discussion kicked off in the ‘about’ section of this blog on depictions of violence and women in crime fiction. I’m taking the slightly unusual step of reproducing the thread here (in a lightly edited form), as it would other-wise remain largely invisible. It closes with a fabulously affirmative list of ‘strong women in crime’, sourced via Twitter and the blog.

With thanks to the participants in the discussion – Susan, Cassandra, Maxine and Bernadette – and to everyone who put forward their favourites for the list!

The discussion began with a comment about Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Roseanna (1965).

Susan Wright: I recently discovered your blog thanks to Mark Lawson’s ‘Foreign Bodies’ series on Radio 4. I’m enjoying your reviews and I agree with many of your opinions, especially about the cliched representations of women in some crime fiction. Like you I thought Varesi’s River of Shadows was wonderfully atmospheric but marred by the sex scenes. I’m now reading the first Martin Beck novel; having been told it was a Marxist critique and had a left-wing perspective, I was surprised by the prurient description of the victim, particularly the interview of her boyfriend by the US cop which goes into graphic detail about her sex life. I know this was written before 70s feminism, but I was disappointed all the same. It seems cliches about women and female sexuality are not limited to Italian male crime authors.

Mrs P: What you’ve said about Roseanna, the first Martin Beck novel, has really got me thinking. It’s a little while since I read it, but I understood the role of those sexual details in a slightly different way. I saw them as providing the reader with a portrait of Roseanna as a very independent, sexually-liberated person, and instead of indulging in the stereotypes one might find in literature of the time (that her sexuality was what ‘got her into trouble’), the authors give her full victim status. Beck, for example, never wavers in his quest to bring her murderer to justice. So in that respect the novel is arguably groundbreaking.

But I take your point, and think I may need to read the novel again, so that I can see that interview with the American cop in the context of the whole narrative!

Susan Wright: I agree it is a groundbreaking novel and the authors wanted to show Roseanna (and themselves) as modern and sexually liberated, but I found some of their approach quite disturbing, almost voyeuristic, although I suppose all fiction is voyeurism to some extent! As well as the American cop scene, at one point Beck asks a colleague to write a detailed description of the corpse which I also found a little prurient. I cannot ever recall reading a crime novel which described a male victim in that way. I’m only half way through the book but it is striking how few women there are and how marginal they seem, though I suppose this reflects how different women’s roles were in the 60s – so far there are no female police. I like Beck’s compassion, not just for Roseanna but for the woman Karin who worked on the cruise boat and has fled a violent man.

Cassandra Clark (author): I am disturbed by what Susan Wright says as it resonates so closely with my own feelings about the kind of obsessively detailed descriptions of violence against women in some crime novels. I don’t think it’s good enough to say it takes place in the 1960s so it’s OK. The same prurience is rarely directed towards male murderees. Maybe we should ask ourselves why not? I suppose until it is (though heaven protect us against what that will mean for our humanity) there will be no equality between men and women. This is just a thought. I have to deal with this problem every time I write because my series is set in the fourteenth century when things were a bit rough – and women had even less say than now.

Mrs. P: Depictions of violence against women in crime fiction (especially sadistic sexual violence) have bothered me as long as I’ve been reading in the genre, and I would agree with you that this is a topic that should be acknowledged and properly discussed. Every now and then I consider writing a blog post on the subject and then get cold feet, because in many ways it’s such a minefield. In any case – a few thoughts in response to your comment:

Time of publication: I agree that misogyny should not be excused if it appears in a book written in the 1960s, but it does provide at least a partial explanation that helps us understand its presence.

Authorial intent: some authors like Val McDermid have been criticised for writing eye-watering depictions of violence against women (usually by serial killers). I’ve heard McDermid argue that her intent is to highlight the shocking realities of misogyny and violence against women in our society, which are often ignored. However, the risk that a reader might get some kind of perverse kick out of those depictions remains, as the author can never completely steer the interpretation of his or her writing. Her later books have apparently toned down this element.

The same problem could be said to exist in relation to David Peace’s ‘Red Riding’ quartet (1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983), which explore the Ripper killings in some detail, and which I greatly admire. (This is where things get complicated for me – why do I view some depictions of violence against women as justifiable and some not? I need to think about this in more detail, but think it has to do with the purpose of those depictions / what the inclusion of those depictions achieves in the larger context of the narrative.)

Misogyny sells? One really depressing thought for me is that publishers / film studios are actively on the lookout for explicit depictions of violence against women (whether in crime fiction or other genres such as horror), because they know that these will sell. What that says about us as a society is pretty bleak.

Equality: funnily enough, I happen to be reading An Uncertain Place by the French crime novelist Fred Vargas at the moment, which features an unbelievably brutal murder of a man, with some pretty prurient features! Still undoubtedly an exception to the rule, and I agree with you that this isn’t the kind of equality for which we should aim!

There was a bit of a media storm in 2009, when Jessica Mann, an author and critic, declared that she was no longer willing to review some books due to their misogynist content. (Her original statement can be accessed here). Val McDermid then wrote a response (she felt that female authors were being unfairly targeted for criticism).

I’d be very interested to hear in a little more detail how you deal with all of these complexities as a writer yourself…

Maxine (Petrona blog): I am allergic to crime novels depicting violence (torture, serial killer, mentally unstable kidnappers, etc.) against women, children and other victims and I am afraid that the genre seems to be increasingly popular. I have failed to finish several “raved about” books on these grounds, and failed even to start others, e.g. Stuart MacBride’s latest whose plot blurb is horribly off-putting.

That having been said, I do not think the criticism of Roseanna by Sjowall/Wahloo is fair. I think this is a serious book, not prurient, and I feel that Beck’s sympathy for the victim drives him on to solve a crime that others would long since have forgotten. I think the S/W novels are as far from some of the poorly written, sensationalist rubbish that is written these days as it is possible to be!

Mrs. P: I feel the same way about Roseanna, but to be fair this was an impression gained from a partial reading of the book (am keen to see what Susan thinks on completion!).

Thanks also for the link (via Friendfeed) to the blog-post you wrote on the Mann discussion. Some extra links there that might be of interest to others…

bernadetteinoz (Reactions to Reading blog): This is a perennial topic and one I suspect will be with us for several generations yet. I do my best to avoid books in which the violence against women feels particularly prurient but, like you Mrs P, I might not always appear consistent as I do tend to take intent into account and, of course, it is usual that I have to infer intent from things outside the book in question (e.g. the author’s previous work). Somewhat perversely I absolutely do not think that we should be censoring our publications based on the fact that some perverted sicko somewhere might get some enjoyment or, heaven forbid, some ideas, from what he (and it will almost definitely be a he) reads. That way madness (and totalitarian dictatorships lie).

I think I do disagree with one point made earlier in this discussion, well half-disagree anyway. I think the reason we don’t see nearly as many graphic descriptions of torture and sexually motivated violence occurring to men in crime fiction is that the genre is after all in some ways a reflection of real life and that kind of violence does not happen as much to men in real life as it does to women. However, the kind of violence that men are often subject to – being shot or dying in violent person-to-person fighting – is depicted quite a lot. George Pelecanos’ books are full of it as are the books of many other authors I’m sure – but I can’t name heaps of them because I tend to avoid them just as I do the books in which violence against women for the sake of it appears to be a central point to the book’s existence.

Mrs P: I absolutely agree with you about the censorship issue, although one thing I’m interested in is the ‘self-censorship’ angle, by which I mean authors who may change their approach to depicting violence in a series, due to audience reactions or because they feel that they went a step too far in their early work. I’ve heard David Peace say (at a reading in Belfast a couple of years ago) that he would have written parts of his ‘Red Riding’ quartet differently today, particularly the detailed depictions of what was done to the female child victims in the novel. He saw this shift as being partly due to his own development as a writer; he now felt elements of those depictions were gratuitous. I’d be very interested to hear if other authors have modified their depictions of violence as their writing careers progressed (in either direction, in relation to either gender, and if so why).

‘Gendered’ types of violence as a reflection of real life: this is a really good point, and I think what Val McDermid was arguing when defending depictions of violence against women in her own books (as I heard her do at a Harrogate panel in 2006). I was barely able to read portions of The Last Temptation , but I could at least see what she was trying to achieve. It did put me off reading her works for a while though. George Pelecanos: another author I greatly admire, whose novel The Big Blowdown is on my list of all-time crime greats. His depictions of violence seem to me to be carefully contextualised in larger narratives of ethnic and class tensions, and work for that reason in my view.

Maxine: Agree with you both on the censorship aspects, and Bernadette makes a good point about the “macho” violence which is more commonly the way it is done to males in crime fiction, than the type of nastiness done to the weak (women, children). Reminds me of the way some comedians on TV are said to target the disabled.

Val McDermid seems to have toned down her torture-style books over the past few years, so she herself may be an example. Probably to do with appealing to a wider, non-crime-reading audience.

It is nice to me that some of the very best-selling and top (my view!) crime authors don’t depict unnecessary violence while still being hard-hitting, e.g. M. Connelly, D. Meyer, I. Rankin, R. Rendell, L. Marklund. I also like authors like Peter Temple who address tough issues such as abuse of children (in care homes), young women, etc. – making the topics harrowing and not airbrushing, but still not dwelling on them in unnecessarily “revelling in it” ways. Connelly, Marklund etc. do quite a bit of this, too.

Mrs P: I very much agree with your last paragraph, Maxine: a huge amount depends on the quality of the writer, and the skill with which he or she situates depictions of violence in the context of larger issues. That’s when the crime novel reaches its full potential as a vehicle for critiquing society, and highlighting crimes and injustices perpetrated within it.

Cassandra Clark: I do agree that context is important, but when people say it’s ok if well written this is to put aesthetics above ethics. Something to discuss there, I feel. I also question one of the contributors’ remarks about violence being mostly done to women and therefore it’s a true picture of society. (Novelists are not journalists.) I haven’t checked the statistics but I would imagine most murders are a result of street violence between young men. It’s the criticism of unbalance, also levelled at crime novels set in Iceland or Sweden – more corpses than inhabitants! – leading one to imagine the crime rate in these places is ten times higher than that in Chicago, tipping the balance towards blatant untruth and undermining the argument that they provide a true picture of society. What gets me down is the constant dwelling on women as victims. Yes, we know about misogyny but what do we know about how to fight back? If detailed descriptions of the nasty things people can do to other people is considered necessary to tell a good story then I want to see a few winning women in this literary-engendered battle. In fact, come to think of it, that’s how I deal with it in my own writing. Hildegard fights back. I hope she always will.

bernadetteinoz: I’ll respond to this as I was the one who made the original claim and I do think it stands up. If women are going to be subject to violence it is most likely to be domestic violence or sexual assault by someone she knows (and by knows I mean everything from is ‘married to’ to ‘has met briefly’) – that’s what the health stats say anyway (which I know about from my day job) – I think crime fiction reflects this, though of course it takes things to extremes (often for no good reason, sometimes to make a perfectly valid point) – of course there is also a whole load of serial killer fiction in which mostly women are tortured and whatnot, but most of these are cashing in on a trope that I think had its origins in something far less flashy and probably a lot more realistic (e.g. the guy meets girl and when she says no he decides she meant yes and rapes her scenario). That certainly appears to be what the early books depicting quite graphic violence from authors like Patricia Cornwell were doing (I think Cornwell lost track of this early theme, but that’s another story).

That said I think there is a whole load of crime fiction that does not treat women as victims – there are loads of strong female characters who fight the good fight either due to some trauma in their own past or their viewing of the realities of what has happened to other people they know. Certainly most of the crime fiction I read these days does not cast women as the perennial victim. But I rarely read any of the mainstream crime/thriller/ slasher stuff in which people are making things out of human skin or collecting women’s body parts or any of that kind of nonsense.

Cassandra Clark: Yes, I think I was generalising about mainstream i.e. best-seller paperbacks. What about a list of strong women novels then?

Mrs. P: Great idea – and a lovely way to wrap up this discussion.

Update, 5 December: Margot Kinberg has written a very thoughtful blog post over at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist about some of the more difficult questions raised in this discussion (such as why graphic depictions of violence sell). It’s well worth a read.

Update, 9 February: Thanks to author J.J. Marsh for alerting me to her excellent discussion with author Frances di Plino entitled ‘Feminists and crime fiction – an odd couple?’.

STRONG WOMEN IN CRIME

  • Lena Adams (Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series, USA)
  • Adelia Aguilar (Ariana Franklin, ‘Mistress of the Art of Death’ series, UK)
  • Jo Beckett (Meg Gardiner’s Jo Beckett series, USA)
  • Annika Bengtzon (Liza Marklund’s Bengtzon series, Sweden)
  • Tempe Brennan (Kathy Reichs’ Tempe Brennan series, USA)
  • Siobhan Clarke (Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels, UK)
  • Jenny Cooper (M. R. Hall’s Jenny Cooper series, UK)
  • Dr. Anya Crichton (Kathryn Fox’s Anya Crichton series, Australia)
  • DCI Kate Daniels (Mari Hannah’s Kate Daniels series, UK)
  • Evan Delaney (Meg Gardiner’s Delaney series, USA)
  • Marie Donovan (Alex Walter’s Marie Donovan series, UK)
  • Detective Elinborg (Arnadur Indridason, Outrage, Iceland)
  • Bell Elkins (Julia Keller, A Killing in the Hills, USA)
  • Erica Falck (Camilla Läckberg’s Fjällbacka series, Sweden)
  • Amanda Fitton / Campion (Margery Allingham, Campion series, UK)
  • Charlie Fox (Zoë Sharp’s Charlie Fox series, UK)
  • Ruth Galloway (Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series, UK)
  • Bina Gelbfish (Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, USA)
  • Noria Ghozali (Dominique Manotti, Affairs of State, France)
  • Gunnhildur ‘Gunna’ Gísladóttir (Quentin Bates’ Gísladóttir series, UK; set in Iceland)
  • Thóra Gudmundsdóttir (Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s Thóra series, Iceland)
  • Mumtaz Hakim (Barbara Nadel’s Hakim and Arnold series, UK
  • Dr. Clare Hart (Margie Orford’s Clare Hart series, South Africa)
  • Barbara Havers (Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley series, USA; set in UK)
  • Hildegard of Meaux (Cassandra Clark’s Hildegard of Meaux series, UK)
  • Irene Huss (Helene Tursten’s Huss series, Sweden)
  • Smilla Jaspersen (Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, Denmark)
  • Lena Jones (Betty Webb’s Lena Jones series, USA)
  • Carol Jordan (Val McDermid’s Tony Hill series, UK).
  • Jayne Keeney (Angela Savage’s Keeney series, Australia)
  • Nhu ‘Ned’ Kelly (P.M. Newton, The Old School, Australia)
  • Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan (Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan series, UK)
  • Edie Kiglatuk (M.J. McGrath, White Heat, UK; set in the Arctic)
  • Sal Kilkenny (Cath Staincliffe’s Sal Kilkenny series, UK)
  • Simone Kirsch (Leigh Redhead’s Kirsch series, Australia)
  • Anni Koskinen (Barbara Fister’s Anni Koskinen series, USA)
  • Aimée Leduc (Cara Black’s Aimée Leduc series, USA; set in Paris)
  • DCI Janine Lewis (Blue Murder, UK; TV series created by Cath Staincliffe)
  • Karin Lietze (Pieke Biermann, Violetta, Germany)
  • Dr. Sara Linton (Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series, USA)
  • Sarah Lund (The Killing, Denmark; TV)
  • Rory Mackenzie (Meg Gardiner, Ransom River, USA)
  • Kathleen Mallory (Carol O’Connell’s Mallory series, USA)
  • Ella Marconi (Katherine Howell’s Marconi series, Australia)
  • Miss Marple (Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, UK)
  • Rebecka Martinsson (Åsa Larsson’s Martinsson series, Sweden)
  • Sharon McCone (Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone series, USA)
  • Anna-Maria Mella (Åsa Larsson’s Martinsson series, Sweden)
  • Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series, USA)
  • Alex Morrow (Denise Mina’s Morrow series, UK)
  • DS Rachel Narey (Craig Robertson, Cold Grave, UK)
  • Saga Norén (The Bridge; Denmark and Sweden; TV)
  • Maureen O’Donnell (Denise Mina’s Garnethill trilogy, UK)
  • Anna Pigeon (Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon series, USA)
  • Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, USA)
  • Annie Raft (Kerstin Ekman, Blackwater, Sweden)
  • Agatha Raisin (M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series, UK)
  • Annie Raymond (Penny Grubb’s Annie Raymond series, UK)
  • Detective Inspector Louise Rick (Sara Blaedel’s Louise Rick series, Denmark)
  • Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles (Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles series, USA)
  • Mattie Ross (Charles Portis, True Grit, USA)
  • DS Geraldine Steel (Leigh Russell’s Geraldine Steel series, UK)
  • Kay Scarpetta (Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta series, USA)
  • DC Janet Scott and DC Rachel Bailey (Scott and Bailey, UK; TV)
  • Lisbeth Salander (Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, Sweden)
  • Jill Shadow (T. J. Cooke, Kiss and Tell, UK)
  • Vera Stanhope (Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series, UK)
  • Clarice Starling (Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, USA)
  • D.I. Roberta Steel (Stuart McBride’s Logan McRae series, UK)
  • Emily Tempest (Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest series, Australia)
  • Jane Tennison (Prime Suspect, UK; TV)
  • Elsie Thirkettle (L.C. Tyler’s Elsie and Ethelred series, UK)
  • Baroness Ida ‘Jack’ Troutbeck (Ruth Dudley Edwards’ Troutbeck series, UK)
  • Harriet Vane (Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane series, UK)
  • V.I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky’s Warshawski series, USA)
  • Merrily Watkins (Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins series, UK)
  • Hanne Wilhelmsen (Anne Holt’s Hanne Wilhelmsen series, Norway)

The Killing 3: Lund is back…one last time

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Watching the opening of The Killing 3 tonight was a bitter-sweet experience. On the one hand, there was the delight of seeing ‘our Sarah’ again and hearing that oh-so-evocative theme tune, and on the other, a sense of melancholy, because this is really it – the final series – as director Søren Sveistrup has repeatedly stressed in interview.

Cover of the Series 3 DVD, due out mid-December

Warning: slight spoilers below

In the previous two series of The Killing, Sarah Lund has faced a stark choice between the conventional happiness provided by a strong family life and her commitment to the role of police detective, one that ultimately alienated everyone around her, leaving her painfully isolated. Viewer reactions to Lund’s professional tenacity have sometimes been divided between admiration (without her, cases wouldn’t have been solved), and criticism for neglecting her family (in particular her son). These reactions have in turn generated some interesting discussion about gender stereotypes, especially as Sofie Gråbøl, the actress playing Lund, has said that the key to her characterisation was ‘acting like a man’.

When we meet Lund at the beginning of Series 3, it looks like she’s opting for happiness: after 25 years on the force she’s completed her fair share of murder investigations, and is moving sideways into a comfortable desk-job at the OPA (Operational Planning and Analysis unit). She’s trying to make time for herself (gardening! cooking! a funky new jumper!) and to repair her relationship with her son Mark. Of course, we know it can’t last – seeing Sarah cook a tasty Stuvet Oksekød doth not a riveting crime series make. And so, when a man’s dismembered body is found by the Copenhagen docks ahead of a visit by the Danish prime minister, it’s clear that she’ll soon be back to her old investigative ways. And when she is, we’re treated to a heady (and topical) brew of big business, politics, kid-napping and murder that’s gripping to watch. I already have a bit of a theory, which I’m writing on a bit of paper to be unfolded only after episode 10…

To be honest, though, I’m a little fearful for Lund. After the traumas sustained in the last two investigations, I’m not sure she can survive a third intact, either physically or mentally. I’m also a bit worried that director Søren Sveistrup will send her off with a bang that’s way too literal for my liking at the close of the series. Lund’s death in service would in many ways be a fitting and logical end to her unswerving dedication to the job, which takes her into dangerous situations and annoys some exceedingly nasty people. But I would really rather that didn’t happen to our girl.

On a lighter note, I settled down on the sofa this evening for a highly enjoyable game of  ‘Forbrydelsen Bingo’. I can report that I put a cross in a grand total of 7 of my boxes. I’ll hang on to my sheet to see if I can cross off the other 5 next week.

Finally … here’s a whole heap of marvellous links for your delectation

Episodes 1 will be repeated on Monday 19. November at 11.25pm, with episode 2 following on Tuesday 20. at 11.25pm. Both are also available on BBC iPlayer.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the beginning of the series, but please try to avoid big spoilers so that we protect the enjoyment of those still to watch 🙂

Update: there are a few spoilers in the comments below, so please look away if you haven’t yet watched!

BBC Radio 4’s ‘Foreign Bodies’ episode guide…with a bit of Mrs. Peabody in #2!

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Mark Lawson’s ‘Foreign Bodies’ series kicked off yesterday with an exploration of two seminal detectives from Belgium –  Hercule Poirot and Jules Maigret. Val McDermid, Andrea Camilleri, P.D. James, Jakob Arjouni and Camilla Lackberg all joined Mark for a fascinating discussion about these two key investigative figures.

Today it was the turn of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Swiss detective Inspector Bärlach, featuring a contribution from your very own Mrs. P… Our discussion took in Dürrenmatt’s links to earlier Swiss crime writer Friedrich Glauser, Dürrenmatt’s exploration of the moral crisis facing Europe following the Holocaust, and his subversion of the detective genre to question the possibility of justice. The crime novels discussed included The Judge and his Hangman (Der Richter und sein Henker, 1950), Suspicion (Der Verdacht, 1951) and The Pledge (Das Verprechen, 1958).

Listings for the first 7 episodes are now up on the ‘Foreign Bodies’ website. They air Monday to Friday on Radio 4 at 13.45, and are then available online. For good measure, there’s an omnibus edition on Friday at 21.00.

Episode 1  Belgium: Hercule Poirot and Jules Maigret (Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon)

Episode 2  Switzerland / Germany: Inspector Bärlach (Friedrich Dürrenmatt)

Image for Inspector Barlach

Episode 3  Czechoslovakia: Lieutenant Boruvka (Josef Skvorecky)

Episode 4  The Netherlands: Commissaris Van Der Valk (Nicolas Freeling)

Episode 5  Sweden: Inspector Martin Beck (Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö)

Episode 6  UK: Commander Dalgliesh / Chief Inspector Wexford (P.D. James and Ruth Rendell)

Episode 7  Sicily: Inspector Rogas (Leonardo Sciascia)

You can also hear Bernard Hepton (who played Toby Esterhase in the BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) begin his sublime Radio 4 reading of Dürrenmatt’s novella The Judge and his Hangman (available until 29 October).

Roseanna, the first of the Martin Beck dramatisations – will air on Radio 4 on Saturday 27 October at 14.30, but if you can’t wait, help yourself to this sneak preview.

Mrs. P’s review of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Pledge is available here.

UPDATE 28 October: Mark Lawson has written an overview article about the ‘Foreign Bodies’ series for The Guardian entitled ‘Crime’s Grand Tour: European Detective Fiction’.

#27 / Leif G.W. Persson, Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End: The Story of a Crime

Posted on by Kat Hall
21

Leif G.W. Persson, Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End: The Story of a Crime, trans. from the Swedish by Paul Norlen (London: Black Swan, 2011 [2002]). An epic crime novel and bravura account of one of Sweden’s greatest unsolved crimes  4 stars

Opening line: The best informant is the one who hasn’t understood the significance of what he has told.

Like Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, this novel opens with an unexplained fall from a tall building in the freezing depths of a Scandinavian winter. In the case of Persson’s Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End, the casualty is a young American, John Krassner, whose death is initially presumed to be suicide, but might well be something more sinister – for how to explain the fact that his shoe hit the ground a good ten seconds after his body?

For a significant portion of the text, the reader might reasonably assume that Krassner’s death is the ‘crime’ referenced in the novel’s subtitle. However, as the narrative unfolds over a sprawling 638 pages, it becomes clear that his demise is linked to a much larger crime – one that took place in Sweden in 1986 and remains unsolved to this day. If you can’t quite remember that event, I’d advise you to stay away from reviews until you’ve finished the book (my reading experience was considerably enhanced by putting two and two together at a relatively late stage – the biggest ‘OMG’ reading moment I’ve had in years). But if you can’t wait, or are looking for illumination after reading the novel, click here…

In common with a number of Swedish crime authors since the 1960s, Persson has a rather jaundiced view of Swedish society and is highly critical of the authorities and the power wielded by the state. The police are depicted as racist or misogynist bunglers, with the Swedish secret police force (Säkerhetspolisen or Säpo) shown in a particularly harsh light. What makes the strength of this critique startling and more than a little interesting is the author’s own long-held position within the Swedish establishment. As the blurb on the inside front cover tells us, Persson has enjoyed an eminent career as ‘Scandinavia’s most renowned criminologist and leading psychological profiler’, as well as being an advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Justice and a professor serving on the National Swedish Police Board. It would be interesting to know how these august bodies reacted to the very negative depictions of the state and its law enforcement agencies within the novel.

One of the few likeable figures in the book is Superintendent Lars Martin Johansson, the ‘honest Swedish cop’ who digs the deepest into Krassner’s death. But even he is only able to discover a portion of the truth: as individual acts collide with one another and fuse with shady political operations in Sweden and beyond, a set of events unfolds whose complexities are beyond the understanding of a lone investigator. In the end, only the reader is provided with a privileged viewpoint in which everything adds up, while being given to understand that no ordinary Swede would ever have a hope of getting near the truth. And of course this is just one possible imagining of those seminal events in 1986 – there are numerous other ways these might have played out.

This is not a crime novel for the faint-hearted: its hundreds of pages, multiple narrative perspectives and complex plotlines require considerable commitment. But once the different strands come together together in the final part the novel, the reader’s efforts are rewarded as the ambition, range and intelligence of the narrative is revealed.  In many ways a political and social history of Sweden since the Second World War, this Kafkaesque narrative tackles big themes (the relation of the individual to the state, loyalty, betrayal, trauma, the precariousness of democracy), but is also rich in satirical humour (look out for ‘Anderson’s Confusion Syndrome’) – and for me was a highly satisfying read.

Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End is the first in a trilogy. The second part has recently been translated into English, entitled Another Time, Another Life.

Mrs. Peabody awards Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End an ambitious and satisfying 4 stars.

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#26 / Mons Kallentoft, Midwinter Sacrifice

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Mons Kallentoft, Midwinter Sacrifice, translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2012 [2007]). An impressive debut and the first in a series featuring talented police investigator Malin Fors  4 stars

Opening line: Love and death are neighbours.

I tend to have an allergic reaction to any cover trumpeting that there’s a new Larsson or Nesbo in town, as nine times out of ten such claims are overblown. However, in the case of the debut novel Midwinter Sacrifice, author Mons Kallentoft shows that he can hold his own in such company at least, with a well-written, page-turner of a narrative, and an impressively-realised female detective.  

Set in the city of Linköping in southern Sweden, where the author was raised, the novel makes good use of a ferociously icy nordic winter and the landscapes of the region – dark forests and frozen plains – to create a lyrical, chilling backdrop for the opening crime: the murder and ritual hanging of a local man, who for much of his life was a social outsider. Malin Fors, a gifted police investigator who struggles to balance a demanding job with her role as a single parent following the break-up of her relationship, is called to the crime scene one cold February morning. Together with her partner Zeke, she begins to piece together the events that led to the murder, in a first-class police procedural that repeatedly makes you want to read on (just one more chapter, honest…).

The elements of this crime novel that I particularly liked were: Malin’s nuanced portrayal as a thirty-something woman dealing with the lifelong consequences of her teenage pregnancy; the thematisation of parenting, and the relationships between parents and children (whether infants, teenagers or adults); the depiction of the rest of the police team; the innovative use of the murder victim’s voice in parts of the narrative (difficult to pull off, but effectively done); and a surprise reference to Douglas Adams’ Life, the Universe and Everything (stylish).

The only aspect of the novel that jarred slightly for me was its ending, which was a little too melodramatic for my taste. However, I’m keen to follow Malin on her next case, in the series’ second novel, Summertime Death, which has also recently appeared in translation. The third novel, Autumn Killing, is out in September, revealing a nice use of seasons to structure the series: spring next, I presume…

You can read an extract from Midwinter Sacrifice here.

Mrs. Peabody awards Midwinter Sacrifice a highly more-ish 4 stars.

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This, that and the other…

Posted on by Kat Hall
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This … is an interview with Jo Nesbo by James Kidd, which appeared in The Independent over the weekend. Topics covered include Anders Breivik, Nesbo’s father and the publication of the old/new Harry Hole novel The Bat. The interview was carried out following Nesbo’s sell-out appearance at the Theakstons / Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in July.

That … is another interview by Kidd (and now I’m really jealous) of Henning Mankell, on the publication of his novel The Shadow Girls (originally published in Sweden in 2001). While not crime fiction, the social critique that’s found in Swedish crime writing in general and Mankell’s works in particular is very much evident in this work.

The other … is a provocative piece by American mystery editor Otto Penzler in Publishers Weekly, entitled ‘Why the Best Mysteries are Written in English’. A number of arguments are put forward by Penzler (albeit not always with total clarity) to justify this grand assertion, and a lively set of responses have now accrued in the comments section, which make for an entertaining read.

Theakston File 3: Camilla Läckberg interview with Mrs. P. (Part 2) on The Hidden Child

Posted on by Kat Hall
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Part 2: In which Camilla Läckberg (CL) and Mrs. Peabody (MP) discuss the author’s fifth novel, The Hidden Child – its origins, its impact, its depiction of wartime Sweden and Norway – as well as the the process of historical research, and why Swedish crime writers are still drawn to the subject of the Second World War.

I was particularly keen to discuss this novel with the author, because it forms part of the corpus for my academic research on Nazi-themed crime novels (crime novels that engage with the Nazi period or its post-war legacies).

SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not yet read The Hidden Child, you might wish to come back to this interview at a later point, as it gives away major details about the plot. 

MP: Can I come on to The Hidden Child, in which you explore the legacy of the wartime past?

CL: They’re starting to film it in August for the cinema. I think it’s going to be great.

MP: I can imagine – it has lots of ingredients that would work very well. So what was it that drew you to the topic, because quite a few Swedish writers and Scandinavian writers do go back to look at the legacy of that past.

CL: Well, it actually started with an email from a reader, who thanked me for the books, and then said, ‘Did you know that there were lots of exciting activities going on in the area [around Fjällbacka, the coastal village north of Göteborg where the novels are set] during the Second World War? And I was like, ‘no, I never heard about that’. So I started doing some research and I found out about the smuggling, and the boats going back and forth [between Sweden and Nazi-occupied Norway], people fleeing over the border… And I thought ‘Wow!’, and the ideas started coming. Also, when I’d started writing about Elsy [Erica’s mother], who was already dead in the first book, I only knew that she had been cold with her daughters, but I didn’t know why. After four books, I still didn’t have a clue why. But when I started researching and started working on the idea of ‘the hidden child’, it literally dropped in my lap – Elsy’s whole story. It was one of those magical moments you have as a writer, when it’s like someone is telling you … I suddenly knew everything about  what had happened to her; why she was the way she was. That was fantastic. So that book is very special to me for that reason, because I was basically ‘told’ Erica’s mother’s story.

MP: And it’s a very moving book, I think, as well.

CL:  I had another very moving moment when it came to that book, actually. A year after it had come out in Sweden, I was doing a photo shoot for a cover, and there was this make-up artist, a woman who was around forty, forty-five. When we were alone for a few minutes, she asked me ‘How did you do your research into the Norwegian resistance and the people at Grini [Nazi concentration camp in Norway that held a number of political prisoners]? Did you know anyone who was there?’ No I didn’t; I researched through books and accounts that were on the internet by people who were there, but I hadn’t met one. And then she told me that her mother was from Norway: she had been part of the Norwegian resistance during World War Two, had fled from Norway, ended up in Sweden, and had never talked about her experiences with her children. But when she had read The Hidden Child, she got the children together and said, ‘read this, this is my story’. And then she talked about it: she was 19 when she was in the resistance and was put in Grini …. That was a special moment, because you guess so much. When you’ve done your research you have to guess a lot and fill in the blanks from your own fantasy. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you probably don’t, but those moments when you understand ‘I got that right’ – that’s fantastic.

MP: Can I ask you about the depiction of the main characters and their relation to the conflict? Because I think that you do something very interesting there – there’s a sort of twist.

CL: Hmmm. What do I do?!

MP: Well, you have a murder victim, who is supposedly a Norwegian resistance fighter, who then turns out to have a very different background – his father was an SS-officer and he also served in Grini. And the murderer is the Swedish resistance fighter, who was a prisoner in the camp. So it seems to me that there’s something complex going on there in terms of how you’re looking at the categories of ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’…

CL: It’s all about playing with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’; who’s ‘good’ and who’s ‘bad’? If you do good your whole life, can that compensate for then doing something bad once in your life? And on the other hand, if you’ve done a lot of bad things, can you compensate by leaving them behind, or do you have to carry them with you? Can you turn over a new leaf? I love playing with those things. And also when it comes to murderers, I think it’s so much more interesting when good people do bad things, than when bad people do bad things. What can trigger a basically good person to do something bad? And that’s so much the case in that book – he [the murderer] has lived his whole life doing good things… But that’s also a question: for whom did he do those things? Was it for his own ego or was it out of true conviction? You can always play with those things as well.

MP: It seemed to me that there was a real complexity about the position of the victim and the perpetrator / the murderer and the victim. There’s a trading of places and what you end up with is very much a grey on grey [CL: yes], rather than a black and white morality [CL: yes], which leaves some questions in the mind of the reader… Were you looking for that complexity?

CL: Yes, hmmm, it’s the same thing again [see CL’s comments in part 1 about the inclusion of ‘issues’ in her crime novels]. I don’t think about it when I write it. I just … go along and tell the story. It’s only afterwards that I can see the patterns. It’s like when I wrote The Stonecutter: I wrote the whole book, and when I read the manuscript through to start editing, I was like ‘oh my goodness, there’s a theme in here that I didn’t know was here’ – about what makes a good mother and motherhood. I don’t realise those things while I write. But I guess it’s part of the structure for the book. It’s like scaffolding and I don’t see the scaffolding until I take a few steps back and look at the whole.

Original Swedish cover/title (translates as The German Child)

MP: When you were writing about this controversial past in The Hidden Child  – one that still has resonance in the present – were you ever anxious? You’re obviously portraying something that is quite delicate. Was there a particular kind of caution when dealing with that subject matter, or did you just dive in?

CL: Just dove in, I think. I don’t think there’s anything that I write about that I’m afraid of approaching. The only thing I’m afraid of writing is sex scenes. That’s mainly because I picture my mother and my mother-in-law reading the books and their imagination running wild, so I can’t bring myself to do it! But that’s the only thing that I’m afraid of writing.

MP: It seems like another key theme in that novel was one of trauma: Elsy’s trauma and then the way that trauma has knock-on effects and is communicated down a generation…

CL: I think that theme is in all my books, and especially the eighth one, The Angel Maker. Do you know what an ‘angel maker’ is? It was a Swedish term common in Norway and Denmark as well, that described women in the late 1800s and early 1900s…. If you had a child out of wedlock, and you couldn’t take care of it, you could pay a woman a lump sum to take the baby, and what happened sometimes was that the women thought, ‘OK, I’ve got the money and this baby is only going to cost me from this point on…’. So there are a few court cases where women were found to have killed eight or ten babies. I start the story with a woman who is an ‘angel maker’ being arrested and they discover bodies buried in the ground in the basement. And that then follows as a dark cloud over her daughter, over her grand-daughter and the next generation after that. I love that theme; it recurs in my books.

MP: You’re always very concerned about the human implications of acts, whether of criminal acts or…

CL:  It’s all about the characters for me. It’s the characters that make the crime plot, not the other way around. I don’t form the crime plot and then add the characters. I have a murderer and a motive and then I make the characters start doing things and that creates the plot.

MP: You mentioned some of the research that you undertook for The Hidden Child. Did you look at historical studies?

CL: I borrowed books about the Second World War in the area, because that’s what I was interested in. And then of course I always have to do research depending on where the story takes me. The story took me to Grini, and then it took me on the trains to the concentration camps in Germany, so then I had to do research about the camps and ended up with the ‘white buses’ going to Sweden [programme set up in 1945 by the Swedish Red Cross and Danish government to transport concentration camp inmates from Nazi-controlled areas to Sweden]. So I had to do more and more. I don’t do this amount of research, then I’m done and I write the book. I start at one end and then I discover that ‘I don’t know anything about the part I’m going to write now – I’m going to do some research’. So it’s a continuous process all through the book.

MP: When you’re dealing with that kind of historical event, is historical authenticity important?

CL: Well, I’m not a historian, so I will never get it absolutely right. If I were to get it absolutely right I’d spend five years doing research for every book… And then I’d probably write a thesis instead which would be really boring, compared to a crime novel [ironic laughter from Mrs. P, who once spent five years writing a boring thesis]. I mean I do think that I get it pretty right, but I can’t say that I’ve got all the details right.

MP: But again you were talking earlier about scaffolding in terms of plot; there’s historical scaffolding as well that you can make sure…

CL: I make some markers, and I drop some details, and I let the reader fill in the blanks. I don’t have to describe every detail of what a person was wearing in the 1800s. I can mention a few details; I can mention a dinner; but I don’t have to describe that in the 1800s they were eating this and this and this. But I also happen to have a father-in-law who’s a historian, so I always give him the manuscript and say, ‘please come back to me when you’ve read it and we can discuss the details’. So he always has a lot of good input.

MP: That’s very handy.

CL: Yes, I know! A police officer husband and a historian father-in-law: that’s two for the price of one. If only my mother-in-law had been a forensics expert. That would have been perfect!

MP: One last question… I’m really interested that there are lots of Scandinavian writers who are still bringing in the legacy of the Second World War into their crime novels. Is that legacy still a point of public discussion in Sweden? For example, that there were Swedish nationals who went to fight for the Germans.

CL: It’s brought up once in a while and the fact that we were not neutral is now established. We don’t pretend that we were neutral any more. And also I think there are several reasons why it keeps coming back: it’s a very fascinating war, and it’s also visually a very striking war – for example, the swastika symbol. So it’s easy to picture it. And it was so big in every way. I think that intrigues us as crime writers, because it’s the epitome of human evil. I mean, it’s evil. And also I think it’s still up for debate because of the fact that we now have – and I think it’s a disgrace – a nationalist party in Sweden as part of the government [the Sverigedemokraterna or Sweden Democrats].  And I’m so embarrassed that people actually voted for them. I’m horrified that we’re starting to forget. History repeats itself.

21 July 2012 in the Library, Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate.

Extra links:

Part 1 of this interview

Camilla Läckberg’s website

Jo Nesbo interview with Mark Lawson in which he discusses his family’s wartime past and its impact on the Harry Hole novel The Redbreast

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Theakston File 2: Camilla Läckberg interview with Mrs. Peabody (Part 1)

Posted on by Kat Hall
16

Part 1: In which Camilla Läckberg (CL) and Mrs. Peabody (MP) discuss reasons for writing crime fiction, the flexibility of the genre, secrets from the past, bad guys getting their comeuppance, fusing the domestic with the grisly, and favourite authors.

Camilla Läckberg (copyright of the author)

MP: So if it’s alright with you, I’ll start by asking some general questions. What was it that drew you to crime fiction in particular?

CL: I never even thought about writing anything else. I’ve always been in love with crime fiction ever since I was little, so if I was ever going to write, it was going to be crime fiction.

MP: So you had a history of reading crime fiction?

CL: Oh yes. It started when I was seven with finding Death on the Nile on my father’s bookshelf. I absolutely fell in love with the Agatha Christie books, so I read all those, and I continued on, reading both crime fiction for youth, like the Enid Blyton books, but also more adult crime fiction.

MP: And was it mainly British and American crime fiction?

CL: Mainly British; some American writers as well, but mainly British. I always loved the British school of crime writing … And I’m not only saying that because I’m here!

MP: No, no, understood! Do you think that the crime genre offers you particular opportunities as a writer? I mean I’m coming at the question in a slightly different way, but what is it about the genre that attracted you – not as a fan, but as a writer?

CL: Well, I’m going to steal a quote from a Swedish colleague of mine, Håkan Nesser [author of the Van Veeteran and the Barbarotti crime series]. He once said that a murder is such a wonderful hook to hang a story on – because you have this natural element of drama in the whodunit question, but then you can add everything else that there is in other kinds of literature: you can add love, and everyday life, and humour, and sex … You can add anything. So in my world, crime fiction has more, because you can add all that in as well, and have a very exciting drama going on.

MP: So it’s formula fiction, but you’re saying that there is a flexibility as well…

CL: Yes, that’s why we [authors] all have different styles; we approach the task of writing crime fiction in different ways. I mean, we’re not much alike in the way that we tell our stories.

MP: Yes, that’s true – there’s lots of variety. One thing I’ve noticed is that many of your novels unearth a long-hidden secret from the past. Was that always an important theme for you, or was that something that simply developed as the series went on? I think there are four or five of your novels where you see this…

CL: Yes, actually it’s in all the novels. I did it that way in the first story, and then I did it again in the second and the third, and by that time I started realising that ‘oh! there’s a pattern here’. I probably like to tell a story this way, and when I myself try to analyse why, I think it’s because to me, even if you look at real crime, it’s really difficult to understand it and to explain it just by looking at the present. You always have to go back, to look at the person who did it, and how his or her life was. How was the upbringing, how was the childhood, the parents? Maybe you have to go back to the grandparents or even further back to understand the sequence of events that led up to the moment where someone was capable of doing that. And that’s why I tell my stories this way, because I want to explain the motive and the murderer and what happens. And in doing that I have to go back in time. But it varies how far back I need to go.

MP: Yes, and sometimes you’re going back and then bringing in a historical element as well…

CL: Yes.

MP: … which is interesting. Is there a ‘return of the repressed’ idea in there as well? The idea that there might be a secret in the past that people have been silent about…

CL: I think secrets are more common than we think. Most people have secrets. They’re big or they’re small or they’re in-between, but most people have secrets. There are things we don’t tell our husbands or wives or parents or children or friends or that we don’t tell at work. We keep secrets. And sometimes that’s OK and works out, but sometimes that has consequences. A small secret can turn into a big one…

The first novel in the series

MP: And is justice another theme that you’re interested in? I mean the way that you’re describing it, you’re very, very interested in the ‘why’, in the motivation, in looking at the psychology that leads up to the crime. Is justice a concern as well – what happens afterwards?

CL: Yes, I don’t like it when the bad guy gets away. I think there should be a punishment. I’m a bit Greek that way with the whole revenge thing. I do like a happy ending, which in crime fiction is that the killer is caught and punished. I don’t like having endings where the killer gets away. That doesn’t sit well with me.

MP: So there needs to be a proper closure at the end of the novel?

CL: Yes. I can still get annoyed with real life cases when you know that the bad guy … like the OJ Simpson case. That really annoys me. It disturbs the hell out of me. I don’t like that in my books either.

MP: Can I ask you a little about your main protagonists Erica and Patrik? I think that’s such a clever pairing, because they give you so much flexibility – having Patrik as a formal police investigator alongside Erica, who has a connection to crime through her writing, but is a kind of amateur sleuth. Did she come first or did you plan the two of them together?

CL: No, the thing was that I didn’t want to write a police novel, because I thought there are so many crime books with police investigations, so I wanted to do something different. And then I thought, I want to have a woman as a heroine, and I thought about what kind of job she could have so she could go around investigating murders. And a lot of jobs were already taken or I didn’t know anything about them, so an author came as a natural idea; that’s how I created her. But when I started writing about her, I quickly discovered that it’s pretty darn hard to write about someone not connected to the police, to police investigations, so I thought, hmmm, I need to create some kind of police officer here. And then a love interest was the kind of obvious thing to think of. So from the beginning – I love it now – but from the beginning it was a little bit with regret that I … that I thought I have to include police officers as well. But I love it now. I love my police officers and I love Erica and Patrik, so I’m happy it turned out that way … but it wasn’t meant to be from the beginning.

MP: No, but you’ve created something unusual there…

CL: I’ve included so much of their everyday life, which was taking a risk, because I didn’t know if people would like to hear about the little things happening in their life, which are big things – getting married, having children – but it’s not unusual drama; it’s drama we all have.

MP: And that was actually my next question. They are depicted as a very ordinary couple; they have universal problems of how to deal with childcare, of how Erica can keep her career on track, and you tackle the difficult subject of postnatal depression.

CL: Which I had myself, so that’s why I wrote about it.

MP: So did you want to incorporate that to raise awareness?

CL: The funny thing is that, no, I never….. I wish I could say, oh, I want to write about this cause or want to change society or want to make people aware of something, but I really don’t – it’s a side-effect. I’m happy when it happens, but I can’t write my books with an agenda. I tell a story, and as a side-effect my own experiences, my own political views and things like that will absolutely appear in the books, but it’s not my agenda. My agenda is to tell a good story and to entertain the reader. Everything else comes as a side-effect, actually.

MP: But at the same time, I was very struck when I first read your work… Um, a lot of women, a lot of female readers will connect with that experience…

CL: And I love when that happens – I love that. I still have mothers coming up to me on the street and saying, thank God I read your book when I had my baby, because I thought I was the only one who felt like this. I love that, but it’s not my agenda. What I do is write about things that are important to me, and that I’ve experienced, that have really had an impact on me, and of course those will also be things that are meaningful to other people, since I’m not unique, whatever my mother tells me! And because I write so much better when I write about things that I’ve experienced, or that upset me or concern me … That’s why I don’t write about global terrorism or spies. Of course I think it’s horrible when there are terrorist acts, but what gets me going is husbands beating their wives, or children not being taken care of – that’s the thing that’s closest to my heart and that’s what I write about.

MP: I understand. One thing I found interesting as well when I first read your books was the strong presence of ‘the domestic’ on the one hand, through Erica and Patrik’s home life, but then, some very explicit descriptions of corpses on the other [laughter] – there is a contrast between those two elements in the books that’s quite striking. And I felt that you were doing something new there…

CL: I think that is the exact success factor of the books: the relationship between Erica and Patrik, and the fact that it’s a mix between the ordinary drama of everyday life and the extraordinary drama of a crime investigation. I think it’s that contrast. And it’s also the contrast between, on the one hand, a scene with a corpse or a very dark scene with a mother grieving her child, and then on the next page it’s Melberg being stupid, and you can laugh a little bit, so it’s all about throwing the reader between different emotions.

MP: And in some ways you might think there’s a risk in doing that as a writer, because those elements are so contrasting, but it really works…

CL: I didn’t sit down and plan to write this kind of crime fiction. I just started writing something the way I would have liked to read it. I write books for one reader and that’s me. I’m very selfish that way. I just write the kind of book I would have loved to read, according to my taste, and it so happens that there are other people who have the same taste. And it was something quite new … It had to do a little bit with the Elizabeth George books. I think I probably got a little inspired there, because I’ve always loved Elizabeth George books. She’s got great crime plots, but the reason why I kept reading them was to see what would happen to Lord Lynley and Lady Helen. So I wanted a strong story about people that you wanted to follow through the books.

MP: Are there any Swedish authors who’ve influenced you or have your main influences come from outside Scandinavia?

CL: It’s difficult for me to say who’s influenced me or not, because I’ve read so … I mean I was such a book nerd when I was growing up and I still am, and 80% of my reading is crime fiction, so I’ve just always read tons and tons and tons of crime fiction, and I’ve probably picked up little pieces here and there from everybody. So it’s hard for me to say specific authors that I’ve been inspired by.

MP: Or are there any that you particularly like at the moment?

CL: Well of the Swedish ones, yes, I’ve got a few favourites: Åsa Larsson for example [author of the Rebecka Martinsson series], and Mari Jungstedt [author of the Knutas / Berg series]. I like Håkan Nesser – he’s fantastic, especially the Barbarotti books. I’m not that keen on Mankell. I loved the first books but then I got a little bit tired of Wallander always being tired and depressed. But I think my number one favourite is probably Åsa Larsson. I think she’s a fantastic writer.

21 July 2012 in the Library, Old Swan Hotel, Harrogate.

Extra links:

Camilla Läckberg’s top 10 Swedish crime recommendations.

Camilla Läckberg’s website

Sarah at Crimepieces also had a very interesting interview with Camilla at Harrogate.

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The Theakston Files

Posted on by Kat Hall
8

I’m just back from four days at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which, as ever, was a wonderful mixture of interviews, panel discussions and a crime-writing knees-up.

Our first evening was very special: we saw Colin Dexter, creator of the Inspector Morse series, honoured with the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction award, and ‘tartan noir’ writer Denise Mina win the Crime Novel of the Year Award for her ‘hugely atmospheric and haunting book’, The End of the Wasp Season.   

Scene of the crime: the ‘chalk outline’ and ‘blood splatter’ that greeted us on arrival at Harrogate Station

As ever, there were a bewildering number of fascinating and (in some cases controversial) sessions to attend over the following three days. Karen from Euro Crime was spotted quietly tapping away on her laptop in the audience, and her notes on a variety of events, including ‘America’s Got Talent’, ‘Writing for Your Life’, ‘Drawing the Line’, ‘Crime in Another Dimension’, and the John Connolly interview are available here. Many thanks, Karen!

This lucky blogger was given the chance to interview four outstanding crime writers –Arne Dahl (Sweden), Camilla Läckberg (Sweden), Stuart Neville (Northern Ireland) and Jason Webster (UK/Spain) – and also had interesting chats with authors Liza Marklund (Sweden), Margie Orford (South Africa) and Antonio Hill (Spain). Norwegian publishing sensation Jo Nesbø‘s wide-ranging discussion with Mark Lawson completed a very satisfying festival that showcased the best of international crime fiction.    

I’ll shortly be posting a series of ‘Theakston Files’ (a nod there to one of my favourite TV detectives), with interview transcripts and notes from the Nesbø session. Hope you enjoy!