by Peter on February 3, 2010
Two authors that have made a big splash in Sweden recently are Lars Kepler and Jens Lapidus. Soon they will both appear in English as well, and I expect them both to be very successful.
Lars Kepler is the pseudonym of the two people on the image above, authors Alexandra og Alexander Ahndoril. After they had published their book The Hypnotist – a book that got rave reviews and became a bestseller in Sweden – the Swedish media started a huge investigation into the case of who had written the book. And eventually it was revealed.
Regardless of the hoopla – there is also substance. Reviewers agree that the book is very well written, that it is extremely exciting and quite a bit frightening. And readers in Sweden love it.
”Lars Kepler enthralls readers with The Hypnotist, just like Stieg Larsson did with the Millennium-series… I just sit there, spellbound, while racking my brains trying to figure out who Lars Kepler is. The man who, with his magic wand, has created one of the best crime novels I have ever sacrificed a good night’s sleep for.”
(Norrköpings Tidningar)
It is still unclear when exactly it is being published in English, but I am confident it will be in 2010.
The second newcomer, and equally exciting, is the young lawyer Jens Lapidus. 
He has written two books so far. Never fuck up (Swedish title: Aldrig fucka upp) and Easy Money (Swedish title: Snabba cash). They are part of a planned trilogy called The Stockholm Noir Trilogy. His writing has been compared to James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane.
Both novels are dark and take place in the criminal underbelly of Stockholm, where Hells Angels, Bandidos, different ethnic mafia groups and prison gangs vie for space and control over drugs, weapons, and money. They have sold extremely well in Sweden, and the first novel has already been released as a movie in Sweden. No date has been released for the English translations, but I am sure it will be soon.
I am about to start reading these books, and I am confident that many of you will soon be doing the same.
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by Peter on January 26, 2010
Who wrote The Girl With the Dragoon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest? The publication of a Swedish biograhpy about Stieg Larsson has sparked a new debate in Scandinavia over this. As Stieg Larsson was the bestselling author in Europe in 2009, this is somewhat interesting.
It started with a comment in a Swedish newspaper – Dagens Nyheter – by a former colleague of Stieg Larsson, Anders Hellberg, who said that at the time when he worked with him, Stieg Larsson could not write a single coherent sentence. That he was a bad writer. And Hellberg speculated that perhaps someone else had written the books in the Millennium-series. Today Danish newspaper BT has a headline saying “Stieg Larsson was not alone in writing the Millennium series”.
The debate over this has been back and forth for a while in a number of Scandinavian newspapers. Now, in an email exchange with Danish newspaper Politiken (a very reliable newspaper), published today, Eva Gabrielsson – Stieg Larsson’s partner for 32 years – says that “I did not only correct language”, and goes on to say that her involvement in the writing process extended far beyond commenting on the language.
“It is difficult for me to identify what is Stieg and what is me in the Millennium language, content, and so on, ” says Eva Gabrielsson
The only thing I am sure of, is that this is not the end of it – now that the lid has been opened, many will want to see the inside of this case.
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by Peter on January 25, 2010
The “mother site” for this blog, ScandinavianBooks.com, was launched in 2007. That was many HTML, CSS and PHP-books ago. Since then we have designed and created lots of web pages, but ScandinavianBooks has lived with the same design. Behind the scene, we have revised most of the code as we learned more about how to do things better and more efficiently, but the page has looked basically the same.
Now, finally, it has been given a new design. A design and “look and feel” more in line with what the site has grown into, we feel, as well as a more informative, modern and neat look. We hope you like and enjoy it!
My thanks to the people who have assisted and given feedback, especially Cindy 
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by Peter on January 20, 2010
According to Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, Jo Nesbo has been nominated for the 2010 Edgar Allan Poe Award for the “Best Novel” (see also mysterywriters.org). It is Nesbo’s Nemesis, translated by Don Bartlett, that has been nominated. The other nominees for 2010 are:
• Tim Gautreaux: «The Missing».
• John Hart: «The Last Child».
• The Odds by Kathleen George
• Charlie Huston: «Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death».
• Malla Nunn: «A Beautiful Place to Die».
We wish Jo Nesbo and Don Bartlett good luck, and our congratulations. It has been a long time since a Scandinavian writer has won this award. The last time was Sjowall and Wahloo in 1971 with their novel The Laughing Policeman!
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