Postcard Killers is the result of an interesting collaborative effort between James Patterson, with a record number of New York Times bestsellers, and Liza Marklund, well established Swedish crime fiction writer. Nothing out of the ordinary for James Patterson – he collaborates extensively – but a daring move by Liza Marklund. Two quite different writing styles, two very different backgrounds.

Perhaps not so surprising, the Patterson style of thriller making won! Postcard Killers has short sentences in short paragraphs in short chapters. And it moves at a blistering pace, if possible even faster than the usual Patterson bestseller.

The story is also well plotted. It seems a young serial killing couple is traveling all over Europe. In each of the countries they visit, they kill a young couple. The murders are bloody and brutal, and after they have killed, the murderers take photos of the dead victims. The photos are sent as postcards to newspaper reporters. The killers want publicity and soon get it. In the media they are nicknamed the Postcard Killers.

Very little is known about them. They are extremely professional. No traces are left after their horrendous deeds. No DNA, no fingerprints, no pictures that make identification possible. Nothing. They kill, they leave, they send a postcard, they steal and sell valuables belonging to their victims and clean out their credit cards. Then they move on, to the next country, the next victims.

Now they have arrived in Sweden. A female Swedish newspaper reporter, Dessie Larsson, receives their postcard. That means someone in Stockholm is going to die. On the back it says:

“To be or not to be
In Stockholm,
That is the question
We’ll be in touch”

She gets in touch with the police. The same night an American cop, NYPD detective Jacob Kanon, knocks on her door. He has pursued the postcard killers all over Europe after they killed his daughter Kimmy in Rome, always one or several steps behind. He is desperate but extremely determined. Even if Hell freezes he will continue to pursue them until the bitter end.

Against her will, Dessie is drawn into the case. And reluctantly she is drawn towards the strange, single-minded detective from America as well. But what can she do? Why has she been singled out by the killers? What do they want, and what do they want from her?

As the stubborn detective and the resourceful reporter close in on the Postcard Killers, we follow them on a twisting and turning journey of action, brutality and obsession. Into a reality where art is lived and made in life and through death by the charming, attractive, calculating, cunning and raving mad serial killers.

Postcard Killers will, of course, be panned by a number of critics, as it provides a great opportunity for big-name bashing. And, for sure, it does have its weaknesses: Some elements of story are fairly implausible; the characters are a little stereotypical. But it is actually a great crime fiction novel; not the best I’ve ever read, but solid, fast-paced, with some smart twists and turns, and quite suspenseful. Even though the characters could have been more firmly drawn and feel a little distanced, I liked them. Postcard Killers is better than I had expected, and a book I enjoyed reading. Also, it is a book I do not hesitate to recommend.

(Review based on the Norwegian edition – Postcard Killers is available for pre-order at Amazon US)

Links to books by Liza Marklund at amazon US and
amazon UK: Liza Marklund (books and DVD’s). Links to books by James Patterson at amazon US and amazon UK.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the movie based on the first of Stieg Larsson’s three books, is very soon to be released in the US. The movie will first be show on movie festivals in Miami and Austin on March 5th and March 12th. See also our review of the Millennium movies on DVD.

On March 19th the movie will premiere on more than 33 theaters throughout the US! Here is a link to the news release from Music Box Films showing the locations. Exciting stuff!

The other two movies are scheduled to be released during the Spring and Summer of 2010. We’ll keep you posted!

PS: See also the reviews of the movie by Times Online and Telegraph (UK),

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

The Stonecutter is the third novel by Camilla Läckberg translated into English and released in England. It features policeman Patrik Hedstrom and his wife Erica Falck from Fjallbacka in Sweden. Patrick and Erica now have a newborn daughter, Maja. Erica suffers from a post-birth depression, and Patrik has a hard time coping with all the new demands on him at home.

In The Stonecutter a little girl is found dead in a fisherman’s net. The post-mortem reveals that this is no accidental drowning! The girl has fresh rather than salt water in her lungs. Also there are traces of soap in her lungs and ash in her mouth. Someone has murdered the little girl indoors, dressed her and thrown her into the sea. So now Patrik has a murder case that requires his full attention. To some extent he is relieved to be able to return to work.

This murder case is a delicate one for Patrik, partly because the victim is a child, partly because she is the daughter of one of Erica’s friends, Camilla. Also, it is hard to see what the motive for this terrible crime could possibly be. Patrik and his colleagues follow every possible lead. And as they dig, more and more dark secrets from the little community of Fjallbacka surface. The police find evidence that indicates that the parents may have molested their other child. They find a neighbor that is involved in a child pornography ring. They reveal feuds between neighbors, and deep family conflicts. There is much not immediately visible behind the idyllic façade of small-town Sweden, and some of it is not pretty at all.

At we follow the investigation of the murder case, we also follow the destiny of Agnes, the daughter of a rich owner of a stone quarry, from the 1923 to the present. She gets involved with a stone cutter, gets pregnant, and finds her father rejecting her, withdrawing all her privileges and forcing her to marry the stone cutter – a man for whom she has no love – when he finds out.

In the present Patrick and his colleagues tear into the heart of Fjallbacka. As other children are attacked they frenetically chase down leads, but seemingly without making much progress. As well, mistakes and conflict within the police force result in the death of an innocent witness. When Patrick in the end connects the dots and finds the solution, it turns out to solve much more than he had anticipated. What he finds is a deep hatred and evil that has been build over long, long time.

Läckberg shows us some of the not so very social sides of social democratic Sweden, another parallel world where an evil mind lurks behind the scenes. Läckberg’s writing is getting better and better, and she is becoming more and more popular in Scandinavia. Her books have topped the bestseller lists in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Reading The Stonecutter it is easy to see why.

The Stonecutter is an interesting, exciting and action-packed crime fiction novel, even better than Camilla Läckberg’s earlier book The Ice Princess. It is great reading, and the ending is a winner! The novel has been excellently translated by Steven T. Murray – it is a true pleasure to read. Läckberg is very good at describing the effects of crime on a small community with close ties and relationships among people, and also does a great job at showing how the past may, in some circumstances, exert an active influence on the present. Great entertainment!

Links to books by Camilla Läckberg at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

It is strange how things are inter-related. Henning Mankell writes the Kurt Wallander series. The series became popular crime movies. And now the music from the Wallander movies has become popular as well. Nostalgia (Wallander Main Theme) by Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo.

You can listen to the track below or purchase the song as an MP3 file for £0.80 GBP, €0.90 EUR or $1.30 USD. Click the image on the left for a link to amazon US. Here is a link to amazon UK: Nostalgia (Main Theme For Wallander)

And here is a scene from the Wallander movie The Woman in the Photograph from the BBS-series as well. The Brits have already seen it, here in the US we will just have to wait for it. Oh well.

In the movie clip Wallander turns to Isa to help shed light on the identity of the woman in the photograph, but the assassin is once again closing in. Contains some violent scenes.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

Internationally acclaimed author Yrsa Sigurdardottir takes watchers on a tour of her native Iceland while she previews her newest Iceland thriller, My Soul To Take, an evocative, suspensful tale that exposes Iceland’s sinister history.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

NPR today reports that Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire is number 2 on the hardcover bestseller list for the week ending February 7th. At the same time, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is no. 1 on the paperback list!

The weekly surveys of close to 500 independent bookstores nationwide in collaboration with the American Booksellers Association. Number 1 on the hardcover list is The Help , by Kathryn Stockett.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

According to Swedish Newspaper Dagens Nyheter, these were the bestselling authors in Europe in 2009:

1. Stieg Larsson
2. Stephenie Meyer
3. Dan Brown
4. Paolo Giordano
5. Carlos Ruiz Zafón
6. Camilla Läckberg
7. Herman Koch
8. Tatiana de Rosnay
9. Henning Mankell
10. John Grisham

It is not very surprising that Stieg Larsson is on the top of the list. More surprising, to me at least, is that two other Swedes – Camilla Läckberg and Henning Mankell are also on the list. Quite a success for Swedish crime fiction!

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

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.

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.

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

©2010 Nordic Bookblog. All Rights Reserved.