Bad Intentions (Den onde viljen) is the ninth novel in Norwegian and the seventh in English in Karin Fossum’s excellent series about Inspector Konrad Sejer. It is a psychological thriller about living with bad conscience and a police procedural where we partly know whodunit.

The plot is very interesting. Early one September day, three old friends – Axel, Reilly and Jon – go on a weekend trip together. Jon has severe psychological problems and suffers from anxiety attacks. Axel and Reilly have picked him up at the hospital and brought him to their favorite place, a remote cabin in the forest, to cheer him up.

They are restless, and decide to row out on the Dead Water Lake, the little lake next to the cabin. Out on the lake, Jon starts to feel very anxious and jumps into the lake. One of the friends wants to try to save him; the other one prevents it. They decide to construct a shared story about what happened that presents it as a suicide, and they wait until the next morning before calling the police.

When the police, Konrad Sejer and his assistant Skarre arrives, Sejer and Skarre quickly detect some problems with the story the two boys tell them. Some of the facts do not fit the story all that well. But the boys – the only witnesses – are consistent and tell the same story. Sejer strongly feels that the boys are hiding something. However, finding what they hide and the truth behind Jon’s death will prove very difficult. Weeks pass without further clues, and then in a nearby lake the body of a teenage boy floats to the surface.

Bad Intentions is an intelligent psychological crime novel that deals with bad conscious and its effects on the human mind. Fossum has created a smart plot where lies lead to further lies and actions to cover the initial lies, and very cleverly describes the consequences of this within a friendship. As the context changes, what was once mutual trust turns gradually into fear and distrust. And, as Fossum shows, it is sometimes very hard to hide the truth – it has a way of popping up when you least expect it!

I was very fascinated by this book. It is excellently written and cleverly plotted. It just feels like a very believable, very real story, and at the same time as it is suspenseful and entertaining, it is also a book that made me ponder. I strongly recommend Bad Intentions – it is a marvelous crime fiction book!

Links to books by Karin Fossum at amazon US, amazon UK, amazon CAN, and Fossum at Barnes & Noble

The American publishing house Knopf – the publisher of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series in the United States – is currently being publicly punished for gross incompetence by book stores and readers in the US. An interesting spectacle, if you ask me.

New York Times reports that book stores are importing Stieg Larsson’s latest,The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (link to same at Amazon UK), from England, where it has already been published. The price in England is about $ 15, and it is selling in the US for up to $ 45. So this is pretty good business. As will notice if you click on the image of the book, Amazon only sells preorders, and not the real thing because they are loyal to silly Knopf!

So wherein lies the folly and incompetence of Knopf? In behaving as if we live in 1909 and not 2009! In 1909 few people would have known that the book had already been published in England (or, indeed, that English printing presses managed to churn out The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire much quicker as well). But in 2009, in the Age of Internet, the Age of the informed consumer, virtually everybody know. Including, of course, small independent book sellers throughout the land.

So people do the smart thing – some readers order from Amazon UK, some from other online booksellers in England, some bookstores import from England. People buy several copies of the book in England whilst traveling and bring it back. There are many possibilities! And in the Age of Internet people are smart – they find them!

Only Knopf still lives in the pre-internet age. They could have coordinated the US publication dates with those in England. Indeed, perhaps they could even have beaten England to the mill? But like GM, the market insensitive giant whose market shares have steadily dwindled since World War II, they chose to do it the way they preferred, ignoring the nuisance of consumers preferences. It is hard to see any other reason why the US is the last country in the civilized world to get The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest?

(Original title: Det som er mitt. Published in England as Punishment.) Emilie, nine years old, disappears on the way home from her school. After a search, her father finds her backpack in a deserted alley. Six days later, a little boy disappears, the five year old Kim. Then, while more children disappear, the bodies of the missing children start appearing in their family’s homes with notes that say “You got what you deserved.” Only nine-year-old Emilie remains at large. There is no word of her at all, nor a returned dead body.

A serial child murderer is on the loose and Adam Stubo is in charge of the case. He has personal reasons for wanting to solve the case of the missing children: not long ago he lost his wife and only daughter in a terrible accident, and now all he has left is his young grandson.

Viewing a television panel discussion of the child kidnappings, Stubo’s attention is caught by Johanne Vik. Vik’s thinking differs considerably from that of the other participants, and in the middle of the discussion she walks off the set, outraged by the assumptions made by the other panelists. Adam Stubo is impressed, and decides she is the perfect foil to counterbalance the police procedures. Thus he turns to Johanne Vik for a profile of the killer. Together they race against the clock to find the kidnapper before another child turns up dead.

And while the Norwegian media drum up a nation-wide witch hunt for pedophiles, Stubo and Johanna gradually uncover a quite different story – one where revenge rather than lust is the basic ingredient.

What is Mine is the first book in Anne Holt’s series featuring the former FBI profiler – now working as an academic psychologist – Johanne Vik, and Detective Inspector Adam Stubo of the Oslo police. The second is What Never Happens. Personally I like this series, but I liked her previous series featuring Hanne Wilhelmsen even better. However, for some or other reason that series has not yet been translated into English.

What is Mine is a nicely paced crime fiction with a solid and twisting plot and interesting, well developed and well-rounded characters living complicated and demanding lives. It is very suspenseful. Adam has scars in his soul from his losses, and Johanne attempts to parent a mentally handicapped child while building a career. Vik and Stubo are a very interesting pair, coming at the problems from different angles but managing to benefit from the differences. What is Mine is a tad slow in the beginning, but quickly picks up pace. It is a very clever crime story and an interesting tale of crime and punishment.

Praise:

“Anne Holt is the latest crime writer to reveal how truly dark it gets in Scandinavia” — Val McDermid

Links to Anne Holt’s books at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

Inger Frimansson is a Swedish author and journalist who writes psychological thrillers, in many ways similar in style to Karin Alvtegen and Karin Fossum. Her breakthrough in Sweden came with the novel Good Night my Darling in 1998 (see also our review of  The Shadow in the Water).

If you expect Island of Naked Women to be a soft porn novel, you are in for a disappointment. The title has a historical explanation, but is somewhat parenthetical to the content of the novel. Instead, this is another psychological thriller by Inger Frimansson, written is a style she masters to perfection. In 50 or so pages she sets the stage for an exciting and suspenseful novel with a tense atmosphere. And when things start to happen, the consequences are bad both in a real sense and psychologically – and it really feels as if they had to be bad, nothing else would have been right in the dark scene so vividly drawn by Frimansson.

In Island of the Naked Woman (superbly translated from Swedish by Laura Wideburg), writer Tobias Elmkvist, a Stockholm novelist with career troubles, tired and at times deeply depressed, returns to his childhood home in Ôstgötaland to visit and help his father, Carl Sigvard. His relationship to him is not good, as Tobias (wrongly) feels that his father is ashamed of him. Even so he feels that he now needs to help his father who is confined to his bed after having broken his leg.

When he arrives, he meets his father’s younger partner, the somewhat coarse Sabina Johansson, and finds himself strongly attracted to her. As it turns out, the attraction is mutual. And shortly after, as Tobias and Sabina give in to their desires in a barn tack-room, a disapproving local, Hardy Lindström, walks in and confronts them. Tobias gets scared, and plunges a screwdriver into Lindstrom’s throat. He thinks he has killed him. However, when he later returns to the barn, he finds no trace of the body and no blood. Was it a dream? Did he imagine it all?

Island of the Naked Women is more a psychological thriller than a mystery novel. There is no mystery in the book for the reader. Rather this is more a study of guild and emotions associated with it. It is well written and composed, and the characters are very intriguing, constructed in a manner that makes for strange dynamics and lots of tension. A good, suspenseful book with a tense atmosphere which I recommend.

Links to books by Inger Frimansson at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

See more reviews of Swedish crime fiction at ScandinavianBooks.com!

The Water’s Edge (Den som elsker noe annet, 2007) is Karin Fossum’s eight book in the Inspector Sejer series and the sixth to be translated into English. The translation by Charlotte Barslund is very good – impressive, actually.

A middle aged couple – Reinhardt and Kristine Ris – on their usual Sunday walk in the woods find the body of a small boy lying at the foot of a tree. He has a T-shirt on, but is naked from the waist down. He has been murdered.

Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre arrive at the scene of the crime and find out that the little boy is eight-year-old Jonas August Løwe. The couple had seen a man on the track in the woods walking away from the location of the body.Their descriptions of the man varied slightly, but the woman, Kristine, said that he looked like H.C. Andersen, the famous Danish writer. It also turns out the boy has been sexually abused.

Unexpectedly, the finding of the body triggers changes in the the Ris’ relationship. Kristine starts to long for a child. Reinhardt seems to excited and somewhat obsessed with the murder. The relationship seems to be falling apart.

Sejer and Skarre contact all the known pedophiles in the area, they interview the children at the school, the parents and teachers, but they
don’t get anywhere. Things get even worse when another boy – Edwin – disappears.

The Water’s Edge is a great book from Karin Fossum. The only thing I did not like about it was that Fossum was a little too eager to impart on her readers all her knowledge about the subject of pedophilia. On the other hand, she does not condemn but writes instead in a somewhat distanced and detached style which I found very appropriate. Also, Karin Fossum manages to show us how the terrible incidents are viewed both from the point of view of the perpetrator and by detectives Konrad Sejer and Jacob Skarre.

The Water’s Edge is a well written, sober book dealing with a very difficult subject in a sensitive and enlightening fashion. It is a great read and highly recommended!

Read more about Karin Fossum and her books at Scandinavianbooks.com!

Links to books by Karin Fossum at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

Karin Fossum, Norway’s bestselling “queen of crime”, brings literary elegance and moral ambiguity to the detective novel.
– The Independent

As usual, I am very impressed by Karin Fossum’s talent and originality.
– Eurocrime.co.uk

Johan Theorin has so far only written two books. Both are excellent. As a result, he is a bestseller in his native Sweden (in competition with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell). The first novel, Echoes from the Dead, has been well received internationally. This novel, The Darkest Room (Nattfåk – which means something like Night fog), the second in a planned series of four, is in my opinion even better. Like his first novel, this too is an intelligent book somewhere in between a crime fiction book and a ghost story.

A couple from Stockholm, Kathrine and Joachim, with their two children – Gabriel and Livia – has purchased an old manor house on Eel Point on the Swedish island of Öland. It has been empty for a long time – apart from the spirits of the dead, that is – and the houses have been neglected, but they want to renovate it and move in. The house has a strange history; it was built on timber from a ship that sunk in 1846. It is rumored to be visited by ghosts.

Strange things are still going on in the house. Before long, Katrine is found, drowned, close to the house. It looks like an accident, but the young policewoman Tilda Davidsson is not convinced that it was an accident. There are many strange things happening, and many houses are visited by thieves during the night.

Tilda Davidsson, who recently started working with the Marnäs police, is the grandchild of old Erlof’s brother (from Echoes of the Dead), and is interested in the history of Oland. She begins to investigate the accident, while also tracking down a gang denuding the uninhabited summer residences of antiques. More and more it becomes clear that somehow, for some reason, the gravitational center of the many odd things that seem to be happening is Eel Point.

The Darkest Room is well written, full of mysteries, and told in a style that evokes a feeling of that there is something mystical, perhaps super-natural, going on. The plot is rich and has lots of neat features, and Theorin very skillfully shows his cards one at a time in order to gradually build more and more suspense. As well, this is a book which displays a deep understanding of human vulnerability and grief. Another good Swedish crime fiction book, highly recommended!

Links to books by Johan Theorin at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

The Stone Murders, to my knowledge the first book by Finnish writer Matti Joensuu published in English, has been expertly translated by Raili Taylor. Joensuu writes police procedurals featuring detective Harjunpaa. His books are written in a spare, austere language which sometimes feels a little stiff.

The Stone Murders refer to just that – first one and then another murder in Helsinki where the victims are killed by stones. Very soon the police and detective Harjunpaa zooms in on youths hanging around in the area where the murders have been committed. Harjunpaa himself learns firsthand what it means to be surrounded by and harassed by rioting, pleasure seeking and teenagers totally lacking respect even for the police.

As readers, we know more than the police, and also follow two youngsters, both living sad – terrifying is perhaps a better description – lives, running away and getting drunk when they can, and getting into trouble more or less because they can and because it is something to do. We know they are the murderers and we know why. But will the police find then?

I found the book to be very interesting, not only for the mystery but also because it provides a somewhat shocking perspective on Finland’s youth problem (it may not be all that different in Germany, the UK and the US, by the way). The book really tells a shocking tale, not only of brutal murders but also of a segment of a generation with seemingly no future. Even so, the story ends on a note of hope. The Stone Murders is a good book I am happy to recommend!

Links to books by Matti Joensuu at amazon US and amazon UK.

Jo Nesbo, whom many now claim is the top crime writer in Europe, does it again! The Redeemer (Frelseren) was a huge hit when it was published in Norway. Quite possibly it is the best among Nesbo’s books translated into English so far.

The action in this book starts with two incidents taking place 12 years prior to the main plot in the book. The first is a rape of a 14 year old girl that takes place in a Salvation Army summer camp in Norway. We learn of the rape, but not who the perpetrator is, nor the identity of the victim. The second event is that a young Croatian boy destroys 12 Serbian tanks in Croatia.

Then, on a cold night, an officer in the Salvation Army in Oslo is murdered during a Christmas concert, shot in the head at point blank range. The murderer is a professional hit man who usually does not make mistakes. But this time he made one small mistake. As well, he was unlucky.

So Harry Hole and his team have their work lined up. Harry is pretty dry now, not drinking much. But, of course, he has other problems. He has a new boss, which he quickly turns into an enemy. And he is a little paranoid (which is good, in this case). A troublemaker, and certainly not one for teamwork!

PS: The Leopard is available for order at Amazon UK.

In this case there is very little to work with. No immediate suspect, no weapon, no motive. And then the assassin discovers he has shot the wrong man, and Harry’s problems start for real. What follows is some really outstanding police work, utilizing modern surveillance technology to the utmost. And the hit man becomes increasingly desperate. He will stop at nothing to eliminate his target.

The Redeemer is, I think, Jo Nesbo’s most gripping thriller yet. The descriptions and characters are good. The plot is rich, complicated and fascinating. As well, Jo Nesbo provides readers with some false clues to make it even more complicated. And the action is fast and very exciting. Hole is even more fascinating in this book than in the previous ones, I think. And, as well, all the right ingredients are there: Lies, deceit, motives, revenge, murders, and skillful opponents. Go buy! A great read!

Praise for this book:

Hole in one! — VG, Norway

Links to books by Jo Nesbo at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.