Review of The Abominable Man by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (1971, Harper)

Sweden in the early 1970s. A senior police office is killed with a bayonet in his hospital room. The case is dealt with by Martin Beck, the head of the national murder squad, and his team. Nyland was a disagreeable character and there are plenty of people likely to hold grudges, but they quickly hone in on one. But as well as being deadly dangerous, he seems to have little to lose.

The seventh book in the series, the tale is one of police brutality, lack of accountability, and revenge, providing as usual a social commentary on an aspect of Swedish life. The plot is fairly linear with little mystery, more focused on the reason for the attack and the chase to apprehend. And the ending is very abrupt with no wrapping up or examination of the fallout. In my view, while still a good read, it’s the weakest in the series so far.

Review of Black Cross by Greg Iles (1995, Harper)

January 1944. The Allies are preparing for to cross the Channel but there are rumours that the Nazis have a deadly surprise for them – Sarin and Soman gases, both much more deadly than anything the Allies have in their armoury. It is being developed and tested in Totenhausen, a Nazi camp that conducts medical experiments to test and develop the toxic gases. Churchill and the head of SOE, Duff Smith, hatch a plan to halt the use of the gases by bluffing the Germans into thinking that the Allies have the capability to exact revenge at scale. It involves smuggling their own experimental, unstable supply of Sarin into Germany and releasing it at Totenhausen. It will, however, kill both the concentration camp inmates as well as their captors. Churchill reasons that the inmates will die anyway and their sacrifice will save tens of thousands of lives. Eisenhower is set against the mission, but Churchill is convinced it is necessary. One of the men picked for the secret job, Jonas Stern, a Zionist guerilla fighter from Palestine, is prepared to sacrifice his own people for the greater good; the other Mark McConnell, an American pacifist and poisonous gas expert, is much more reluctant to participate in mass murder. They are flown into Northern Germany, where from the start their mission runs into trouble, leaving the two men to improvise, their moral dilemmas multiplying as they seek a way to destroy the camp, save as many inmates as possible, and steal secrets, knowing that the chances of success and escape are diminishing with each hour they are there.

Black Cross is a thriller set at the start of 1944 involving a secret Allied mission into Germany to destroy a camp that is producing and testing deadly poisonous gases. The action adventure of infiltrating Nazi Germany to perform a mission is given a twist through a series of moral dilemmas and Sophie’s choices and the selection of the two men selected to undertake the task. Mark McConnell is a pacifist and conscientious objector who is asked to perform mass murder for the greater good. Jonas Stern is a German Zionist who has no qualms using violence for political ends, but is formerly local to the area and may know people in the camp they are to destroy. Their inside agent is a nurse dedicated to saving lives, not taking them. The three of them are persuaded that since all the inmates are to die in medical experiments anyway, hastening their demise for liberation of the continent is the right thing to do. But executing the plan in practice, especially when you’re in situ and things are not going as hoped, is fraught. Iles spends the first part of the book patiently setting the scene, lining up the characters, building their relationships, and creating empathy for the camp inmates. Once McConnell and Stern are in Germany the pace shifts gears and he quickly ratchets up the tension. It all seems a little far-fetched but the story hook, dilemmas, characters, and twist and turns keep the pages turning with no let up. The result is a thought provoking action thriller, though the moral aspect seemed to get a little lost towards the end, with none of the characters reflecting in any depth on whether they’d pursued the right course of action and its consequences.

Review of The Bomber by Liza Marklund (1998, Pocket Books)

A few months before Stockholm is due to host the Olympics a bomb explodes destroying one of the stands. Newly promoted to senior editor on the crime desk at a national tabloid paper, Annika Bengtzon mobilises her team to cover the story with her leading from the front. Using her contacts and shameless chasing leads she manages to get scoops on rival newspapers. But not all of her team are happy with her rapid promotion and seem keen to sabotage her efforts. Moreover, she’s finding it difficult to balance the long hours with her home life and two young children in the days leading up to Christmas. Nonetheless, she’s determined to try and identify The Bomber before anyone else and land the big story.

The Bomber was the first book published in the Annika Bengtzon series (the fourth chronologically) that follows the work of a crime reporter located in Stockholm. In this initial outing, Annika is struggling to balance home life and kids with promotion to head of the crime desk and investigating a major bombing incident at the main Olympic stadium. The story is as much about her trying to juggle the different roles while dealing with difficult colleagues who are undermining and sabotaging her efforts, keeping her husband on side, and coping with the stress, as it is about the investigation into the bombing. Marklund keeps the story and drama moving forward as Bengtzon battles on all fronts and seemingly keeps pace with the police’s efforts to uncover the bomber. It’s clear that she knows her newsrooms and the politics of running newspaper and the mechanics of hunting stories. The storytelling is pretty workman-like and the characterization a little thin at times, though it’s appeal is its plot-driven nature. I wasn’t really convinced about perpetrator or their backstory or the denouement, though the pages kept turning all the way to the end.

Review of Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum (1996, Swedish; 2003 English; Vintage)

Six year old Ragnhild is walking home in a small village where everybody seems to know everybody else when a van stops and the driver offers her a lift. At first unsure, she decides to climb into the van. Six hours later, her mother is frantic and half the local community are out searching. What they discover, however, is the naked body of a teenage girl near to a local tarn. Chief Inspector Sejer begins an investigation with Skarre, a younger cop working his first murder. Nobody seems to have a bad word to say about Annie Holland, though they acknowledge that she had changed over the last few months, becoming withdrawn, leaving the local handball team, and running for miles. Sejer and Skarre systematic work their way through interviewing all the local families, but there are few leads. The more they hunt, the more they discover about the lives of inhabitants and their various tragedies – family disputes and untimely deaths – but they don’t seem to warrant the death of Annie.

Don’t Look Back is the second book in the Inspector Sejer series set in rural Norway. In this outing, Sejer starts by investigating the disappearance of a six year old girl, but soon finds himself in charge of a murder investigation. Annie Holland was a fit fifteen year old, obsessed with running, who had become withdrawn over the past few months and was in an on-off relationship with her boyfriend. She was well liked by neighbours and had baby sat for almost every family on her road. Everyone seems surprised when she is found lying naked next to a tarn having been drowned. Fossum charts Sejer’s investigation as he and his younger sidekick, Skarre, try to unearth clues that will lead to her killer. As with Sjowall and Wahloo’s Beck series, there is an everyday realism to the investigation, setting out the patient, persistent footwork without melodrama or invented tension. The characters all feel real, living ordinary lives tainted by the various issues they have to face. Fossum does a nice job of keeping the story moving with engaging prose and manoeuvring various characters into and out of frame. Even to the last part of the book I was unsure who the murderer was and the story builds to a satisfying denouement.

Review of Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1970, Harper)

Viktor Palmgren, a rich industrialist, is having dinner with a small group of colleagues and their partners at the Savoy Hotel in Malmo when a man enters the restaurant, shoots him in the head, climbs out of a window, and disappears. The police are slow to react and by the time they arrive the man is long gone. Given Palmgren’s standing and overseas connections, political pressure is applied to the police for a quick resolution. With no result in sight, the national police chief turns to Martin Beck, head of the homicide division in Stockholm. Beck heads to Malmo, but there are few leads to follow. With little other option he starts to place pressure on Palmgren’s dinner guests in the hope that they can remember anything that might help, or better still make themselves into a viable suspect.

Murder at the Savoy is the sixth book in the Martin Beck series set in Sweden in the 1960s/70s. In this outing Beck is called in to help investigate the assassination of a high profile industrialist, killed while he is eating dinner at the Savoy Hotel in Malmo. The industrialist has no shortage of potential enemies given his various business enterprises and ruthless pursuit of profit. However, Beck and his colleagues have few clues to pursue and struggle to make headway. The attraction of the Beck series is its subtle social commentary on the Sweden’s social project and the realism of the characters and procedural elements. Beck and his colleagues are very ordinary people, and there is no melodrama, no plot devices, and no larger-than-life characters to ‘lift’ the story or add tension. Instead, the tales are told in an under-stated way focusing on how the police go about their business (and make mistakes, sometimes get lucky), the interactions between them, and how the crime sits in the context of Swedish society. This gives the story a humdrum, everyday feel, and this I think is the beauty of the series. The resolution to this outing is nicely satisfying, in the main because it is so straightforward, unadorned and arrived at via persistence, luck and muddling through.

Review of The Blood Spilt by Asa Larsson (2008, Penguin; 2004 Swedish)

Rebecka Martinsson is still traumatised from her last visit home to Kiruna in northern Sweden when she ended up fighting for her life. Her law firm has retained her services, but has her on light duties. When the firm is approached by a set of churches in Kiruna for legal services one of the partners thinks its opportunity to aid Rebecka’s rehabilitation. She journeys home with her boss, planning to stay on for a few days after the Church business is conducted. When they arrive, however, they find the Church is reeling from the murder of one of their women priests. A staunch feminist, Mildred Nilsson had managed to polarise the community with her self-defence classes for women, an all-female Bible study group, and establishing a church fund to protect the local she-wolf from being hunted. The local police are not short of potential suspects, but they are short of any evidence. Rebecka unearths a fresh lead, handing it over to the police and hoping it’s the end of her involvement in the case.

The Blood Spilt is the second book in the Rebecka Martinsson series set in northern Sweden. Martinsson is a corporate lawyer with mental health issues after an encounter that left three people dead. In this outing, she travels back home two years after the traumatic events of the first book, still licking her wounds and trying to get her life back on track. She stays in an off-the-track bed-and-breakfast, visits her grandmother’s house, and makes friends with a teenage boy who has a mental disability. She has a bit of work to do for a local church, but that is quickly concluded. The local community is reeling from the death of female priest and Rebecka discovers some evidence and passes it on to the police, but as far as she’s concerned that’s the end of her involvement. However, she has an unfortunate habit of crossing paths with murderers. There’s a good sense of place, the characterisation well drawn, and portrayal of the complex web of connections and local rivalries is nicely done. The investigation into the death of the priest is the main thread of the story, but there are a couple of subplots relating to Rebecka’s personal life and the journey of a she-wolf. While nicely written, the latter added little to the story and was a bit of a distraction. Martinsson builds the tension well and the final section of the book has a couple of chilling climaxes, and a couple of the events made me quite annoyed (but not in negative way) in terms of how they turned out (they just had a powerful affective punch). Overall, an engaging read that left me worrying about what trauma Larsson will put Rebecka through in future books.

Review of Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten (1998, Swedish; 2003, English; Soho Crime)

Richard von Hecht, a rich businessman, falls to his death from his apartment balcony, landing a few yards away from his wife and son. The Göteborg police are called, but the initial prognosis is suicide. The preliminary investigation though indicates foul play and the police start the process of discovering the identity of the killer. Inspector Irene Huss is part of the team, a former national judo champion who is happily married with twin teenage daughters. Her instinct is that it's a family matter and the police’s probing reveals some skeletons in the closet, but a bombing exploding at the man’s office suggests that there might be more to the case. Attention is soon focused on a well-known local criminal and a chapter of Hells Angels, but their relationship to the family is not clear and everyone seems to have something to hide.

Detective Inspector Huss is the first in a ten book police procedural series set in Göteborg, Sweden. While the title focuses attention on Huss, the investigation into the death of a rich businessman is very much a team affair conducted by a set of inspectors under the guidance of a superintendent.  The story then is as much about the dynamics of the team and general police work as it is about solving the murder of Richard von Hecht. The case itself is a little bit of slow burner, gaining pace and tension as it unfolds as various elements are uncovered and those connected to the case manoeuvre to try and protect their interests. Tursten does a nice job of spinning in blinds and feints and keeping a number of potential suspects in the frame, revealing family secrets and adding in an intriguing connection to organized crime. The team-driven investigation and the realism and mundanity of the procedural elements and cop’s lives reminded me of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo’s Detective Martin Beck series. One thing that seemed a little odd is that the team seems to consist entirely of inspectors that are all frontline investigators with no lower ranked personnel seemingly involved; that jarred with the seeming realism otherwise. Also at times the prose was somewhat clunky; I’m not sure if that was a translation issue or a feature of the original text. Otherwise, this was an engaging and entertaining read and I intend to try the second in the series.

Review of Clinch by Martin Holmen (2015, Pushkin Vertigo)

Winter, Stockholm, 1932. Ex-boxer Harry Kvist makes his living as a debt collector, recovering items not yet paid for or the outstanding balance. Violence is his preferred method of persuasion, often hitting first and asking questions after. It’s a marginal existence, but he manages to get by. As the first snow of the season falls he takes a job recovering an outstanding balance of a car sale from a man named Zetterberg. Harry leaves his mark a heap on the floor, but very much alive. The following day he’s arrested by the police for murder. A few hours later he’s released on the basis of witness testimony, though he’s still in a person of interest. A prostitute who he spoke to when he was casing Zetterberg’s apartment building can validate his alibi – that he’d left the before the time the murder was committed – but she has disappeared. Harry sets out to find her in the underbelly of the city, hooking up on the way with an ex-film star intent on slumming it with a brawler.

Harry Kvist is a perfectly cast anti-hero. A sailor turned champion boxer, turned debt collector who sometimes drinks too much to forget the death of his daughter. He has a preference for sex with men, cruising Stockholm’s parks and shady bars, but will settle for a woman. And he has no problem using violence to get answers to his questions, whether woman, child or man, often leading with his fists first and asking afterwards. And he doesn’t mind if there are a couple of collateral deaths along the way. In this opening book in a trilogy, it’s the winter of 1932, and Harry has been framed for murder, with a man he has just visited in order to collect a debt found dead shortly afterwards. Initially arrested, then freed by witness testimony though still a person of interest, Harry sets about trying to clear his name and determine who is setting him up. He goes about this task with grim bloody-mindedness, hooking up with a fading but rich ex-film star and drug addict who seems glad to be slumming it with a once-renowned boxer. With its noir-ish styling, storytelling and atmosphere, aided by the Swedish winter and the contrast of poverty and riches, Holmen charts Harry’s journey. It’s fairly grim in places, and Harry tests the limit of the ‘hero’ part of ‘anti-hero’, but it’s an engaging and compelling read that is nicely plotted. Overall, a taut slice of Swedish noir and I’m looking forward to the next instalment.

Review of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (Abacus, 2009 Swedish, 2012 English)

Allan Karlsson never wanted a hundredth birthday party with the mayor and local press, so an hour before the event he climbs out of the window and wanders into town in his slippers. He finds himself at the bus station where he buys a ticket to get on the first bus. While he waits a young man asks him to mind his suitcase while he goes to the toilet. When the bus comes before the man returns, Allan gets on, taking the suitcase with him. And so his adventure starts, having taken fifty million kroner from a criminal gang. It soon involves a couple of murders and an elephant. But Allan is used to escapades and taking things in his stride.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a comic crime caper meets Forrest Gump told through three strands that eventually meet at the denouement. The first strand follows Allan’s escape from an old people’s home on the day of his hundredth birthday and subsequent adventure involving a suitcase of cash, a career thief, a criminal gang, an eternal student turned hot-dog seller, a reclusive woman and her elephant, and a couple of murders. The second tracks the hunt for Allan by a police detective and prosecutor who are hampered by incompetence and vanity, and a criminal boss who has dim-witted accomplices. The third maps out Allan’s life, which has involved a couple of journey’s around the world, meeting several world leaders, several incarcerations, and key contributions to the nuclear age. The concept is a nice one and the story starts out well, with a strong hook and a lightly comic touch. Comic crime capers are usually held together with plot devices, with the humour, pace and larger-than-life characters papering over the unlikely twists and turns. Allan is a wonderful character that rejects politics and religion and has a devil-may-care attitude to life, however, he cannot quite compensate for the creakiness of the plot, especially towards the end, when unlikely and silly occurrences are substituted for the absurd. Moreover, the humour becomes a bit tedious after a while. The result is a tale that starts well, but cannot sustain the feel-good formula to the conclusion.

Review of A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (Atria Books, 2012)

Ove has never been the life and soul of a party – in fact, he’s been withdrawn, taciturn, irritable and abrasive most of his life. Ove has high principles and a short fuse. He expects things to be done correctly, conducts daily neighbourhood inspections, and badgers his fellow residents and the local council if things don’t meet his exacting standards. And he has no time for people who do not drive a Saab or can’t fix anything they own. Now aged 59, his beloved wife, Sonja, is dead and he’s been let go from his job. He just wants to end it all and join her. His new neighbours and a stray cat, however, have other ideas, disrupting his plans and his ordered life. Pregnant Parvaneh, husband Patrick and their two young children are immune to Ove’s curmudgeonly ways and slowly inveigle their way into his life – borrowing ladders, seeking lifts to hospital and driving lessons, and reading stories. The cat hangs around his house seeking shelter from a local bully with a vicious little dog. Try as he might, Ove can neither end it all, nor get his neighbours or council officials to follow or enforce the Resident Association rules. Moreover, he can’t help doing good deeds, in part because he gets so frustrated with other people making a hames of whatever it is they are doing, though he moans and despairs all the while. Despite his wishes, his bitterness and crankiness seem to finally be becoming appreciated by more than his wife, who always saw in him qualities that no-one else could. Backman tells Ove’s story by focusing on the few weeks from when Parvaneh and her family move into street, interspersed with key moments in his life. The tale is essentially an in-depth character study, peeling back the layers to reveal what made the man, and detailing how his life and those of his neighbours becomes transformed. It’s a sort of a late coming-of-age/putting life back-on-track story that’s engaging, gently humorous, a bit sentimental, and heart-warming. I found it an enjoyable read on the lead up to Christmas.

Review of The Dying Detective by Leif G.W. Persson (2016, English; 2010 Swedish)

Former police chief Lars Martin Johansson still enjoys street food. When he stops for a hotdog what saves his life is the presence of a number of police officers. Suffering a massive stroke he is rushed to hospital. While recovering his neurologist tells him about the rape and murder of a nine year old girl that took place twenty five years ago. The neurologist’s father was a priest who before he died told his daughter that a parishioner had passed on her suspicions concerning the killer, though he hadn't told the identity to the daughter. The case has never been solved. From his hospital bed, Johansson starts to investigate, soon discovering that the original investigation had been botched from the start. Moreover, due to a new twenty five statute of limitations, even if he identified the perpetrator they could not face justice. Johannsson, however, is not the kind of person who’s going to let a stroke, ill-health, weak evidence or the justice system get in his way – he was after-all known as the cop who could see round corners.

The Dying Detective is the eighth book in the Jarnebring and Johansson, not all of which have been translated into English. It can though be read as a standalone and I’ve not yet read any of the other books. In this outing, Johansson has retired as police chief and suffers a serious stroke. While recovering he starts to investigate a twenty five year old rape and murder of a nine year old girl that was never solved. Using his friend Jarnebring to run errands and asking favours of former colleagues he starts to piece together what happened and who was responsible. His obsession for justice is not good for his recovery, but Johansson is only interested in the good life and justice, not struggling along with illness and popping pills. Undoubtedly the star of the book is Johansson, a bear of a man struggling to maintain his bite. He’s surrounded by a cast of memorable characters including Jarnebring, his brother Evert, wife Pia, and home-helps, the tattooed Matilda and burly Max, and there’s some nice interchanges between them. I was particularly taken with the narrative voice, which is engaging and entertaining, especially the tandem of Johansson’s spoken words and thoughts.  For the most part, Persson keeps the plot moving along, mixing in some light humour and social commentary. At the point the killer’s identity is revealed, however, the pace drops and the story becomes somewhat drawn-out, shifting from the hunt to the nature of justice. What was a great read has the wind taken from its sails, losing momentum and direction. Which was a shame as I was thoroughly enjoying the tale. Nonetheless, The Dying Detective is a very good read with a wonderful lead character.

Review of The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell (Vintage, 2007)

In a small hamlet in northern Sweden nineteen people are brutally murdered.  The local police are soon under enormous pressure to find the killer and bring him to justice, but clues are thin on the ground.  Judge Birgitta Roslin feels compelled to visit the hamlet when she realises she is related to one of the couples killed.  Using her legal insider status she gains privileged access to the investigation and soon picks up her own clues and pursues her own line of inquiry.  She is particularly interested in an old family diary and red silk ribbon left at scene, neither of which the police seem to have any interest in.  The ribbon eventually leads her to China and directly into the path of a powerful and highly politically-connected man who is prepared to stop at nothing to fulfil his ambition.

The title and the cover tagline (‘Revenge can take more than a lifetime’) neatly sum up in a few words the story that Henning Mankell spins out over 560 pages.  The first section of the book is a typical Scandinavian police procedural and is enjoyable and quite gripping.  But then the second section is set in China and Nevada in the mid-nineteenth century, the next in modern day China, then we visit East Africa, before heading back to China, Sweden and London.  While the mid-nineteenth century story is interesting, what follows is a rambling tale that is more a partial political treatise than a thriller.  Whole chunks of the material is overly descriptive and little move the story forward, there are a host of clunky plot devices, and bits of it make little sense, including why a very successful man from Beijing felt so compelled to murder 19 people for the way his ancestors were treated (not killed) more than a 130 years previously, and why a shooting in London is not investigated in any meaningful way.  In effect, Mankell has jammed two stories together – a murder in Sweden by someone holding an inter-generational grudge and a political tale about in-fighting amongst China’s elite and its policy in Africa.  Neither quite work on their own, let alone together.  After a good start then, the book becomes increasingly flabby and, in my view, untenable.  Which was a shame.

Review of The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1969, Harper)

A man commits suicide leaving a note that simply says ‘Martin Beck’, a chief detective inspector in the Stockholm murder squad.  Later that day, Beck’s colleague Gunvald Larsson is observing a small apartment block as a favour to another department when it explodes violently.  Larsson manages to rescue a number of people from the block before it collapses, but three are left dead.  It also appears to be a suicide, the victim leaving the gas running, which later ignites.  The case seems pretty straightforward, though there are some niggling questions, such as why the small-time criminal committed suicide and why the fire department was so late to arrive. 

The Fire Engine That Disappeared is the fifth book in the Martin Beck series.  Like the preceding novels, Sjowall and Wahloo tell the tale using a measured, understated voice.  The focus is very much on the everyday group dynamic of a murder squad, the various personalities, petty jealousies and rivalries, and how the police go about identifying and solving the crime.  And again, the timeline is stretched over many months involving lots of laborious and routine work.  However, the usual realism seems a little less believable in this tale than the others with a seemingly perfect crime being picked apart with a certain amount of luck and coincidence, the tale itself felt a little flat, and the social and political commentary about Swedish society is much less pronounced.  Nonetheless, it’s a solid addition to what has so far been a strong series.

Review of The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1968 Swedish, 1971 English, Pantheon)

Late 1960s Stockholm.  On a cold winter night as a bus nears the end of its route a gunman opens fire killing the eight passengers and the bus driver.  Amongst those killed is Åke Stenstrom, a young detective in Martin Beck’s team.  Beck is assigned the high profile case and immediately comes under pressure from politicians and the media for a quick solution.  However, clues are thin on the ground.  Working on the assumption that Stenstrom’s presence on the bus is not a coincidence, Beck and his team chase down all leads, however tenuous they might seem seeking the vital breakthrough that will reveal the killer’s identity.  But to solve one mystery they discover they must solve another.

The Laughing Policeman is the fourth book in the much praised Martin Beck series.  In my opinion it’s a masterclass in how to write a realist police procedural novel that does not rely on coincidence or plot devices to move the story along, nor does it concentrate on a non-conformist, lone cop (plus sidekick) who singlehandedly solves the case whilst coping with all kinds of personal issues.  Instead, the case is solved through patient, diligent investigative work by a team of cops, involving a lot of footwork, collaboration, probing, leaning on informers, petty criminals and suspects, and wandering down blind alleys.  It doesn’t get any racier with respect to the cops’ home lives, which are relatively humdrum and mundane.  Yet despite this everyday realism the story is completely gripping as the dyspeptic Beck and his team inch towards solving the death of their colleague and eight other passengers shot late at night on a Stockholm bus.  In my view the best book in the series so far.  

Review of The Hidden Child by Camilla Lackberg (Harper 2011, Swedish 2007)

True crime writer Erica Falck has finally decided to open the trunk left by her late mother and to sort through its contents.  What she finds is a set of diaries from the early 1940s and a Nazi medal.  She takes the medal to a local history teacher to try and uncover its significance.  A couple of months later the man is found dead, seemingly murdered just a few days after she had visited him.  While the police investigate the death, Erica, intrigued by her mother’s past, also starts to look for answers, aided by her husband, Patrik, a police detective who is on paternity leave to look after their young daughter.  It is clear that the history teacher had been one of her mother’s childhood friends, along with three others.  They are unwilling to talk about the past, but a path to the secret they share has been opened and Erica and the police are determined to chart a route down it.

The Hidden Child is a well plotted story about two connected crimes in the small coastal town of Fjällbacka, Sweden, one committed in 1945, the other in the present day.  The tale has two particular strengths: a fairly intricate plot told from multiple perspectives that has depth, resonance, and attention to detail; and very nice and detailed characterisations, with in-depth back stories and interchanges.  Indeed, the tale is as much a soap opera concerning the families of Erica Falck and Patrik Hedström, the small team of cops at the local police station, and the lives connected to the case as it is a crime tale.  However, whilst a lot of this soap opera drama is interesting and engagingly told, much of it is somewhat surplus to requirements with respect to the main storyline (though I suspect some of it is pretty central to the series).  The ending is a little telegraphed, especially as the number of viable candidate murderers is whittled down, but nonetheless Lackberg manages to spin out intrigue and nice reveals under the end.  The result is a multi-threaded, well paced story that kept this reader turning the pages. 

Review of Exposed by Liza Marklund (2011, Corgi; 1999, Swedish)

Annika Bengtzon is a trainee journalist working as a summer intern at one of Sweden’s largest tabloid newspapers.  She’d like to be sourcing and reporting stories, but instead has been assigned to the tip-off phone, trying to weed out the genuine items of interest from pranksters and crazies and passing them onto the news desk.  When a caller rings in to report that the body of a naked woman is lying in a nearby cemetery she senses the chance to move from office lackey to reporter.  She manages to persuade her boss to let her follow up on the tip and sets off to investigate.  The tip proves to be true and Annika quickly starts to source facts about the woman and the police investigation, determinedly tracking down leads and making a nuisance of herself.  When a government minister is named as a prime suspect in the case she knows that something is not quite right.  But why would a minister sooner be a murder suspect rather than revealing the reality about where he was and what he was doing?  Annika knows that she potentially has a much bigger story, but forces are conspiring to ensure that she doesn’t get the chance to discover the truth.

Exposed is a very readable investigative journalist procedural set in Stockholm.  It follows the travails of rookie reporter Annika Bengtzon as she investigates the death of a local sex club worker and seeks to secure a permanent post with a tabloid newspaper.  Annika is a well realised, complex character who is determined to succeed, but has a habit of undermining her own efforts through instinctive, but poorly judged actions.  The story rattles along at a quick clip and the central plot is engaging, with Marklund threading the story with a number of subplots and rivalries and alliances between characters.  The telling is a little melodramatic at times and there are two twists at the end, one concerning Annika, the other another central character, neither of which were needed nor rang true.  Nevertheless, Exposed is an entertaining read that introduces a character whose life is as messed up as those on whom she reports for the tabloid press.

Review of The Man on the Balcony by Majs Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1967, translated 1968)

The summer of 1967 and a mugger and a child killer are stalking the parks of Stockholm.  The jaded and tired Detective Inspector Martin Beck and his colleagues are under pressure to catch the killer before he strikes again.  However, there’s precious little evidence to go on.  Eventually they find two witnesses, the mugger who is given up by a jilted girlfriend and a three year old boy who’d been playing with a small girl when she was snatched.  One is reluctant to talk, the other can barely put a sentence together.  As the summer unfolds, the number of victims grows and the public pressure rises, and the police hope for a break that will identify the perpetrator. 

The Man on the Balcony is the third instalment of the Martin Beck series of police procedurals written by the husband and wife team of Sjowall and Wahloo between 1965-75.  The books are characterised by an understated social realism.  Beck and his colleagues are normal, everyday people with differing egos, foibles, frailties, talents and opinions, trying to balance work with their home lives.  The investigation unfolds in fits and starts, with painstaking footwork, frustrating interviews, and little doses of luck.  There’s little machismo, no maverick geniuses and little in the way of heroics - just the police getting on and doing their jobs.  In this book, Sjowall and Wahloo start to broaden out the focus from Beck to introduce more of the team and the characterisation is keenly observed.  The plot is fairly standard police procedural fare and hinges on a couple of coincidences, but what makes the story work is the realism and its telling.  There’s a lovely cadence to the storytelling, a kind of gentle, instant rhythm.  Overall, a solid addition to the series.